Melanie Calvat
Francoise Melanie Calvat (November 7, 1831-December 14, 1904, 73 upon passing) was a French religious sister/nun in the Roman Catholic Church. A religious sister is a Christian woman who has taken public vows in a religious order dedicated to apostolic works. Even though they’re called nuns, they’re canonically distinct. She & Maximin Guiraud, was/were the 2 seers of Our Lady of La Salette.
Melanie was born in Corps in Isere, France. She was the 4th of 10 kids in a family of extreme poverty. The family was so poor “that the young were sometimes dispatched to beg on the street.”
By the age of 9, Melanie Calvat was hired out as a shepherdess. This is where she met Maximin Guiraud on the eve of their apparition. Her contemporary employers described her as “sulky,” “lazy,” & “uncommunicative.” She spoke the regional Occitan dialect (Patois) & fragmented French. She didn’t have any formal schooling, religious or secular. So naturally, she couldn’t read or write well or at all.
On September 19, 1846, Melanie (a teen at the time) & Maximin (aged 11) saw a vision of the Virgin Mary while tending cows, in the mountains of La Salette. The kids reported seeing a “Beautiful Lady” sitting on a rock, weeping with her head in her hands. She wore a high headdress of roses & a golden crucifix.
The Lady (the Virgin Mary) spoke of the sins of the people. Specifically, the profanation of Sundays & the use of the Lord’s name in vain. She warned of a coming famine (the “potato blight”) if the people didn’t convert. Crucially, the Lady reported sharing individual secrets with each kid, which they were forbidden to reveal until a later date.
The bishop of Grenoble, Philibert de Bruillard, named several commissions to examine the facts. The Marian apparitions were formally approved by the Bishop of Grenoble in 1851. While the event was accepted, Melanie’s personal trajectory became increasingly difficult. Maximin, who entered the seminary, also had difficulties living a normal life.
After the Marian apparition in 1846, Calvat was placed as a boarder in the Sisters of Providence Convent in Corenc, close to Grenoble. She entered religious life at the age of 20. In 1850, she became a postulant with this order & in October 1851, she took the veil.
In May 1853, Bishop de Bruillard died. In early 1854, his replacement refused to grant permission for her to be professed. Because he found that she wasn’t spiritually mature enough. Calvat claimed that the real reason for the refusal was that the bishop was aiming to gain the favor of Emperor Napoleon III of France.
Following the bishop’s refusal to permit her to be professed, Calvat was officially allowed to move to a convent of the Sisters of Charity. However, after 3 weeks, she was returned to Corps en Isere for further education.
She was then allowed to move to Carmel at Darlington in England. She arrived in 1855. She took temporary vows in 1856. In 1858, she wrote to the Pope to tell him a part of the secret she was “authorized” to reveal in that year. In 1860, she was released from her vow of cloister at Carmel by the Pope & returned to mainland Europe.
She entered the Congregation of the Sisters of Compassion in Marseille. Marie, a sister, was appointed as her companion. After a stay in their convent at Cephalonia, Greece, where she & Sister Marie went to open an orphanage. Then, after a short journey at the Carmelite convent of Marseille, she came back to the Sisters of Compassion for a brief time.
In October 1864, she was admitted as a novice, on the condition that she kept her identity secret. But she was recognized. In early 1867, she was officially released from the order. She & her companion then went (following a short stay at Corps & La Salette) to live at Castellamare near Naples in Italy. She was welcomed by the local bishop. She lived there for 17 years & wrote down her secret, including the rule for a future religious foundation.
In 1873, Calvat wrote her personal message again, with the official permission of Sisto Riario Sforza, the Cardinal Archbishop of Naples. Meanwhile, religious orders were being formed at La Salette of Grenoble. These were to provide from pilgrims & spread the message of the vision.
Calvet claimed she had been authorized by the apparition to provide the names of these orders, their rules, & their habits. The 1 for the men was to be named: Order of the Apostles of the Last Days. The 1 for the women was to be named: Order of the Mother of God.
The bishop refused her demands. So she appealed to the Pope. The Pope granted her an audience. She was received by Pope Leo XIII on December 3, 1878. The message was officially published by Calvat herself on November 15, 1879. She got an official ok from Mgr. Salvatore Luigi Zola, Bishop of Lecce near Naples (who had protected & assisted Calvat in his diocese), under the title: Apparition of the Blessed Virgin on the Mountain of La Salette.
Later, the Vatican put this book on the Index of Prohibited Books. The “Secret of La Salette” is actually a series of documents written by Calvat at different stages of her life. The 1851 secret was sent to Pope Pius IX. It warned of “France’s corruption” & a coming “general war.” The 1879 secret was published in Lecce, Italy. It contained the famous line: “Rome will lose the faith & become the seat of the Antichrist.”
Calvat visited the Sanctuary at La Salette for the last time on September 18-19, 1902. In the last months of her life, she lived at Altamura, Italy, where she didn’t reveal her identity. Her identity was revealed only AFTER her death.
She passed away on December 14, 1904, at her home in Altamura, Italy. She was interred in Altamura under a marble monument with a bas-relief picturing the Virgin Mary welcoming the “shepherdess of La Salette” into Heaven.
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