As fans of the New York Knicks celebrated the team’s recent NBA title with a parade in Lower Manhattan, members of a contemplative religious order in Monroe were expressing some unbridled jubilation of their own on Thursday. 

“We are so elated and so thankful to God for the great news,” said Mother Maria Catherine Iannotti, general superior of the Parish Visitors of Mary Immaculate (PVMI), whose founder, Servant of God Mother Mary Teresa Tallon, was named venerable by Pope Leo XIV on Thursday morning, June 18. 

“In our hearts, we know that Mother [Tallon] is a saint. We’re just praying that the Church recognizes it by reading through her life and knowing how much she loved God and how much she gave, hoping to fulfill everything He asked of her,” Mother Maria Catherine said from PVMI’s motherhouse in Monroe during a telephone interview with The Good Newsroom. 

A native New Yorker who founded her order there 

Born in New York in 1867, Mother Tallon was the seventh of eight children born to Irish immigrants. Although her mother initially tried to discourage her from religious life, Mother Tallon entered the Sisters of the Holy Cross in South Bend, Indiana, at age 19. She stayed with the sisters for 33 years and taught in Catholic schools. 

In 1920, she founded a new congregation in New York — the Parish Visitors — to teach the faith and, in particular, reach lapsed and uninstructed Catholics. While Mother Tallon died in 1954, her sisters continue to evangelize and catechize in the United States, where they have convents in New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, as well as in Nigeria and the Philippines. Mother Tallon is buried at the PVMI motherhouse at Marycrest in Monroe, about 50 miles northwest of Manhattan, in Orange County. 

In 2013, the Church declared her a “Servant of God,” meaning that her life and virtues were being investigated for a cause for her canonization. 

The Holy See’s declaration that she is “venerable” recognizes her heroic virtues. Miracles verified as occurring through her intercession would be required for beatification and canonization. 

It takes a miracle (or two) 

Mother Maria Catherine summed up the work of her foundress this way. “I’m trying to write her biography, and I was trying to think of a title for it. The other day, it came to me, our foundress once said about Mary’s visit to Elizabeth (Lk. 1:39-56), ‘Were it not for charity, she would not have gone.’ I thought about that in relationship to our founder’s life, and I decided the title for the book is going to be ‘Were It Not for Charity.’” 

 She said that the cause for Mother Tallon’s sainthood must now be advanced through verified miracles, and that one such possible miracle has already taken place and will be investigated. 

Mother Maria Catherine asked the laity to pray the prayer found on PVMI’s website, which reads in part, “We humbly ask you to continue to expand the work you have begun in her. Fulfill her ardent longing to promote sanctity in each heart, to restore family life, calling all to full participation in the life of the Church, and arousing the conscience of Your people in loving concern for the most neglected and spiritually abandoned in our midst.” 

Even hours after hearing the news, the superior general’s joy was palpable. “We are so excited. It’s ice cream all day today,” she said. 

— OSV News contributed to this report.