Remembering Servant of God Catherine de Hueck Doherty, Founder of Madonna House, in Combermere Canada, on the Day of her Death
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Sevant of God, Catherine de Hueck Doherty, originally of Russia, moved to Combermere, Ontario, Canada, in 1947, and founded Madonna House. Catherine was a bridge between the Christian East and West. Baptized Orthodox and later becoming Roman Catholic, her spiritual heritage drew upon both of these traditions. In Combermere, building on the foundations of a Friendship House, she founded this new apostolate, which celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2022. Madonna House began as a group of laypeople including her husband Eddie Doherty. At the suggestion of Pope Pius XII, beginning in 1954 members have been making a commitment to dedicate themselves to Madonna House for life, as celibate men and women. The total membership now numbers approximately 200; laymen, women, and priests. Members wear a large metal cross with the Latin words "Pax" and "Caritas" meaning "Peace" and "Love." There are now Madonna House apostolates in different parts of the world including the USA, Grenada, and Belgium.
Catherine de Hueck Doherty died on December 14, 1985, after a long illness. She left behind a spiritual family of more than 200 members, and foundations around the world. She left to the Church, which she loved passionately, a spiritual heritage that is a beacon for this new century. The following is taken from a Letter to Madonna House Family:
“We need to be poor! Let us live an ordinary life, but, beloved, let us live it with a passionate love for God. Become a mystery. Stretch one hand out to God, the other to your neighbour. Be cruciform. … Christ’s cross will be our revolution and it will be a revolution of love!”
Catherine Kolyschkine was born in Nizhny-Novgorod, Russia, on August 15, 1896 to wealthy and deeply Christian parents. Raised in a devout aristocratic family, she grew up knowing that Christ lives in the poor, and that ordinary life is meant to be holy. Her father’s work enabled the family to travel extensively in Catherine’s youth. At the age of 15, she married her cousin, Boris de Hueck. Soon, the turmoil of World War I sent them both to the Russian front: Boris as an engineer, Catherine as a nurse.
The Russian Revolution destroyed the world they knew. Many of their family members were killed, and they themselves narrowly escaped death at the hands of the Bolsheviks. The Revolution marked Catherine for life. She saw it as the tragic consequence of a Christian society’s failure to incarnate its faith. All her life she cried out against the hypocrisy of those who professed to follow Christ, while failing to serve him in others.
Catherine and Boris became refugees, fleeing first to England, and then in 1921, to Canada, where their son George was born. In the following years she experienced grinding poverty as she laboured to support her ailing husband and child. After years of painful struggle, her marriage to Boris fell apart;
later her marriage was annulled by the Church.
On October 15, 1930 Catherine renewed a promise she had made to God during her ordeal in the revolution, and gave her life to Him. She marked this as the day of the beginning of her Apostolate. With the blessing of Archbishop Neil McNeil of Toronto, Catherine sold all her possessions and provided for her son, George. In the early 1930’s she went to live a hidden life in the slums of Toronto, desiring to console her beloved Lord as a lay apostle by being one with his poor.
On May 17, 1947, Catherine came to Combermere, Ontario, Canada, with her second husband, American journalist Eddie Doherty, whom she had married in 1943.
(Image of Our Lady of Combermere at Madonna House)
Madonna House itself developed as a Training Centre for lay apostles. Over the years many thousands of guests — young and not so young, lay and cleric, men and women of many cultures, Catholic and not Catholic — have been inspired, set on fire, born anew and renewed in spirit through the hospitality and formation received at Madonna House, and have taken their experience home to the marketplaces.
Madonna House is constituted as a Public Association of the Christian Faithful within the Roman Catholic Church, under the authority of the bishop of the Diocese of Pembroke. Since 1958, the Madonna House family has included associate clergy: priests, bishops, and deacons serving in their own parishes, dioceses, and ministries, living and proclaiming the Madonna House spirituality in multiple countries and innumerable ways.
Members of the Madonna House community live a simple daily routine beginning with a brief prayer service, followed by a day of work, and ending with Mass and dinner. Work at the main house generally consists of the day-to-day maintenance of the community, care of a farm, and the sorting and distribution of donations to the poor.
The spirituality of the Madonna House Apostolate is summarized in The Little Mandate, a "distillation" of the Gospel message of Jesus Christ brought forth by the apostolate's foundress. Some members of the apostolate live in "poustinia", meaning a small, sparsely furnished cabin or room (the term poustinia has its roots in the Russian word for "desert"). For these few staff workers, their voluntary life as poustiniks is somewhat like that of a hermit, though less strict.
Madonna House welcomes guests into their community, allowing anyone to come and join their daily routine of work and prayer for varying lengths of time at their training centre in Combermere. Also, once a year, a program is offered to families at Madonna House's summer camp called Cana Colony. Cana Colony was begun as a response to the request by Pope Pius XII to Catherine Doherty in 1951 that she and Madonna House would "always remember the family. " Cana Colony began the following year and the camp is located at the edge of Bennett Lake.
The main work of the Madonna House Apostolate is serving the poor — both the physically and spiritually poor. Donations sent to the community are redistributed locally and internationally. Through their missionary field houses, Madonna House staff workers serve the needs of the poor in many ways, from "prayer and listening houses" to soup kitchens.
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