Jeanne Jugan, Foundress of the Little Sisters of the Poor

Three years after the French revolution had broken out, a baby girl was born whose name is known today all over the world.

Jeanne Jugan was born on October 25, 1792 in Cancale, a fishing port on the north coast of Brittany, France. Her father was absent at the time, for he sailed six months earlier for the fishing season in Newfoundland. According to parish registers of Cancale, she was baptized the same day in Saint Méen Church.

Less than four years later, Jeanne’s father was lost at sea.  At home, it was hard to make both ends meet. Jeanne, her brother and two sisters learned from their mother how to live poverty honestly and courageously with faith and love in God.

A servant and kitchen maid in a manor near Cancale, Jeanne was 18 when she refused a first marriage proposal. Six years later, she asked the young sailor who renewed his request to no longer think of her. “God wants me for Himself. He is keeping me for a work which is not yet known, for a work which is not yet founded,” she explained to her mother.

Jeanne probably did not realize the impact of these prophetic words. Many years were to pass before this call became clear to her. In the meantime, she left Cancale for the nearby town of Saint Servan. A nurse at Le Rosais Hospital, a visiting nurse, then a servant, she desired only to serve God and others, especially the poor.

She was in this way faithful to the ideal of configuration to Jesus through Mary - that Saint John Eudes taught to members of the Third Order of the Admirable Mother, an association founded in the 17th century which she joined around the age of twenty-five.

Saint Servan, 1839

One winter’s evening, Jeanne opened her home and heart to an elderly woman named Anne Chauvin. Anne was half paralyzed, blind, and had suddenly found herself all alone. Jeanne gave up her bed for Anne, and slept in the attic. This act committed her forever. Soon another old woman followed, then a third. In 1843, there were forty of them around Jeanne and her three young companions, who had chosen her as the Superior of their small Association which was slowly taking the form of a religious community.

However, it was not long before Jeanne was deprived of this responsibility. Through her faith and love, she discovered in this turn of events God’s plan for herself and for her religious family. Jeanne then spent all her time collecting for the poor.  She had witnessed this act of charity and of sharing as a child in Cancale, when a sailors' widow was in need. Jeanne was encouraged to continue collecting by a Brother of Saint John of God.

Time of Hidden Growth, 1862-1879

As the years passed by, Jeanne Jugan was buried more deeply in obscurity. The history of the beginning of her work was distorted. When she died on August 29, 1879, in La Tour St. Joseph, few Little Sisters knew that she was the foundress. However, her influence on the younger Little Sisters, whose life she had shared for twenty-seven years, was decisive. During this long period, she transmitted to them the original charism and spirit of the community. Little by little the situation became clear.

In 1902, the truth became evident. Jeanne Jugan, Sister Mary of the Cross, who died on oblivion a quarter of century earlier, was not the third Little Sister, as it was believed, but the first, the foundress. Her tomb, in the crypt of the chapel of the Motherhouse, in La Tour St. Joseph (Saint Pern), attracts many pilgrims, as do her birthplace in the hamlet of Les Petites Croix, in Cancale, and the foundation’s house in Saint Servan.

Recognition

On July 13, 1979, the Church officially acknowledged the heroic nature of Jeanne Jugan’s virtues.

On October 3, 1982, at her beatification in the presence of 60,000 pilgrims from all over the world, Pope John Paul II declared of “Blessed Jeanne Jugan” that "God could glorify no more humble a servant than her."  Her example continues to inspire the Little Sisters of the Poor today as they continue her work of humble service to the poor.

Printed with permission from the Little Sisters of the Poor.

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