I've talked previously about Jean-Marie Odin in the context of talking about the French Legation in Austin, Texas, and the aftermath of the 'Pig War' of 1841:
The French Legation building had been sold to Fr. Jean-Marie Odin, a member of the Congregation of the Mission, a Vincentian religious society. The Holy See had established the Apostolic Prefecture for Texas -- essentially a pre-pre-diocese -- in 1839, and Odin had been assigned to that as Vice-Prefect. When in 1841 the Apostolic Prefecture became an Apostolic Vicariate -- essentially a pre-diocese -- he was named Apostolic Vicar. Apostolic Vicars are generally titular bishops, so he was consecrated titular Bishop of Claudiopolis in Isauria. He was not in the building very long, because the Holy See formed the Diocese of Galveston in 1847 and chose Odin to be its first bishop. The area under his jurisdiction didn't actually change much -- the Diocese of Galveston covered the whole of Texas -- but he moved to Galveston and did quite extraordinary well in that position. He would later be named Archbishop of New Orleans as the nation began to be overtaken by the Civil War.
He happens to come up -- obliquely, and without being named -- in Huysmans's The Cathedral. Durtal is considering possible topics for writing about, and one of the topics that has been suggested to him is the life of Jeanne Chezard de Matel. She was born in 1596 near Lyon, and when she got older she decided that she wanted to go into the religious life. She had considerable difficulty finding anything suitable; over a period of about six years, she considered multiple possibilities, all of which ended up not panning out. So she eventually decided to start a religious order with a couple of other women who were also trying to figure out how to get into religious life. Thus was the seed of the Order of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament. The Archbishop of Lyon seemed cautiously supportive, but he died soon after the order was started, and the new archbishop did not like any of Jeanne de Matel's ideas for the order at all. Since the community's boarding school for girls was doing reasonably well and quite a few women were joining the community -- Jeanne's problem of not finding any of the extant religious orders suitable for her spiritual needs or practical abilities, despite an intense interest in the religious life, seems to have become a common one -- this set up an escalating series of confrontations. The order was eventually approved by Rome, but quite late; Jeanne de Matel, who had deferred the order's planned habit and religious profession until approval, was only able to take the habit and make her profession a few hours before her death in 1670. Durtal notes that she was not canonized, which is still true, although in 1992 she was given the title of Venerable by John Paul II, in part due to the Order beginning actively to take up her Cause for Canonization.
The order was by then doing quite well. They were, like all French-based orders, hit hard by the French Revolution and the dissolution of religious orders in the Decree of 1790, but they were able to reform again in 1817. The intersection with Texas, which is mentioned in passing as Durtal is running through the difficulties of Jeanne de Matel's life, came in 1852, when Bishop Odin, finding the Texas-sized Diocese of Galveston a bit unmanageable, started trying to get some help from his native France. The Order of the Incarnate Word answered his call, and St. Claire Valentine (the 'St.' is part of her religious name, not a title, so she's often known as 'Mother St. Claire' to avoid confusion) organized a group of sisters to take the three-month trip to Galveston. There they studied English and Spanish, and then caught a ride to Brownsville. More sisters arrived from elsewhere, they established a school for the poor, and then began to found other communities and engage in other projects throughout Texas. The communities still exist -- they run a number of schools and retreat centers throughout Texas, and a few (due to later requests by other bishops) in Mexico and Ohio, as well.
