Joan Antidea Thouret

Jeanne-Antide Thouret (also known as Joan Antidea or Joan Antida Thouret) was born on 27 November 1765 in the village of Sancey-le-Long in the Franche-Comté region of eastern France, in what is now the department of Doubs. She grew up in a large family of modest rural means; her father worked as a tanner. After her mother’s death when Jeanne-Antide was still in her teens, she took on substantial responsibility for the household and younger siblings. Drawn to a life of prayer and service to the poor, she entered the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul in Paris in 1787 and was formed in that congregation’s apostolate among the sick and the needy.

The French Revolution suppressed religious communities and scattered her sisters. In 1793 she was compelled to leave her convent and return to her native village, where she continued, as far as circumstances allowed, to nurse the sick and to instruct children. Facing mounting danger, she crossed into Switzerland and later spent a period in Germany, still seeking to live her vocation in exile. Toward the end of the 1790s she made her way back to Franche-Comté. In 1799 at Besançon she gathered companions, opened a school and works of relief for the poor, and thereby laid the foundations of a new congregation inspired by Vincentian spirituality, later known as the Sisters of Charity of Besançon (Sisters of Charity under the protection of Saint Vincent de Paul).

The community grew quickly in eastern France. Thouret composed a rule for her sisters centered on education of girls, care of the sick, and service of the abandoned. In 1810 she accepted an invitation to establish houses in the Kingdom of Naples. While she was in Italy, a serious conflict developed with the Archbishop of Besançon over the government and the text of the rule of the French houses. Modifications were imposed that she would not accept, and she was in practice excluded from the communities she had founded in France. The French and Neapolitan branches of her work thereafter developed along separate paths for a time, a trial that marked the last period of her life.

She remained in Naples, directing the Italian houses, founding schools, hospitals, and other works of charity, and enduring poverty, misunderstanding, and declining health. She died in Naples on 24 August 1826. Devotion to her spread with her congregation, which later established houses in many countries under the name Sisters of Charity of Saint Joan Antida Thouret. She was beatified by Pope Pius XI on 23 May 1926 and canonized by the same pope on 14 January 1934. Her liturgical memorial is kept on 24 August.