photo courtesy of John Huertz The Little Sisters of the Poor brought a first-class relic of St. Jeanne Jugan to the Mass celebrating her canonization. The reliquary was placed in front of an oil painting of the new saint.

Charles Dickens didn’t have many illusions about people — for one thing, he started out as a court reporter — but his words above indicate he had the same reaction to St. Jeanne Jugan that many people had who knew her.

Dickens would have approved of the commemorative Mass said in her honor at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception last Friday evening. Bishop Robert W. Finn presided, joined by Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann of the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas, and by emeritus Bishops Raymond J. Boland of Kansas City and George K. Fitzsimmons of Salina.

Last October Pope Benedict XVI declared Jeanne Jugan, foundress of the worldwide Little Sisters of the Poor religious order, a saint along with St. Damien of Molokai and three other people.

“The Sisters celebrated all over the world, but this is the only celebration we know of with four bishops,” said Sr. Marguerite LSP, superior of Kansas City, Missouri’s Little Sisters of the Poor community from 2001-2006.

Caring for old and sick people by giving them good medical care in a safe and happy home is the order’s distinctive charism. “The homelike atmosphere is very important to people in their last days,” Sr. Marguerite said.

In his homily, Archbishop Naumann touched on this key point. Quoting St. Jeanne directly, he reminded the Cathedral’s near-capacity congregation of her admonition to “Be kind to the elderly, because in serving them we serve Jesus Christ.”

St. Jeanne Jugan is yet another example of French Catholicism’s characteristic genius for producing saints who can devise very effective ways to care for the neediest people among us — a saints’ roster including St. Vincent de Paul, St. John Baptist de la Salle and a host of others.

“Her love for Jesus gave her her love for the poor and her love for the Gospel. We ask her for this same love so we can be little sisters like her,” said a member of the Little Sisters of the Lamb, a new order of French Dominicans caring for the needy in Kansas City, Kan.

Little Sisters of the Poor remain faithful to St. Jeanne Jugan’s original vision — to share their homes and lives with the poor people they serve, and to depend entirely on God for the means by seeking alms every day.

Jeanne Jugan was born in Brittany in 1792, a tall, sturdy peasant girl with little education but the heart of a lioness. Early in life, she became aware that God had something special in mind for her.

She watched and prayed, and worked as a domestic servant until she was 47. Then one night in 1839, she saw old Anne Chauvin, blind and seriously ill. Mlle. Jugan brought her to her good employer’s house, carrying her on her own back up the stairs to her own bed.

Jeanne’s life changed in that moment. She took the name Sister Mary of the Cross — “a name I am unworthy to bear,” she said — and adopted with her companions a religious rule based on the Third Order rule of St. John Eudes — another great French saint and social reformer — and was chosen the superior of the new community by her companions on May 29, 1842.

She was re-elected in 1843. But the community’s spiritual advisor, a Fr. Le Pailleur, quashed the election on his own authority and replaced her with someone else.

He then forbade Jeanne to have any contact whatever with the order’s rapidly increasing number of donors, or to take part in any decision affecting the order’s governance, or to do any but the most menial work. He also had the early history of the order systematically rewritten, casting him as the founder and leaving her out of the picture entirely. Though she lived to see the order gain Papal approval, Jeanne Jugan would not be recognized as its founder until 14 years after her 1879 death.

This is Fr. Le Pailleur’s enduring legacy — a legacy which may have prompted Bishop Finn’s observation after Mass that “Tangling with a saint is always a mistake.”

Yet Sr. Marie de la Croix submitted in perfect obedience. She continued to beg alms, to pray without ceasing, and to gently encourage all those around her — especially the order’s newest members.

She schooled them in the way of “littleness,” of doing little things with great love by being completely open to God — perhaps another characteristically French Catholic gift to the world, later made world-famous by St. Therese of Lisieux.

Sr. Marie’s legendary humility and tenacity are illustrated by a famous story. Once an irritable old bachelor struck her. She smiled and said, “Thank you. That was for me. Now please give me an alms for my poor.”

Apparently, he did. A contemporary said that she collected alms by praising God.

The Little Sisters of the Poor have experienced tremendous growth from 1846 to the present. The order came to Kansas City at the request of Bishop John J. Hogan in 1882 — the same year the Little Sisters established their first overseas mission, in Calcutta.

“She inspires us by her example to work toward the same level of charity and humility she exemplified,” said Sister Rose Marie LSP, current superior of the Kansas City house.

Today the Little Sisters of the Poor serve poor, elderly and ailing people in about 32 houses in the USA and about 220 houses worldwide, said Sr. Gonzague LSP of the Kansas City home. The order also operates nine novitiates worldwide.

Sr. Maria Catherine is a second year LSP novice in Kansas City. “I was drawn to the Little Sisters of the Poor by St. Jeanne Jugan’s great love for the elderly, and I saw the sisters here living a joyful life,” she says.

“It was also very important to me that they are faithful to the Magisterium.”

The order is sponsoring a “Come and See” vocation discernment day on Saturday, February 27 at its facility at 8745 James A. Reed Rd. in Kansas City, Mo.

“What a great thing it is to make the poor happy,” St. Jeanne Jugan taught the world — while teaching with her life, in word and deed, the truth that “One must always say that God is great.”

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