A
Brief Biography of
Mother
Mary Teresa Tallon, P.V.M.I.
Foundress
Julia Teresa Tallon
Mother Foundress when she was 18 years old.
Who
could guess how many thousands of children and adults would fall in eternal
love with Jesus because Julia Teresa said, "Yes!" to God.
Julia Teresa Tallon was born on May 6, 1867, in Hanover, New York, near Utica. She was the seventh of eight children born to Bridget and Peter Tallon, both emigrants from Ireland. They brought with them the deep faith of Ireland as a heritage for their children; no one could have received it more eagerly than their next-to-youngest, Julia Teresa.
The desire to belong totally to God seems to have unfolded in her with the dawning of reason, though she had no real acquaintanceship with religious in her small rural mission parish. Despite the discouragement and disapproval from her mother who, like many other good Catholic mothers, dismissed the idea of religious life for her child; Julia was firm in her desire to follow a religious vocation from the age of twelve.
On April 30, 1887, guided by her spiritual director, she entered the Holy Cross Sisters at South Bend, Indiana. She remained with them for thirty-three years while God prepared her for her future work and enlightened her mind about the nature of the mission He would give her: the founding of a contemplative-missionary Congregation for the streets and homes, to instruct and counsel, and especially to reclaim the lapsed and the uninstructed for the Heart of the Good Shepherd.
On the Feast of the Assumption, August 15, 1920, Mother Mary Teresa Tallon founded the Parish Visitors of Mary Immaculate in Manhattan with the permission of Archbishop Patrick Hayes. Mother Foundress and the pioneer Sisters visited families living in tenements in an organized effort to aid them spiritually and materially.
Mother Mary Teresa Tallon lived to see the Congregation grow and expand, with Parish Visitor Sisters reaching out to countless hundreds of thousands of fallen away Catholic individuals and families.
On the evening of March 10, 1954, after extreme suffering borne with patience and love for the Congregation, Mother Mary Teresa died just as the Sisters had finished praying the Rosary around her bedside.
To learn more about our life of
love, write or call:
Sister Maria Catherine
Vocation Directress
Parish Visitors of Mary Immaculate
1214 Quincy Avenue
Dunmore, PA 18510
(570) 343-7841