Deepertruth: Stand in the Gap with us and Saint Jeanne Jugan

Stand in the Gap with us and Saint Jeanne Jugan 8/30/2023

As our aging population continues to grow and dignity at the end of life is increasingly threatened, Jeanne Jugan offers herself as a friend and patron of the elderly. She is a Saint for old age.

Jeanne Jugan was not canonized because she founded a religious congregation, because her work has spread all over the world, or even because the elderly need a friend today more than ever. She was declared a Saint because she practiced heroic virtue.

At the age of 15 or 16, Jeanne became a kitchen maid for a family that not only cared for its own members, but also served poor, elderly people nearby. Ten years later, Jeanne became a nurse at the hospital in Le Rosais. Soon thereafter, she joined a third order group founded by Saint John Eudes.

“Refuse God nothing …We must do all through love.” 

Lacking home religious instruction, she is attracted to a new type of stability: nuns who run a children's village. Gruesome stories of Christian saints and martyrs keep Jeanne interested in the local chapel, which is a mile from her barracks.

Born in northern France during the French Revolution—a time when congregations of women and men religious were being suppressed by the national government, Jeanne would eventually be highly praised in the French academy for her community’s compassionate care of elderly poor people.

When Jeanne was three and a half years old, her father, a fisherman, was lost at sea. Her widowed mother was hard pressed to raise her eight children alone; four died young. At the age of 15 or 16, Jeanne became a kitchen maid for a family that not only cared for its own members, but also served poor, elderly people nearby. Ten years later, Jeanne became a nurse at the hospital in Le Rosais. Soon thereafter, she joined a third order group founded by Saint John Eudes.