Marguerite Bays: her relics are snatched up to the ends of the earth

On October 13, 2019, Marguerite Bays (1815-1879), modest seamstress from Siviriez (FR) and great mystic, became the third Swiss in history (after Nicolas de Flüe and Maria Bernarda Bütler) to be canonized. That day, in Rome, it was Pope Francis who officiated in a crowded St. Peter’s Square. Since then, requests to obtain pieces of his remains or simply objects that belonged to him or that touched his remains have continued to arrive from all over the world.

“We have had around 500 requests to obtain these relics since the canonization and around a hundred in 2024 alone. From Vietnam to Colombia via the United States, England or even Australia, they come from all over the world. continents,” lists, astonished, Jean-Daniel Berset, president of the Sainte Marguerite Bays Foundation. With 180 requests, Brazil is far at the top of the requesting countries. On the one hand, because it is a society that has remained very religious, but also because descendants of the saint’s family still reside there today.

Requests for primary relics, or pieces of the body itself, are handled directly by the bishopric of Fribourg. “There are several in the Vatican,” specifies Jean-Daniel Berset. In French-speaking Switzerland, they are found in particular in its reliquary in the church of Siviriez, at the abbey of the Fille-Dieu in Romont, in the church of Grolley, in the chapel of Radio Maria in Lausanne and at the bishopric from Fribourg.