Born in
Montreal, Quebec, Canada on 7 April 1802, the son of a Scottish father and English mother, he came to
Fochabers with his parents in 1816. The following year, he entered the Seminary of
Aquhorties as an ecclesiastical student and a year later on 3 December 1818, on the instructions of
Bishop Alexander Cameron, he and four companions set off from Aquhorties for Paris. Once there, he entered the
Seminary of St Nicholas on 16 December 1818. He left St Nicholas in October 1823 and entered the Sulpician's Seminary of Issy, returning to Scotland in April 1826 after his health had given way. He was
ordained a
priest by
Bishop Paterson at Aquhorties on 9 June 1827. In 1831, John Menzies of Pitfodels, having, three years previously, bestowed on the Catholic Church in Scotland his extensive estate at
Blairs, Aberdeenshire, where a seminary was built, came to reside permanently in Edinburgh and he persuaded Bishop Paterson to live with him at his home, 24 York Place. The Bishop took Gillis with him, as his secretary. The initial group of eleven Sisters comprising Miss Trail (now Sister Agnes Xavier), Miss Clapperton (now Sister Margaret Teresa), The Reverend Mother St Hilaire, Mother St Paula, Sister St Damian, Sister Alexis, Sister John Chrysostom, Sister Mary Emily, Sister Angelina and two lay Sisters (Sister Stephen and Sister Eustelle) then travelled to Scotland but had to live elsewhere for four months while the Convent was being made ready. On 26 December 1834, the community took possession of St Margaret's Convent, which was the first post-Reformation convent in
Scotland. At St Margaret's, arrangements had been made for the reception of young lady boarders, whose education was to be the principal work of the sisters. On 16 June 1835, the Feast of St Margaret, the new
St Margaret's Chapel, which had been built alongside the Whitehouse Mansion House, was finished. In 1863, this chapel went on to house a
relic, given to them by Bishop Gillis, of
St Margaret of Scotland. ==References==