Julie Billiart - Later Life, Death and Canonization

Later Life, Death and Canonization

The seven years of life that remained to her were spent in forming her daughters to solid piety and the interior spirit, of which she was herself the model. Msgr. De Broglie, the bishop of Ghent, said of her that she saved more souls by her inner life of union with God than by her outward apostolate. In the space of twelve years (1804–1816) Mother Julie founded fifteen convents, made one hundred and twenty journeys, many of them long and toilsome, and carried on a close correspondence with her spiritual daughters. Hundreds of these letters are preserved in the motherhouse. In 1815 Belgium was the battlefield of the Napoleonic wars, and the mother-general suffered great anxiety, as several of her convents were in the path of the armies, but they escaped injury. In January 1816, she took ill.

She died on 8 April 1816, at the motherhouse of her institute, Namur, Belgium, aged 64.