Who is Mother Marie Joseph Butler, RSHM?

Mother Butler was born Johanna Butler in Ballynunnery, Ireland on July 22, 1860. Katherine Burton, her biographer, says that, unconsciously, Johanna caused a slight ripple of disappointment in the family circle. The three boys who preceded her wanted, as most boys would, another member of their strong, husky clan rather than one of their weak and pretty counterparts.

Miss Burton says that Johanna grew into a fearless tomboy because she was so much at play with these brothers who soon looked upon her as an idol. She goes on to recount an epic of bravery in her childhood. One day, so the story goes, Johanna was playing with her friends around a deserted miniature volcano. Though inactive, it was the terror of the children. A bully among them decided to exhibit a bit of braggadocio. He took a little boy’s cap and meanly threw it in with a flourish into the crater. The children were petrified. Not so Johanna. She confronted with indignation the bully. Then she jumped lightly into the crater and retrieved the little boy’s cap.

Origin of the Guilds

Foundation in America

Mother Marie Joseph Butler, Superior General of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary (1926-1940) was a woman with an insatiable zeal for the missions. The impact of her zeal was such that when she died on April 23, 1940, Marion Dolan, an alumna of Marymount, decided to perpetuate the charitable endeavor that Mother Butler started. Six years after Mother Butler’s death, the Mother Butler Mission Guilds, as conceived by Mrs. Dolan and approved by the Marymount nuns, was born.

Foundation in the Philippines

The Philippines was privileged to be the first beneficiary of the Mother Butler Mission Guilds. This was due to a plea expressed by Reverend Thomas A. Mitchell, Society of Jesus, on behalf of the missions at a Mass in St. Margaret’s Church in Pearl River, New York. Not much later, Father Mitchell was assigned to the Philippines. It was at this priest’s suggestion that Clara O. Corpus, who was going to the United States, arranged to meet Marion Dolan. From this meeting was born the idea of founding the Mother Butler Mission Guilds in the Philippines.