Madeleine Delbrêl

Madeleine Delbrêl (1904–1964) was a French Catholic author, poet, and mystic. She came to the Catholic faith after a youth spent as an atheist.

Delbrêl died unexpectedly from a brain hemorrhage in 1964 and now has an open cause for canonization. Pope Francis declared her Venerable in 2018.

Biography
Madeleine Delbrêl was born in Mussidan, Dordogne, France. Although her father, as well as his father before him, were railroad workers, he was of an artistic disposition and Madeleine inherited his interest in and talent for writing. She gained notice for her poetry and was a gifted pianist. Throughout her childhood, she lived in several different places, and was never able to feel at home or make friends anywhere. Her parents were not religious, so Delbrêl was an atheist by age of fifteen, experiencing life as absurd.

At seventeen Delbrêl wrote a tract titled: "God is dead--long live!" which expresses her view that death is the only certainty in life. Consequently, she lived life without any regard to middle-class values, writing and illustrating poetry, studying philosophy and art at the Sorbonne University in Paris, designing her own fashions, and being one of the first women of her set to cut her hair short.

However, when her fiancé suddenly decided to join the Dominican Order and her father went blind, her life fell apart. At the same time she began to notice that life did not seem absurd to her Christian friends, who still enjoyed life as much as she did. Suddenly, God's existence did not seem a complete impossibility anymore. Delbrêl decided to kneel and pray, and also remembered Teresa of Ávila's recommendation to think silently of God for five minutes each day.

Delbrêl called the year of 1924 the year of her conversion. For in praying she found God—or, as she felt, he found her. To her God was someone to love, just like any other person. At first she considered taking the veil and entering the Carmelite Order, but then felt called upon to be in touch with people and help them lead happier lives. Delbrêl joined the Girl Scouts, then led a group of women in Ivry-sur-Seine, a small working-class town, with the goal of simply caring, consoling, aiding, and establishing good contact with the people. She then took a degree in Social Studies and was employed by the city government of Ivry, where she worked throughout World War II and thereafter.

Her notable works include The Marxist City as Mission Territory (1957), The Contemporary Forms of Atheism (1962), and the posthumous publications We, the Ordinary People of the Streets (1966) and The Joy of Believing (1968).

Delbrêl died unexpectedly from a brain hemorrhage in 1964.

Legacy
There is a movement underway advocating for her beatification. The Diocese of Créteil opened her cause in 1993. On January 26, 2018, Pope Francis signed a decree that Delbrêl had lived a life of heroic virtue, giving her a status in the eyes of the Catholic Church that accords her the title of Venerable.

Delbrêl has been cited by Cardinal Roger Etchegaray as an example for young people to follow in "the arduous battle of holiness."