St. Jeanne Jugan

St. Jeanne Jugan, known in religion as Sister Mary of the Cross, was born on 25 October 1792 at Cancale in Brittany, France, during the upheaval of the Revolution, and died on 29 August 1879. A fisherman's daughter who worked as a kitchen maid and a nurse, she was drawn to serve Christ in the poor, and one winter's night she took a blind, elderly, and helpless woman into her own home and gave the woman her bed — the seed of her life's work.

From that beginning grew the Little Sisters of the Poor, a congregation devoted to caring for the aged and destitute, whose sisters begged door to door for the means to support those in their charge. In a striking trial of humility, Jeanne was set aside by others as superior and lived for some twenty-seven years in obscurity among the novices, unknown to many as the true foundress, hiding her sufferings in prayer. Her holiness was recognized only after her death, and she was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009.