Saint Marie-Euphrasie Pelletier

An inked inscription in a period hand in the lower margin identifies the sitter as 'La Mère Marie de Sainte Euphrasie, Supérieure générale du Bon Pasteur, décédée le 24 avril 1868' [English: Superior-General of the Good Pastor, died 24 April 1868].

Born Rose-Virginie Pelletier in France in 1796, she entered a convent at Tours in 1814. At Angers in western France in 1835 she founded her own religious house, la Congrégation de Notre-Dame de Charité du Bon-Pasteur, called the Sœurs du Bon-Pasteur d'Angers [the Sisters of the Good Shepherd of Angers]. She was beatified by Pius XI in 1933 and canonised by Pius XII on 2 May 1940.

From an album compiled by the Belgian jurist, journalist and prison reformer Edouard Ducpétiaux (1804-1868), who in 1863 convened and presided over the first Catholic Congress, a general assembly of some 3000 Belgian Catholics which met at Malines [Flemish: Mechelen] in northern Belgium between 18 August and 22 August 1863.

Photographer unidentified.