Mo. Mary Teresa Tallon, founder of the Parish Visitors of Mary Immaculate (P.V.M.I.). Photo: Pope Leo XIV has recognised the heroic virtues of Mother Mary Teresa Tallon, the founder of a US religious order devoted to person-to-person ministry, and declared her venerable, advancing her cause for canonisation.
Mary Teresa Tallon was born May 6, 1867, in Hanover, New York, to Irish immigrants. At age 19, she joined the Holy Cross Sisters in South Bend, Indiana, serving for 33 years in the religious community as a teacher in Catholic schools with poor and neglected children.
In 1920, she founded a new religious congregation, the Parish Visitors of Mary Immaculate, as a community focused on contemplation and personal, door-to-door ministry. As explained in a biography of Mother Tallon on her community’s website, she particularly wanted to “reclaim lapsed and uninstructed Catholics for the heart of the Good Shepherd.”