Jeanne Mance

On May 9, 1641, Jeanne Mance embarked for New France. After a three-month crossing, she arrived in Quebec on August 8, 1641. She spent the winter there in the company of Paul de Chomedey de Maisonneuve. Despite objections from the authorities in Quebec who deemed the project of settling in Montreal too risky, the group continued on their way.

On May 17, 1642, Ville-Marie (today Montreal) was officially founded. Jeanne Mance immediately established a makeshift dispensary inside the fort to treat the colonists and those wounded in clashes with the Iroquois. In 1645, thanks to the financial support of Angélique Faure de Bullion, the first building of the Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal was inaugurated.

For many years, Jeanne Mance was the only nurse in the colony. She ensured the administrative and financial management of the hospital while providing care herself. To guarantee the survival of the Hôtel-Dieu and the colony, she made several return trips to France (crossing the Atlantic seven times in total during her life) in order to recruit colonists and raise funds.

In 1659, in order to perpetuate the hospital's work, she brought three nuns from the congregation of the Religious Hospitallers of Saint Joseph from France (Judith Moreau de Brésoles, Catherine Macé, and Marie Maillet). Jeanne Mance continued to direct and administer the Hôtel-Dieu until her death, which occurred on June 18, 1673, in Montreal.

Jeanne Mance's reputation for holiness was established during her lifetime due to her heroic dedication to the sick, the poor, and the wounded, as well as her deep piety.

In the 20th century, on the occasion of the tercentenary of the founding of Montreal and the Hôtel-Dieu in 1942, a movement emerged to promote her cause for beatification. On May 15, 1943, the Committee for the Promotion of the Beatification of Jeanne Mance was officially created.

On May 16, 1945, Archbishop Joseph Charbonneau of Montreal appointed a historical commission to collect her writings. In 1946, the bishops of Quebec officially included her on the list of founders of the Canadian Church.

The diocesan inquiry into her reputation for holiness was opened by the Archdiocese of Montreal in 1959 and closed in 1961. The documents were sent to Rome on May 23, 1961. After the drafting of an initial Positio deemed incomplete, a new Positio was written in 1995 by Dom Guy-Marie Oury, a monk of Solesmes. The historians of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints approved it unanimously in 1997, followed by the theologians in 2013.

On November 7, 2014, Pope Francis authorized the promulgation of the decree recognizing the heroic virtues of Jeanne Mance, thereby officially declaring her "venerable."

For her beatification to be pronounced, the official recognition of a miracle attributed to her intercession is required by the canonical norms of the Catholic Church. To this day, no miracle has yet been the subject of a decree of approval by the Vatican, and her cause is still ongoing.

The spirituality of Jeanne Mance is that of a deeply committed laywoman, animated by a living faith and an absolute trust in Divine Providence. Refusing both marriage and formal entry into a cloistered religious order, she chose to live out her baptism in the heart of the world and the mission. Her particular devotion to Saint Joseph marked her entire work, uniting spiritual contemplation with the concrete action of caring for bodies and souls.

Her legacy is immense. She is today officially recognized as a co-founder of the city of Montreal alongside Paul de Chomedey de Maisonneuve (official recognition by the City of Montreal on May 17, 2012). She is also celebrated as the first lay nurse in Canada. In April 2020, she was posthumously inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame. The Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal, which she founded, is one of the oldest hospitals in North America.