Saint Germaine

Germaine Cousin, also Germana Cousin, Germaine of Pibrac, or Germana, (1579–1601) was a French saint. She was born in 1579 to humble parents at Pibrac, a village from Toulouse.

Narrative Of her, the Catholic Encyclopedia writes: From her birth she seemed marked out for suffering; she came into the world with a deformed hand and the disease of scrofula, and, while yet an infant, lost her mother. Her father soon married again, but his second wife treated Germaine with much cruelty. Under pretence of saving the other children from the contagion of scrofula she persuaded the father to keep Germaine away from the homestead, and thus the child was employed almost from infancy as a shepherdess. When she returned at night, her bed was in the stable or on a litter of vine branches in a garret. In this hard school Germaine learned early to practice humility and patience. She was gifted with a marvelous sense of the presence of God and of spiritual things, so that her lonely life became to her a source of light and blessing... Her love for Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and for His Virgin Mary Virgin Mother presaged the saint. She assisted daily at the Holy Sacrifice; when the bell rang, she fixed her sheep-hook or distaff in the ground, and left her flocks to the care of Providence while she heard Mass. Although the pasture was on the border of a forest infested with wolves, no harm ever came to her flocks. According to one story, one day in winter, when she was being chased by her stepmother who accused her of stealing bread, she opened her apron and fresh summer flowers fell out. She offered the flowers to her stepmother as a sign of forgiveness.

Relics and veneration

Her remains were buried in the parish church of Pibrac in front of the pulpit. In 1644, when the grave was opened to receive one of her relatives, the body of Germaine was discovered fresh and perfectly preserved. He proclaimed her a saint on 29 June 1867, the day on which a vast assembly of prelates gathered in Rome to mark the 18th centenary of the martyrdom of Peter the Apostle, and he congratulated the archbishop of Toulouse, Florian Desprez, and his diocese for giving the church a saint "so powerful, so kind, and so dear to its heart". Her feast is kept in the Diocese of Toulouse on 15 June. She is represented in art with a shepherd's crook or with a distaff; with a watchdog, or a sheep; or with flowers in her apron.