Catholics who followed Mass with a missalette have held the art of Ade Bethune in their hands.

An artist who knew faith and beauty, Marie Adélaïde de Bethune (1914–2002) was born in Schaerbeek, Belgium and touched the world with her art.

“Art,” said sculptor Frederick E. Hart, “must touch our lives, our fears and cares; evoke our dreams and give hope to the darkness.”

Giving hope with simple beauty, Bethune's passionate black-and-white liturgical prints were published in *The Catholic Worker* newspaper for over 60 years.

After emigrating to New York in 1928, she created simple yet powerful woodcut-style images that drew the attention of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin of the Catholic Worker movement, which embraced nonviolence, voluntary poverty, prayer, and radical hospitality.

Her illustrations of *My Sunday Missal* (1937) and *My Lenten Missal* (1942) captured the strength, purity, and honesty of faith. She was also a sculptor, mosaicist, and church designer, helping create the octagon-shaped St. Leo’s Church in St. Paul, Minnesota—a modern revival of the center altar tradition.

“I went back to being an amateur,” she once said, “in the sense of somebody who loves what she is doing. If a professional loses the love of work, routine sets in, and that's the death of work and life.”