At Our Roots

In 1842, the Archbishop of Cambrai approved the first Constitutions of the Sancta Unio, granting official ecclesiastical recognition to the new congregation — born 16 years earlier, in 1826, from the encounter between Fr. Debrabant and the founding mothers.

Today, February 18, 2026 — on the anniversary of the death of Jean-Baptiste Debrabant (1801–1880) — we launch a new series exploring his thought and the charism of the Holy Union through his letters to the sisters. It is a series meant to go back to the roots: in this bicentenary year of the foundation, to better understand the gift it represents for the Church and for humanity today. To rediscover the past in order to read the present — and to renew our gaze toward the future of the mission.

We offer here an excerpt from Fr. Debrabant's circular letter, written at the time of the first approval by the Catholic Church. His words show us how every work of God is born amid tribulation. The "house at Vred" he refers to is the first house opened after the foundation in Douai — also in the Hauts-de-France region — which would serve as a model for all future foundations. It is the beginning of a great unfolding. In sending this letter, Fr. Jean-Baptiste traces the history that had brought him and the sisters to that moment.

“It was towards the end of 1828, in the parish of St. Jacques at Douai, that in the midst of a multitude of obstacles and difficulties, God deigned to favor the undertaking of a work towards which an invincible urge led me for the education and direction of youth. This thought pursued me everywhere, even in my priestly functions, which I fulfilled nevertheless with relish, whether in the parish in the capacity of curate, or in the prisons and hospitals in the capacity of chaplain; for means to assure the future of youth, and to preserve it ceaselessly my mind searched from the contagion so widespread everywhere; only in a solid Christian education could I see a hope for a better future for religion and society (…)”.

“The house at Vred which suffered for many years from every kind of tribulation, was nevertheless, the beginning, for it was from here that several new houses took their origin, houses that were founded simultaneously and quite providentially because, my dear daughters, do not think that things went easily and without obstacles.

No human aid, powerful opposition, numerous contradictions, the most painful disapproval, censure, distrust, these were the foundation stones of that building - of the Congregation which you form today. But and let us bless Providence for it, what seemed inevitably to bring the newly-born Institute to nothing served, as it were, to consolidate it. It was at this time, in fact, that you began to wear a uniform costume, and to bear the names of Dames of La Sainte Union, with the beautiful symbolic decoration which tells you that you have only received that name

So that you may form together a union of heart, mind and feelings, like Jesus and Mary, working to imitate their union and their virtues, above all obedience, charity, silence and simplicity;

you understand by that, my very dear daughters, the motive which caused me to give your dear Institute this beautiful name of La Sainte Union. It was also at this same time that you received the regulations for your exercises and the foundations of your rule and Constitutions, but without any authority to make you observe them other than your own will, always free”.

Circular Letter in the form of a historical account of the origin, trials and progress of the Congregation of the Holy Union of the Sacred Hearts — Addressed by the Founder to all the Religious Sisters, on the occasion of the ecclesiastical approval, April 8, 1842