Jeanne Jugan

The work of Jeanne Jugan was born from a concrete gesture. During the winter of 1839, in Saint-Servan, she took in Anne Chauvin, an elderly, blind, and infirm woman, giving up her own bed to her. Other companions joined her, and with them, she organized the care of destitute elderly people, living herself on the alms she collected from door to door to provide for the needs of her protégés. From this fraternal charity, the congregation of the Little Sisters of the Poor was born, which took shape in the following years and spread rapidly in France and then abroad. In 1845, the Académie française awarded Jeanne Jugan the Prix Montyon to reward her work on behalf of the poor. However, as early as 1843, she was removed from the leadership of the work by Abbé Auguste Le Pailleur, who prevented her re-election as superior and claimed the role of founder for himself. From 1852 onwards, Jeanne retired to the motherhouse, where she would live in total obscurity until her death, without the young nuns knowing that she was the true founder of their institute.

The holiness of Jeanne Jugan is rooted in an extraordinary humility. Unjustly deprived of the recognition of her foundation by Abbé Le Pailleur, she accepted this trial without bitterness and spent the final decades of her life among the novices, sharing in their spiritual formation without revealing her role, until the truth was fully restored only after her death. Her spirituality rests on absolute trust in Providence, the joyful and selfless service of the most humble, and the identification of the poor with Christ himself. During her canonization, Pope Benedict XVI emphasized that she had discovered "in the Beatitudes the source of the spirit of hospitality and fraternal love, founded on an unlimited trust in Providence, which illuminated her entire life." She is credited with advice passed on to the sisters, marked by this same humility: to be little, very little, and to love the elderly tenderly, especially the most infirm. This consented stripping made her, in the eyes of the Church, an eminent witness to evangelical charity and voluntary poverty.

The cause for the beatification of Jeanne Jugan reached its conclusion on October 3, 1982, when Pope John Paul II proclaimed her blessed under the name of Mary of the Cross. More than twenty-five years later, on December 6, 2008, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints recognized a miracle attributed to her intercession: the unexplained healing of Dr. Edward Gatz, an American physician from Nebraska suffering from esophageal cancer, who was diagnosed and operated on at the Mayo Clinic in 1989 and survived well beyond the doctors' prognosis. This recognition paved the way for her canonization. Pope Benedict XVI inscribed Jeanne Jugan in the catalogue of saints on October 11, 2009, during a ceremony that simultaneously canonized five blessed individuals, including Father Damien de Veuster. In his homily, the Pope recalled that she "looked upon the elderly with a gaze of compassion drawn from her deep communion with God." Her liturgical feast is set for August 30, the day after the anniversary of her death, which occurred on August 29, 1879.

The legacy of Jeanne Jugan continues in the congregation of the Little Sisters of the Poor, which has spread from Brittany to many countries in Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Oceania. Faithful to the charism of their founder, the sisters welcome the poorest elderly people free of charge, without distinction of belief, in a family spirit based on hospitality and trust in Providence. The motherhouse remains at La Tour Saint-Joseph, in Saint-Pern, in Ille-et-Vilaine, where the saint's relics rest and where a center dedicated to her memory is located. An emblematic figure of charity towards the elderly, Jeanne Jugan is honored as a model of humble service to the most vulnerable, at a time when the loneliness and precariousness of the elderly remain worrying realities. Benedict XVI emphasized in this regard that "her charism is still current, while so many elderly people suffer from multiple forms of poverty and loneliness." Her memory remains alive in France, notably in Cancale, her hometown, and in Saint-Servan, the cradle of her work.