Jeanne-Antide Thouret’s life is an adventure characterized by one passion – the service of those who are poor, “the suffering members of Jesus Christ” – and by an event, the French Revolution.
| 1765, 17 November | Birth |
| 1787 | Entrance into the Company of the Daughters of Charity |
| 1799, 11 April | Foundation of the Sisters of Charity of Besançon |
| 1826, 24 August | Death in Naples |
| 1926, 23 May | Beatification by Pope Pius XI |
| 1934, 14 January | Canonization by Pope Pius XI |
| 23 May | Liturgical feast |
Jeanne-Antide Thouret was born in Sancey-le-Long (Doubs). She was the fifth child in a rural devout Christian family of the Franche-Comté region.
At age 22, she entered the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul to serve people who are poor, first in Langres and then in Paris.
In May 1794, Jeanne-Antide returned to Sancey because during the French Revolution, all the Daughters of Charity, like most religious, were dispersed and had to return to their homes.
On 15 August 1795, she left for Switzerland with Father Antoine-Sylvestre Receveur’s “Solitaries,” a community obliged to “wander” for twelve years throughout Europe because of the rejection of the Christian faith. She would cross Switzerland and a part of Germany.
On 24 June 1797, she left this community and arrived in Landeron near Neuchâtel, Switzerland, after a more than six-hundred-kilometer solitary journey. There, she received a request from two French priests to return to Besançon in France to care for children with no school to attend and people who were sick.
On 11 April 1799 with some young women, she founded a free school for girls in Besançon and gave broth to those who were poor. The local population called them the “broth and small schools Sisters.”
From May to September 1802, Jean-Antide wrote the Rule of life for her community. Accompanied by some Sisters attracted by her model of life, she opened new schools and places dedicated to health care for the sick while she sent Sisters to teach school and care for those who are sick. On 23 September 1802, she was also asked to take responsibility for prisoners in Bellevaux. She strove to place her talents as an educator at their service, provided them with food to eat, organized work for them and thus made it possible for them to receive a salary. In 1807 in Paris, the community received its official name as the “Sisters of Charity of Besançon.”
On 8 May 1810, Sister Jeanne-Antide was called to Thonon in the Savoy region where she went with some Sisters, but shortly afterwards, in November 1810, she received an appeal from Naples, where she went with eight of her Sisters. In Naples, she was initially asked to take responsibility for the Hospital for Incurables. She also opened a school and a pharmacy within the convent granted her. She and her Sisters did not hesitate to go out from it to visit and care for those who were poor and sick.
On 23 July 1819, its Constitutions were approved by Pope Pius VII. He named the community the “Sisters of Charity under the protection of Saint Vincent de Paul.” In August 1823, she left for Naples, where she died on 24 August 1826.
The community currently has 4,000 Sisters on five continents, working in a wide variety of services for those who are poor. Community life, the Eucharist and the Paschal Mystery are still today, as they were for Jeanne-Antide, the key elements of their life.