At Paris in France, Blessed Rosalie (Jeanne Marie) Rendu, virgin of the Daughters of Charity. Established in a house in the poorest quarter of that city, which she made a refuge for the needy, she strove with all her zeal to visit the poor in their own dwellings, to make peace in times of civil war, and to rouse many, especially the young and the wealthy, to the exercise of charity.
Lifespan: 1786–1856
Beatified: 9 November 2003 by Pope John Paul II
Memoria liturgica: 7 February
“The Daughter of Charity must be like a roadside post against which all who are weary have the right to lay down their burden.”
Jeanne Marie Rendu
Jeanne Marie Rendu was born on 9 September 1786 at Confort, in the canton of Gex in the Jura. She was the eldest of four daughters. Her parents, smallholding mountain farmers of simple life, enjoyed a measure of comfort and genuine respect throughout the village; she was baptized on the very day of her birth in the parish church of Lancrans. Her godfather by proxy was Jacques Émery, a family friend and future Superior General of the Sulpicians in Paris.
Jeanne Marie Rendu was three years old when the Revolution broke out in France. From 1790 onwards, priests were required by oath to adhere to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Many priests, faithful to the Church, refused the oath. They were therefore driven from their parishes; some were put to death, others forced to go into hiding to escape the searches of the revolutionaries.
The Rendu family home became a refuge for the non-juring priests. The Bishop of Annecy found asylum there under the name of Pierre. Jeanne Marie was intrigued to notice that this domestic servant was treated better than the others. One night she discovered that he was celebrating Mass, and was grieved not to have known the truth sooner.
Not long after, in a quarrel with her mother, she let slip a threatening remark: “Be careful, Mama, or I shall say that Pierre is not Pierre.” To forestall any indiscretion on her daughter’s part, Madame Rendu put her fully in the picture.
It was in this atmosphere of steadfast faith, constantly exposed to the danger of denunciation, that Jeanne Marie was raised. She made her first Communion at night, in the cellar of her father’s house, by candlelight. This extraordinary climate tempered her character.
The death of her father on 12 May 1796, followed by that of her four-month-old baby sister on 19 July of the same year, devastated the family. Jeanne Marie, conscious of her responsibility as the eldest daughter, helped her mother, especially in caring for her younger sisters.
In the aftermath of the Terror, minds gradually calmed and life returned to its normal course. Madame Rendu, anxious about the education of her eldest daughter, sent her to the Ursuline Sisters at Gex. Jeanne Marie remained there for two years. During her walks about the town she discovered the hospital where the Daughters of Charity cared for the sick. Watching them, she felt growing within her a desire to go and help them. Her mother agreed that Jeanne Marie, young as she was, might undertake a period of formation in that place of suffering. There, the call of God that she had sensed for several years became clear to her: yes, she would be a Daughter of Charity.
In 1802, Armande Jacquinot from the village of Lancrans confided to her friend that she was preparing to leave for Paris to enter the Company of the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul. Jeanne Marie seized the opportunity and begged her mother to let her go as well. After taking counsel with Monsieur de Varicourt, the parish dean of Gex, Madame Rendu — happy, yet deeply moved by her daughter’s vocation — gave her consent.
On 25 May 1802, Jeanne Marie arrived at the Mother House of the Daughters of Charity in the rue du Vieux Colombier in Paris — on the eve of her sixteenth birthday. The Seminary (that is, the novitiate, suppressed by the Revolutionaries) had reopened in December 1800.
On their arrival, the two young women were welcomed by some fifty other aspirants already engaged in formation.
Her health was unsettled both by spiritual tension and by a lack of physical exercise. On the advice of the doctor and of Monsieur Émery, her godfather, Jeanne Marie was sent to the house of the Daughters of Charity in the Mouffetard quarter to serve the poor. She would remain there for fifty-four years.
The thirst for action, devotion, and service that burned in Jeanne Marie’s heart could not have found a more propitious ground than this Parisian quarter, which at that time was the most wretched in the rapidly expanding capital: poverty in its many forms, psychological and spiritual misery, sickness, destitution, and insanitary housing were the conditions of inhabitants who struggled continually simply to survive.
Jeanne Marie, now Sister Rosalie, served her “apprenticeship” there by accompanying the Sisters on their visits to the sick and the poor. Meanwhile she engaged in catechesis and taught reading to the girls who were admitted to school free of charge. In 1807, Sister Rosalie, together with the Sisters of her community, bound herself with deep feeling and profound joy — by vow — to the service of God in the poor.
In 1815, Sister Rosalie became Superior of the community in the rue des Francs-Bourgeois, which two years later was transferred to the rue de l’Épée-de-Bois for reasons of space and practicality. Here all her qualities of dedication, authority, humility, and compassion could manifest themselves, together with her gifts for organization. Her poor — as she called them — were ever more numerous in that turbulent era; the wreckage left by triumphant economic liberalism deepened the misery of those already on the margins. She sent the Sisters into every hidden corner of the parish of Saint-Médard to bring food, clothing, medicine, and a word of comfort to the poor.
To help all who suffered, Sister Rosalie opened a dispensary, a pharmacy, a school, an orphanage, a crèche, a welfare centre for young working women, and a care home for the elderly poor. Soon a whole network of charitable works would take shape to hold back the tide of poverty.
Her example spurred her fellow Sisters, to whom she often repeated: “The Daughter of Charity must be like a roadside post against which all who are weary have the right to lay down their burden.” Her life was so simple and poor that the presence of God shone through it quite naturally.
Her faith, firm as rock and clear as a spring, revealed Jesus Christ to her in every circumstance, making her live out the deep conviction of Saint Vincent: “Ten times a day you will go to visit a poor person; ten times you will find God there… You go into poor houses, but you find God there.” Her life of prayer was intense; as one Sister testified: “She lived continuously in the presence of God — even if she had a difficult mission to fulfil, we were sure to see her going up to the chapel or to find her on her knees in her office.”
She was careful to ensure that her companions had time for prayer, but there was always the imperative to “leave God for God,” as Vincent de Paul had taught his Daughters. When setting out with a Sister on a visit of charity, she would say: “Sister, let us begin our prayer” — and with a few simple, clear words she would set out the intention and enter into deep recollection.
Like a nun in the cloister, Sister Rosalie walked with her God: she spoke to him of the family that had fallen into destitution because the father could no longer find work, of the old man who risked dying alone in his garret. “I never pray so well as in the street,” she would say. “Even the poor noticed her manner of praying and of acting,” one of her companions recalled. “Humble in her authority, she would correct with delicacy and had the gift of consolation. Her counsels, dictated by justice and given with all her affection, penetrated to the heart.”
She took great care in the manner of welcoming the poor. Her spirit of faith saw in them “our lords and masters.” “The poor will insult you,” she would say. “The coarser they are, the more dignified you must be. Remember that those rags conceal Our Lord.” Her superiors sent her postulants and young Sisters for formation, and for a time entrusted to her care Sisters who were somewhat difficult or fragile. To one of her sisters in difficulty she once offered a counsel that reveals the secret of her life: “If you wish someone to love you, be the first to love; and if you have nothing to give, give yourself.”
As the number of Sisters grew, the charitable office became a house of charity with an outpatient clinic and a school. In this she saw the Providence of God.
Her reputation soon reached every quarter of the capital and the provincial cities. Sister Rosalie gathered around her devoted, effective, and ever more numerous collaborators. Donations flowed in quickly, for the wealthy found it impossible to resist this most persuasive woman. The sovereigns who had succeeded one another at the head of the country likewise never failed to include her in their benefactions. The Ladies of Charity helped her with home visits. Bishops and priests were often to be seen in her parlour, together with the Spanish ambassador Donoso Cortés, Charles X, General Cavaignac, the most distinguished men of state and culture, and even the Emperor Napoleon III with his consort; students of law and medicine, pupils of the Polytechnique, the École Normale, and other leading schools — they all came to Sister Rosalie for information and recommendations, or, before undertaking a good work, to ask at which door they should knock.
Among them, Blessed Frédéric Ozanam — co-founder of the Conference of Saint Vincent de Paul — and Venerable Jean-Léon Le Prévost, the future founder of the Religious of Saint Vincent de Paul, knew well the way to her office; together with their friends they came to seek her counsel in launching their respective undertakings. She stood at the centre of a movement of charity that came to define Paris and France in the first half of the nineteenth century.
Sister Rosalie’s experience was invaluable to those young men: she guided their apostolate, directed their coming and going in the neighbourhood, and gave them, with careful discernment, the addresses of families in need.
She also turned to the Superior of the Bon Sauveur of Caen, asking her to receive a number of persons. She was especially attentive to priests and religious afflicted with psychological disorders. Her correspondence was brief, but touching in its delicacy, patience, and respect towards those who were ill.
Trials were not lacking in the Mouffetard quarter. Cholera epidemics struck repeatedly; the want of hygiene and the pervasive misery heightened their virulence. In particular, during the outbreaks of 1832 and 1846, the dedication and the risks run by Sister Rosalie and her Daughters seized the popular imagination: she was seen gathering up bodies that had been abandoned in the streets. During the uprisings of July 1830 and February 1848, barricades went up and bloody fighting set the authorities against an enraged working class. Monsignor Affre, Archbishop of Paris, was killed while attempting to interpose himself between the warring parties. Sister Rosalie suffered deeply, yet she too mounted the barricades to tend the wounded combatants of either side, fearing nothing and risking her life in the clashes. Her courage and her spirit of freedom commanded the admiration of all.
When order was restored, she worked to save many of those men she knew who had fallen victim to a ferocious repression. She was greatly helped in this by Dr. Ulysse Trélat, mayor of the arrondissement, a genuine republican and himself greatly popular. In 1852, Napoleon III decided to present Sister Rosalie with the Cross of the Légion d’honneur; she was prepared to refuse this personal distinction, but the Superior of the Priests of the Mission and the Daughters of Charity, Father Étienne, obliged her to accept it.
Though her health had always been frail, Sister Rosalie never took a moment’s rest, invariably overcoming fatigue and fever alike. In the end, age, mounting debility, and the accumulated weight of her duties overcame her great endurance and strong will. During the last two years of her life she gradually lost her sight. She died on 7 February 1856, after a brief illness.