Since it was first established in December 2022, the Center for Research on St. Mary of the Incarnation of Wenzao Ursuline University has been dedicated to studying various historical records on St. Mary of the Incarnation. Now, their efforts have borne fruitful results.
The center’s team of translators has completed the Chinese translation of Marie de l’Incarnation, which was initially written in French by famous French-Canadian historian Dom Guy-Marie Oury, O.S.B. With a total of 400,000 characters, the Chinese translation of Marie de l’Incarnation paints a vivid illustration of St. Mary of the Incarnation’s life.
Yu-Ing Choong, an alumna of Wenzao Ursuline University’s own French Department, is the benefactor behind the Center for Research on Mary of the Incarnation’s establishment. Filled with gratitude for the Alma Mater that had both provided her with a solid education in French and cultivation of her own character, she made a donation to establish the Center for Research on St. Mary of the Incarnation, showing her deep love for Wenzao Ursuline University. At the same time, she also established a team of translators alongside the teaching staff of the French Department. Together, they planned the project of translating Marie de l’Incarnation to Chinese. Now, the book has finally been published after three years of hard work.
St. Mary of the Incarnation’s biography has been published in various languages all over the world, but they tend to only tell a simplified version of her story. The new Chinese translation is the only book to translate the entirety of its original source text. The life of St. Mary of the Incarnation is also the history of the Order of St. Ursula’s birth and growth in North America.
As the head organizer for the translation project of the biography Marie de l’Incarnation, Yu-Ing Choong shared her experience of visiting the Monastery of the Ursulines of Québec seven years ago, where she had the honor of reading five of St. Mary of the Incarnation’s handwritten letters that she wrote three hundred years ago, which she then compiled and translated into a book. In 2020, Yu-Ing Choong published a book titled The Letters of St. Mary of the Incarnation, which contains not only the contents of the original letters in French but also their Chinese translation. Yu-Ing Choong’s book received enthusiastic responses from readers in Taiwan and abroad. It also became the bedrock upon which the project to translate Marie de l’Incarnation into Chinese was built. The project aims to share St. Mary of the Incarnation’s brilliance and achievement among Chinese readers.
St. Mary of the Incarnation was canonized by Pope Francis in 2014, and is respectfully regarded as the “Mother of the Order of St. Ursula in New France” and the “Saint Teresa of the New World.” This book takes a deep dive into the events of Marie of the Incarnation’s life, including the story of how she came to dedicate herself to God, and subsequently, the journey that led to her canonization as a saint.
In her opening remarks during the book launching event, Dr. Hwei-Lin Chuang, the President of Wenzao Ursuline University, expressed that this was a time for gratitude and blessings. She thanked all the parties involved in the publishing of Marie de l’Incarnation’s Chinese translation for their devotion and diligence. This opportunity has not only furthered cooperative relations in the academics between Wenzao Ursuline University and Laval University of Canada but granted the former the blessings of St. Mary of the Incarnation’s sacred legacy.
The book launch was also attended by Professor Raymond Brodeur, the founding director of the Center for Research on St. Mary of the Incarnation at Laval University, his wife, and the center’s current director, Professor Philippe Roy-Lysencourt, who flew to Taiwan specifically for the event.
Other than congratulating Wenzao Ursuline University’s Center for Research on St. Mary of the Incarnation on behalf of the head of the Solesmes Abbey in France and Sister Pauline Duchesne of the Ursulines of the Canadian Union, both professors also came as speakers of the keynote speeches held on the same day. After introducing Guy-Marie Oury, O.S.B, the author of Marie de l’Incarnation, they took the time to share about St. Mary of the Incarnation’s life story.
St. Mary of the Incarnation (1599-1672) is the first nun of the Order of St. Ursula to journey to the New World as an evangelist. In the 17th century, she left France and set out on a perilous journey across the Atlantic Ocean to the wild lands of Canada to spread the word of God. Her efforts to educate young women from indigenous tribes opened doors for the Roman Catholic Church’s pluralistic evangelization work in North America. St. Mary of the Incarnation is also one of the three most important saints in the Order of St. Ursula. The Ursulines of the Canadian Union had thus sent a representative team from Laval University’s Center for Research on St. Mary of the Incarnation to Taiwan to share her “sacred legacy” with Wenzao Ursuline University. The team also held a ceremony to lay the sacred legacy of St. Mary of the Incarnation prior to the beginning of the new book launch, allowing students and staff members of Wenzao Ursuline University to pay their respect to St. Mary of the Incarnation.
