Since she was a young girl of fifteen, Berthe had been praying for the celebrant during every Holy Mass: "My Jesus, may your priest not cause You sorrow!" When she was seventeen, her parents lost their entire fortune due to a legal guarantee; on December 8, 1888, her spiritual director told her that her vocation was not for the monastery, but to stay at home and care for her parents.
With sadness, the young woman accepted the sacrifice; however, she asked Our Lady to intercede, so that, instead of her religious vocation, Jesus would call a zealous and holy priest. “You will be answered!” her spiritual father assured her. What she could not foresee happened 16 days later: a 22-year-old young lawyer, Dr. Louis Decorsant, was praying in front of a statue of Our Lady of Sorrows. Suddenly and unexpectedly, he became certain that his vocation was not to marry the woman he loved and pursue a career as a notary. He understood clearly that God was calling him to the priesthood. This call was so clear and insistent that he did not hesitate for a moment to abandon everything. After his studies in Rome, where he completed his doctorate, he was ordained a priest in 1893. Berthe was then 22 years old.
That same year, the young priest, aged 27, celebrated Midnight Mass in a suburb of Paris. This is an important event because, at the same time, Berthe, attending Midnight Mass in another parish, solemnly promised the Lord:
Jesus, I want to be a holocaust for priests, for all priests, but especially for the priest of my life.
When the Blessed Sacrament was exposed, the young woman suddenly saw a great cross with Jesus, and at His feet were Mary and John. She heard the following words: “Your sacrifice has been accepted, your prayer has been answered. Behold your priest... One day you will meet him.” Berthe saw that the features of the face of John had taken on those of an unknown priest to her. It was Reverend Decorsant, but she would meet him only in 1908, fifteen years later, recognizing his face.
The Meeting Desired by God
Berthe was on a pilgrimage in Lourdes. Here, Our Lady confirmed to her: “You will see the priest you asked for from God twenty years ago. It is about to happen”. She was with a friend at the Austerlitz station in Paris, on a train heading to Lourdes, when a priest entered the compartment where they were, to hold a seat for a sick person. It was Reverend Decorsant. His features were the same as those Berthe had seen on the face of St. John fifteen years earlier, so he was the one for whom she had offered so many prayers and physical suffering. After exchanging a few kind words, the priest got off the train. Exactly one month later, the same Reverend Decorsant made a pilgrimage to Lourdes to entrust his future as a priest to Our Lady. While carrying his luggage, he met Berthe and her friend again. Recognizing the two women, he invited them to Holy Mass. While Father Decorsant elevated the host, Jesus spoke to Berthe in her heart: "This is the priest for whom I accepted your sacrifice". After the liturgy, she learned that “the priest of her life”, as she would later call him, was staying at the same guesthouse.
A Shared Mission
Berthe revealed her spiritual life and her mission of consecration to the Immaculate and Sorrowful Heart of Mary to Father Decorsant. He, for his part, understood that this precious soul had been entrusted to him by God. He accepted being transferred to Belgium and became for Berthe Petit a holy spiritual director and an unflagging support for the fulfillment of her mission. Being an excellent theologian, he was an ideal mediator with the ecclesiastical hierarchy in Rome.
For 24 years, until his death, he accompanied Berthe, who, as a soul of atonement, was often sick and suffered particularly for the priests who abandoned their vocation.