Juana Jugan (1792–1879)

Biography

When she was forty-seven years old, and barely knew how to read and write, she took in two sick elderly women in the poor apartment she shared with two other friends. This is how the congregation of the Little Sisters of the Poor began, which today has fifty thousand nuns, spread across thirty countries, and dedicated to the care of abandoned elderly people. The last twenty-six years of her life were spent locked up in the Central House by orders of a chaplain affected by megalomania who claimed the title of founder for himself. Juana did not complain once and was always happy.