Saint Jane Antide Thouret was born in November of 1765 in Sancy, France. When she was 16 years old, her mother died and she had to help her father care for her younger siblings. In 1787 she joined the Sisters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul in Paris and she worked in hospitals. During the suppression of religious orders in the French Revolution she was ordered to return home. She refused and tried to escape and was beaten so badly that it took her several months to recover. By foot, she returned to Sancey and cared for the sick and opened a small school for girls. By the late 1790s she was forced to flee to Switzerland. She worked with other exiled religious and clergy to care for the sick, but there was an anti-Catholic prejudice there too, and they were forced to move to Germany. Eventually she returned to Switzerland and met with her Vicar General and he asked her to found a school and hospital for her Order. In 1799 the school was open. The congregation expanded with other schools and hospitals in France, Switzerland, and Italy. They then moved into prison ministry. They received papal approval in 1819. Saint Jane died in 1828 in Naples, Italy and was canonized in 1934.
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