Roman Catholic Saint. Foundress of the Sisters of Charity, Jeanne Antide Thouret helped raising her seven siblings following her mother's early death and took care in maintaining the household, thus upon expressing her wish to join the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul, her father objected greatly, but eventually gave her his permission. Thus at the age of twenty two, she entered the congregation in Paris. Assigned to hospital labor, the French Revolution suppressed all religious congregations and was consequently forced to abandon the Daughters of Charity after being badly beaten following a refusal to do so from her side. The injuries sustained took eight months to heal. Returning to her native Sancey-de-Long, she cared for the local sick, wounded and poor and opened a small school for girls. Moving to Switzerland following yet another restraint from the authorities, she met a highly anti-Catholic prejudice in the district, which made her shift again, this time towards Germany. Returning once more to Switzerland, representatives from the diocese of Besançon, likewise living in exile, asked her to return to France with a number of young girls and train them in the same manner she was in order to be able to teach children and tend the sick. Upon accepting this offer, she opened a school, a dispensary, and a soup kitchen for the poor in Besançon. With this move, she had founded a new congregation: the Sisters of Charity of Saint Jeanne Antide Thouret, who in a few years extended their houses to twenty six countries, operating in schools, hospitals and prisons. The institute received papal approval in 1819, when Pope Pius VII accepted the "Rule of Life" written by the foundress. Moving to Naples in her later years, Thouret passed away there in 1826 after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage. Pope Pius XI beatified her in 1926 and eventually canonized her on January 14, 1934. On this occasion, he invited the French nation "to exult with joy on seeing its crown enriched by a new flower of holiness".