Museum to preserve memories of ‘Rose’
Man making sure city’s would-be saint is not forgotten
WOONSOCKET — David Ethier of Burrillville never actually met Marie Rose Ferron, the young city woman and immigrant from Québec who suffered the wounds of Christ and took on the illnesses and pain of others as a well-known stigmatic, but he does know a lot about her.
So much in fact, he founded the Rose Ferron Foundation of Rhode Island, a non-profit organization devoted to the memory of Ferron and the creation of a lasting tribute in the city where she spent her life.
The Foundation has acquired the former Castle Gardens Café building at 339 Arnold St. and is busy restoring it into a museum and meeting place honoring Ferron’s life.
And because of that work, Ethier couldn’t be more pleased that Ferron will be inducted into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame on Sunday.
“It is long overdue. She has been neglected in this state for a long time,” Ethier said.
Although Ferron once drew thousands of people from around the country, and especially Canada, to Woonsocket to see her, and pray for a healing, the Catholic church has not moved to recognize her
beyond an authorization during her lifetime allowing her to establish a religious order of sisters. She often wore the habit that was granted under that special authorization but had no other religious sisters in the order, according to Ethier.
But Ethier said Ferron’s story is well-known and told in the book “She Wears a Crown of Thorns,” by O.A. Boyer, and several booklets and pamphlets written by people who knew her and documented the many healings and intercessions attributed to her.
“The miracles speak for themselves and there were many, many healings, she touched a lot of people,” he said.
Ferron was born in Saint Germain de Grantham, Québec, on May 24, 1902, the 10th of 15 children of Jean Baptiste Ferron and his wife, Rose Delima.
Her family first moved to Fall River, Massachusetts, and then in 1925 to Woonsocket. Ferron at that time was already suffering a multitude of ailments, arthritis, rheumatism, the effects of a bad influenza, and after initially walking with the aid of crutches, eventually became bedridden at an early age, according to Ethier.
As she suffered, she also become more religious, often praying through the day and at times experiencing moments of rapture or “ecstasy” from her belief, according to Ethier.
Word of the Woonsocket woman began to spread as she started to experience the wounds of Christ around 1926.
“She started with the lacerations from the whippings and then gradually had the wounds on her hands and feet,” Ethier said. She eventually showed the appearance of the Crown of Thorns on her forehead, and then finally the wound in her side.
She also exhibited the “Holy Face” when at times her features appeared to look like those of a suffering Jesus Christ as he was tortured before the crucifixion.
Ferron was confined to her bed by that time and attended to by her family members and family friends 24 hours a day. After a time most of her stigmata faded and resolved, but some, such as the marks on her forehead and the wound on her side, lingered long after.
Despite her own suffering, Ethier said Ferron took on the pain of the countless others who came to her home in the city for her help. She had a private chapel in her home and people would come to pray with her. She at times seemed to take on another person’s illness herself and was reported to have become temporarily blind many times while helping someone with blindness.
She even is reported to have helped cure cancer in others and yet suffered from the disease herself as she came to the end of her life.
Ferron died just shy of her 34th birthday, on May 11, 1936. Thousands of people lined up late into the night to see Little Rose at rest in her white habit.
After the book about her life was published and translated into five languages, the story of Little Rose spread and drew even more devotees to Woonsocket, according to Ethier. A relative made a chapel in Little Rose’s memory at her home on Providence Street and people would stop there through the years to pray and reflect on the local stigmatic.
Even today many people visit her grave in Precious Blood cemetery and seek her help, Ethier said.
With the Little Rose Museum now in the works, Ethier hopes the memory and hope of Marie Rose Ferron will continue to impact people’s lives for years to come.
“I love her, and I just want to let more people know about her,” he said. “She is a treasure, a real treasure.”