Jesuit and Women Religious Awesomeness!

I love Catholic history.  An excerpt from McNamara's blog:

The story of France's missionaries in 17th-century North America is a great adventure tale, replete with danger, heroism, and martyrdom. And no one chronicled it better than Francis Parkman (1823-1893), who combined literary flair with high scholarship to create historical works that stand the test of time. In one noted passage, he describes the Jesuits in Canada:

Men steeped in antique learning, pale with the close breath of the cloister, here spent the noon and evening of their lives, ruled savage hordes with a mild paternal sway, and stood serene before the direst shapes of death.

Yet Parkman, a New England Protestant, was uneasy about Catholicism itself, which offered "so much to be admired and so much to be detested." One person he greatly admired was Sister Marie of the Incarnation (1599-1672), who served in Canada for four decades and displayed "ability, a fortitude, and an earnestness which command respect and admiration." She was, in short, "a woman to the core..."

Marie served for eighteen years as Mother Superior, guiding the community through poverty, natural disasters, and "Indian wars." Parkman asks, "How did these women bear themselves amid toils so arduous?" A lot had to do with Marie's leadership. When some of the Sisters considered going home, she told them she had "an extreme aversion to returning to France, and had a greater love than ever for her vocation." The Sisters stayed.

Marie was an exceptional organizer and fundraiser, whom one historian calls "a mystic imbued with a sense of action." A biographer suggests that if she hadn't entered religious life, "she might have been an esprit fort born to control thousands." She combined intellectual acumen with common sense, tact with kindness. A contemporary recalled that "no one ever looked upon her without a feeling of reverence..."