Mother Veronica Namoyo Le Goulard a biographical note

Mother Veronica Namoyo Le Goulard
Poor Clare Nun Lusaka
1922- 2013

Biographical Note

Lucette Le Goulard was born on the 11th of May 1922. Her parents were declared atheists and ‘fiercely anticlerical’ They were so infuriated when her grandmother had her baptised clandestinely that they decided to leave their native Brittany as soon as possible because they didn’t want their daughter to be influenced by ‘oppressive superstition’.

‘Emotionally neglected by her parents, Lucette became a difficult child, leading a colourful life, full of mischievous adventure all the while experiencing an unutterable loneliness. At the age of three upon witnessing the overwhelming beauty of a sunset after a sirocco sandstorm, she gained the unshakeable certainty that this beauty was created, and that there was a God. She began to pray. This was the first link in a chain of remarkable events …which led her to embrace the faith and become a Poor Clare nun in Algiers. Disowned by her parents, she put all her trust in Him for whom all things are possible. Her faith was rewarded with a dramatic answer to the prayers of her heart.’

Lucette was given the name Veronica at her Poor Clare investiture. To this was well added by an African archbishop the descriptive name ‘Namoyo’, that is ‘the life bringer’. It is an apt description of the woman who bore the name. The first native African abbesses in Lilongwe and Lusaka are the two whom Mother Veronica received as her first postulants.

Mother Veronica wrote her autobiography in later life as a matter of obedience to her Abbess.

– Mother Veronica Namoyo Le Poulard, A Memory for Wonders, – A True Story, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press 1993)