Fanny Allen’s commitment to the Great Commission was not flashy, the stuff of grand tales of perseverance, suffering, and martyrdom—more the everyday, the challenges to faith from family and friends, the renewed commitment time and again, the daily taking up the Cross to go out among the suffering and the sick to heal them, if not physically, then spiritually.
Fanny Allen, born to revolutionary war hero Ethan Allen and his second wife Francis Montresor Brush Buchanan, was the first native New Englander to become a Roman Catholic nun. She was born and raised in Westminster and Burlington, Vermont. After her father’s death in 1789, she lived with her mother in Westminster before and after her mother’s marriage to Jabez Penniman.
Fanny, like her father Ethan, was uncomfortable with some Protestant doctrines. When she went to Montreal in 1807 to learn French at the Convent School of the Sisters of the Congregation, she came under the influence of Catholicism. At the convent she had a conversion experience, as told by her biographer, Bishop Louis De Goësbriand:
On a certain day, one of the Sisters, by a sort of inspiration, asked Fanny Allen to take a vase of flowers which she gave her, and to carry it upon the altar upon which the Holy Sacrament was present, recommending her to adore our Lord Jesus Christ when she would enter the sanctuary. The young lady started smiling, fully intending not to comply with the request; but as she opened the gate of the chancel she felt arrested by an invisible power, and quite unable to move a step. Three times did she endeavor to go up the sanctuary, and three times she failed in her attempt. Surprised and overcome she at last fell on her knees and in the sincerity of her soul adored Jesus Christ, of whose real presence in the Eucharist she then became fully convinced. Immediately after she withdrew to a remote part of the church where she shed abundance of tears and said to herself: ‘After this miraculous occurrence, I must give myself up to my Saviour.’ She, however, did not at once inform her teachers of what had happened, but desired to be instructed, and made up her mind some time after, to go to confession. After she was sufficiently instructed, she made her solemn abjuration [of her previous, Episcopal Church baptism], and was baptized by the parish priest of Montreal, Rev. L. Saulnier. . . . After her baptism she received her first communion, and on this very occasion resolved to embrace the religious life.
(Goësbriand, Catholic Memoirs of Vermont and New Hampshire, 1886, pg. 14)
Upon returning to Vermont, her mother, stepfather, and friends were shocked by her conversion to Catholicism; Vermont was, like all of New England, a place in which Protestants had long looked upon Roman Catholics with hatred.
The grief and indignation of her parents knew no bounds. They looked upon it as a most disgraceful infatuation. Peremptorily imposing silence upon her in relation to the subject, they determined to suppress it, if possible, until every means had been used to divert her mind from the fatal delusion. (Goësbriand, 15)
This reminds us of Jesus’ words, according to Luke, “Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I have come to divide people against each other. From now on families will be split apart, three in favor of me, and two against—or two in favor and three against” (Lk. 12:51-52).
Time passed, during which her mother accepted Fanny’s religious change, and agreed to take her to Montreal where she might find a community of nuns with whom to live. They visited the Church at the Hotel-Dieu of St. Joseph, where Fanny experienced an epiphany:
She hardly cast her eyes upon the painting of the holy family placed behind the great altar and beheld the face of St. Joseph, that she cried out and said to her mother: “That is himself. You see, mother, that St. Joseph wishes me to live here, he it was who saved me from the monster.” She by these words reminded her mother of an event which had occurred when she was twelve years of age. As she was walking along a river and looking out upon the water which was much agitated, she saw arising out of it an enormous beast of monstrous shape which was coming towards her. In her terror she thought she could not take her eyes from it, nor stir from where she was, when all at once she thought she saw near her a venerable, bald-headed man, wrapped up in a brown cloak, and carrying a stick in his hand, who took hold of her arm, saying: “Little girl, what do you do here? Make haste and run away.” At the sound of his voice she recovered her strength and made towards home in a hurry, turning about, however, to see the old man, but he had disappeared. When she reached home, her mother noticing her excited condition and the changed appearance of her features, understood that some extraordinary accident must have happened, and the child told her the best she could and the cause of her terror and the manner of her rescue by the old man. (Goësbriand, 16)
Fanny immediately resolved to become one of Sisters of St. Joseph of the Hotel Dieu.
Hotel-Dieu of St. Joseph in Montreal had a long and illustrious career when Fanny devoted her life to God.
In Montreal, the mission of St. Joseph on earth was . . . represented by the founding of the Hotel-Dieu, under the charge of the Sisters of St. Joseph. . . . The Sisters of St. Joseph of the Hotel-Dieu are true to the spirit of their first mother, and in their immense and admirable new hospital at the foot of the mountain in Montreal, they nearly always have some patients of Vermont or other New England States. There many are cured, owing, perhaps, more to the prayers and excellent nursing of the sisters than to the skill of their admirable physicians and surgeons. The Sisters of St. Joseph are a cloistered community. In their works of charity they are not encouraged by the hope of being praised by men. The remembrance of St. Joseph ministering to the Son of God, the honor in the sight of God attached to this office, the hope of the greater reward promised to works of mercy, are the chief incentives to their life of devotion. (Goësbriand, 8-9)
Fanny joined the convent in 1808 and lived there for nine years, serving the poor and the sick, bringing to them the message of Christ in accordance with the Great Commission.
Fanny’s life illustrates what often happens when a person goes against comfort and expectation to take on a life-changing task. Fanny’s conversion upset the cohesiveness of her family, challenging her mother’s Protestantism and her father’s Deism. She followed the will of her heavenly Father over the remonstrances of her family and friends, but in so doing she taught her mother, stepfather, and friends that love for God requires amazing sacrifices. As Louis Goësbriand related:
[When] Mr. Penniman and his wife came to Montreal to see her; they visited the monastery in all its details, were surprised to see how happy, contented and perfectly united amongst themselves were the Sisters of this community. They had imagined that Catholic Convents were no better than so many prisons, and they were so pleased with what they saw, that they continually spoke of the happiness of those Sisters, and congratulated the young novice on the choice of life she had made. She also felt so pleased to see her parents free from former prejudices against the religious life, that she seemed to grow more fervent in the service of God, and in the discharge of all the duties of her state. When the time of her profession had come (1810) many of her acquaintances of the United States came to witness this solemn action. They filled the whole chancel, and the church itself was quite full. All the Americans could not but wonder at seeing this young lady of Vermont shut herself up in a convent for the rest of her life. (19)
It was truly an eye-opening experience for New Englanders traditionally brought up in an atmosphere of suspicion of Catholicism in general and convents in particular.
Fanny lived out her life in love for others, both her family and friends as well as the mentally and physically ill at the Hotel-Dieu. Her life echoed what Pope Francis recently encouraged healing nuns to do, “to cultivate their service and love for the sick, always with joy and hope, never losing the joy in their hearts, and loving the most fragile persons.”
Editor’s Note: This article is part of a series on Catholic missionaries to North America.
