Foundress of Little Sisters of the Poor canonized St.Jeanne Jugan

by Commodore Shemal FERNANDO, RSP, USP, MSc

His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI canonized Blessed Jeanne Jugan as one of the newest Saints of the Catholic Church on October 11, 2009 in Rome. St.Jeanne Jugan also known as 'Sister Mary of the Cross' was the Foundress of the Congregation of the Little Sisters of the Poor.

Time and again they say and show that faith and hope have to find expression in love for other people, especially for those most despised and neglected by the world. If the saints share one overarching characteristic, it is to have put their love of God to work for their fellow men and women through their chosen way of life.

Canonization is declaration of a person's holiness and entitlement to veneration. It is the final stage in the process, reserved to the papacy since about 1200. Saints are those recognized by the Church as having gained the reward of heaven and suitable to be venerated and followed as examples on earth. It is the title given after the four-stage process leading to canonization - 'Servant of God', 'Venerable', 'Blessed' and 'Saint'.

Today, the Congregation of the Little Sisters of the Poor founded by St.Jeanne Jugan is serving throughout the world from 202 Homes and the Congregation includes 2710 Little Sisters, 60 Novices and 2065 Lay Associates.

In Sri Lanka, the Little Sisters of the Poor serve the needy through their Home for the Elderly located at 204, T. B. Jayah Mawatha, Colombo 10.

Life of Jeanne Jugan

Jeanne Jugan was the sixth of the eight children of Joseph and Marie Jugan. She was born on October 25, 1792 at Brittany in France and baptized on the same day in the Church of Saint-Meen during the upheaval of the French Revolution. She died on August 29, 1879 at Pern in France, aged 86. She was beatified on October 3, 1982 by Pope John Paul II in Rome.

Her father, a sailor like most men from that area was away in Newfoundland for the fishing season. Four years later, he was lost at sea. Her mother remained alone to raise her 4 children (4 others died as infants). At the age of 16, Jeanne began helping her family by working as a kitchen maid in a manor near Cancale.

She stayed there until the age of 25, and then left home for Saint Servan where she worked as a nurse's aide at Le Rosais Hospital. When a young sailor asked her to marry him, she replied, "God wants me for himself. He is keeping me for a work which is not yet founded."

Jeanne desired only to serve God and the poor - especially the weakest and the most destitute - faithful to the ideal of configuration to Jesus through Mary, that Saint John Eudes taught to the members of the Third Order of the Admirable Mother, an association that she joined around the age of 25.

Founding of the Congregation

One winter's evening in 1839, she opened her door and her heart to a blind, semi-paralysed elderly woman who had suddenly found herself alone. Jeanne gave up her own bed. This act committed her forever. A second elderly woman followed, then a third. In 1843, they numbered 40 around Jeanne and her three young companions. These latter had chosen her as superior of their small association which would gradually develop into a true religious life.

However, Jeanne would soon be ousted from this responsibility and reduced to the simple activity of the collecting, a hard task which she herself had begun. She had been encouraged in this act of charity and sharing by the Brothers of Saint John of God. Jeanne replied to injustice with silence, gentleness and abandonment. Her faith and love helped her to discern God's will for her and for her religious family.

As the years passed by, Jeanne was more and more shrouded in obscurity. The beginnings of her work were falsified. She was kept in the background for 27 years (1852 to 1879), four at the Home in Rennes, and the last 23 years of her long life at La Tour Saint Joseph, the Mother house of the Congregation of the Little Sisters of the Poor since 1856.

At the time of her death, on August 29, 1879, a few little Sisters knew that she was the foundress, but her influence on the young postulants and novices, whose life she shared during those 27 years, proved to be decisive. During this prolonged contact, the initial charism was passed on, the spirit of the beginnings was transmitted.

Little by little, light was shed on the situation. In 1902, the truth began to emerge: Jeanne, Sister Mary of the Cross, who died in oblivion a quarter of a century earlier, was not the third Little Sister, as everyone had been led to believe, but the first, the Foundress!

Spirituality of the Congregation

To the eagerness for progress and liberty of her contemporaries, Jeanne brought the transparent witness of the revelation of God's mysteries to "little ones." She always lived her faith with the simplicity of the "little ones" and advanced resolutely, looking on events and persons with a living faith which arouses hope and works through charity.

20 years of belonging to the Third Order of the Admirable Mother had already simplified her soul through the contemplation of the mystery of Jesus and Mary. The spirituality of Saint John Eudes thus prepared her to penetrate the supernatural richness of hospitality for the accomplishment of her own hospitaller mission with simplicity, humility and union with God in prayer and charity.

Divine Providence gave a very powerful support to the work of Jeanne in the tradition of charity of the Hospitaller Order of Saint John of God. This latter communicated its living spirit of hospitaller charity to her work without hindering the development of this work according to its own charism and specific character. To the Order of Saint John of God, she also owes the "vow of hospitality", by which the service of the Aged poor is raised to the dignity of an act of the virtue of religion.

These two great spiritual currents, meeting and merging - by God's design - in the soul of Jeanne Jugan, created within it a capacity for universal openness. The very rapid expansion of her work showed her that God was destining her to a vocation of charity which could only be attained by an indefectible attachment to the Church. Her earthly mission ended when she saw her small bark firmly attached to that of the Church.

The spirit of the Congregation is the evangelical spirit expressed by Jesus in the Beatitudes. Jeanne, faithful to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, radiated particularly in her life gentleness and humility of heart, which enabled her to surrender herself, in simplicity, to the joy of hospitality.

To be a Little Sister of the Poor, reminds the Little Sisters of those to whom they have vowed their lives, and of their desire to go always to the poorest, to create a flow of apostolic collaboration and fraternal charity, in order to assist Christ in the Poor. For each one personally, it is an invitation to share in the beatitude of spiritual poverty, leading us towards that radical dispossession which surrenders a soul to God.

Miracle of Jeanne Jugan

Dr. Edward Gatz is a retired anesthesiologist who lives in Omaha, Nebraska, in the United States of America. He was born on April 19, 1937 in O'Neil, Nebraska. At the age of 51, he began to feel dyspeptic (digestive) problems with a loss of weight and the appearance of growths on his hands. The diagnosis was interpreted as a paraneoplastic syndrome due to an occult cancer.

An endoscopy on January 9, 1989 revealed the presence of a cancerous lesion in the lower part of the esophagus. The patient was hospitalized at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and had surgery on January 18, 1989 for a partial esophago-gastrectomy.

The biopsy showed a 3rd degree adenocarcinoma, and the examination specified that there was an aneuploid tumour. Dr. Gatz was advised to have chemotherapy, but he refused. He also refused to have radiotherapy. On the day that Dr. Gatz' cancer was diagnosed (January 9, 1989), his wife spoke with a priest, Fr. Richard D. McGloin, S.J., to tell him about her husband's illness and to seek some consolation. This priest encouraged Mrs. Gatz to pray, and gave her the Novena Prayer to Blessed Jeanne Jugan, whom he knew through the Little Sisters of the Poor, and whom he held in veneration. Along with him, Mrs. Gatz began to pray to Jeanne Jugan every day.

In fact, the first endoscopic examination took place on March 8, 1989. The biopsy showed the presence of chronic gastritis, but no signs of recurrence of the tumour.

All the doctors therefore agreed that Dr. Gatz would not live more than 6 to 13 months. Yet he is still alive and well today at the age of 72.

The promulgation of the decree of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, authorized by Pope Benedict XVI, acknowledging the miracle through the intercession of Blessed Jeanne Jugan was signed on December 6, 2008.