From an early age Yvette was hesitant of marriage and wished to live a religious life.

She began to live a more religious life by attending mass regularly, giving to the poor, and deciding not to remarry.

It was after this assurance from the Bishop that Yvette retired to a virtually derelict leper hospital in Statte, close to Huy, on the heights of the river Meuse to tend to the inmates, and more fully follow her religious calling.

Ten years later, she became an anchoress and was enclosed in a chapel cell near the colony in a ceremony conducted by the abbot of Abbaye Notre-Dame d'Orval.

[2] Although never formally canonised as a saint, she is classed as ‘blessed’ by the Catholic Church; feast day January 13, the date of her death.