She was the spiritual daughter of Monsignor Louis Irénée Winnaert, devoting herself after her birth in heaven (1937) to the resurrection of the Western Orthodox Church. She thus became, like those faithful women who accompanied Christ to the Cross, the collaborator par excellence of the one whom Monsignor Winnaert entrusted (1937) with inscribing and developing Orthodoxy among Westerners: Father Eugraph Kovalevsky, future Bishop Jean of Saint-Denis (1964).
Yvonne Barde was born in 1905 in Alexandria (Egypt) into a religiously mixed family, that is to say with Christian, Jewish and Muslim members. His parents of recent generation were French, Jewish and Albanian, among them, Mohamed Ali who was Sultan of Egypt and received power over this country following Napoleon. This heredity gave him a strong character, an alert spirit and the ability to discern where and when to obey God.
By family decision, with her mother and her two sisters, she left Egypt and came to settle in Paris, around 1925. And there, in France, in this city where many men and women committed to religion shone, politics, art, science, literature, philosophy... this young woman joined heart and mind to the society of artists, philosophers (Bergson) and religious and spiritual men, her mother said, not recommending her only one thing: do not marry a religious man!
Under the guidance of the Spirit, in competition with her own dispositions, she entered the chapel of the Ascension in 1928, on Palm Sunday, an office presided over and celebrated by Monsignor Louis Winnaert.
The light of Christ shone in this place and in this man with such brilliance that Yvonne Barde became and became a disciple of Louis Winnaert. She thus accompanied him in his quest for the Church, sharing fortunes and misfortunes and providing the essential economic aid to this spiritual father deprived of everything.
One day, to the great surprise of Louis Winnaert, former priest of the Roman Church, bishop by the Liberal Catholic Church, Abraham new, pushed towards a country (a church) he did not know, she succeeded in convincing him to marry her. Their collaboration and their spirit being in communion, the marriage would put an end to all suspicion and would leave all latitude to pursue the path traced by the Spirit of God, to arrive, he the bishop and she, his spiritual daughter, at the door of the Orthodox Church (1937). Crossing the door of Heaven, Monsignor Louis Charles Irénée was born in heaven on March 3, 1937 and crossing the door of clerical and Christian prejudices on the role of women in the church, Yvonne Winnaert, becomes the main faithful of the growing Western Orthodox Church.
It will play the sacred game of the Church, producing liturgical, historical, poetic, literary works essential for the ecclesial refoundation of the West.
The life she led with Father Eugraph Kovalevsky, makes her similar to the famous Olympias who was the confidante and friend of Saint John Chrysostom.
One day in 1967, Archpriest Eugraph Kovalevsky went to Bucharest to pray to Patriarch Justinian, Patriarch of the Orthodox Church of Romania, to put the Church of France under his protection. The patriarch, advised of Yvonne Winnaert's place with the archpriest – an opinion of a malicious nature – directly raised the question of this presence.
Father Eugraph says simply: she gave her whole life to the Church. The Patriarch, touched, then said: forgive me the question!
Yvonne Winnaert was from 1937 until her birth in heaven in 1997 (her ninety-second year) of all the undertakings, steps, and activities of the Orthodox Church of France, going in particular to meet the hierarchs of other Orthodox churches. to try to arouse their interest in the ecclesiology of that time.
Bishop Jean de Saint-Denis was born in heaven on January 30, 1970. Yvonne Winnaert survived him by twenty-two years, then assuming the role of mother and initiator in history with many disciples, men and women, born to the Orthodox faith through the works of two Monsignors: Louis Charles Irénée Winnaert and Eugraph Kovalevsky. (1)
to know the History of the Western Orthodox Church, become the Orthodox Catholic Church of France, one can read:
“ The Quest for Truth by Irénée Winnaert ” by Vincent Bourne, Edition Labor et Fides – Geneva – April 1966
“ The Divine Contradiction ” by Vincent Bourne, Edition Présence Orthodoxe Paris
“ The Renaissance of a Church ” by Maxime Kovalevsky, Tree collection of Jesse – Editions de l'Ancre
