Saint Jeanne-Antide Thouret

Jeanne-Antide Thouret was born on November 27, 1765, at Sancey-le-Long, in the Doubs, in the diocese of Besançon, and was baptized the same day, taking the name of her godmother. When she was sixteen her mother died, and she took charge of the household. She turned down the marriage her father had in mind for her, and in 1787, at twenty-two, she entered the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul in Paris.

When the Revolution dispersed the religious communities, she went back to Sancey in 1793, where she taught children, nursed the sick and helped persecuted priests. In 1796 she joined the Solitaires of the Christian Retreat, founded by Father Receveur, and followed them to Switzerland and Germany; her younger sister died at Neustadt in Bavaria. In 1797 she left the group alone and went to Einsiedeln, where she felt called to serve the poor.

Back in France, she opened a school for poor girls in the rue des Martelots in Besançon on April 11, 1799, and soon added a dispensary and a distribution of soup for the poor. This was the beginning of the Sisters of Charity. In 1810, at the invitation of Madame Letizia, Napoleon’s mother, she went to Naples with eight sisters, received the house of Regina Coeli and took charge of the Hospital of the Incurables. In a letter of February 23, 1813, she wrote that “when God calls and is listened to, He gives all that is necessary.”

Pope Pius VII approved her Rule in 1819. The clergy of Besançon opposed her, and the new archbishop forbade the sisters of his diocese to receive their foundress; a trip to Paris in 1823 failed to reconcile them. She died at the convent of Regina Coeli in Naples on August 24, 1826, and was buried in its chapel.

Pope Pius XI beatified her on May 23, 1926, and canonized her on January 14, 1934. The Sisters of Charity today number about 1,500 in 170 communities in 33 countries. Five sisters reached the United States on September 16, 1932, at the request of Archbishop Samuel Stritch of Milwaukee, to serve Italian immigrants on the city’s east side and at Saint Camillus Hospital in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin; their North American province has 35 sisters.

The bicentennial of her death opened in Rome on July 24, 2025. The celebrations at Sancey, from May 28 to 31, 2026, included a pontifical Mass before the basilica with the apostolic nuncio, Celestino Migliore, and Archbishop Jean-Luc Bouilleret of Besançon, and a procession of her relics from the church of Saint-Martin to the basilica. In Besançon the Boutique Jeanne-Antide, once the Œuvre du Bouillon, serves meals and gives emergency shelter to the homeless.

The neo-Romanesque basilica of Sancey, built near her house, has stained glass, mosaics and paintings of her life. A house museum beside it recounts her life and her service of the poor.

• Sancey, basilica of Saint Jeanne-AntideThe neo-Romanesque basilica built near her birthplace, still a center of pilgrimage, with guided visits in summer.
• Sancey, her birthplaceThe family house on the rue de la Basilique, shown in free guided visits, by reservation, in July and August.
• BesançonThe city where she opened her first school on April 11, 1799, the beginning of the Sisters of Charity.