Liturgical feast of St. Jeanne Antide: May 23, 2026, Bicentenary year!

The month of May is traditionally dedicated to prayer addressed to Mary. For the Sisters of Charity of St. Jeanne Antide it is also the month in which the church celebrates the liturgical feast of St. Jeanne Antide on May 23rd, the day of her beatification in 1926. This year we celebrate the hundredth anniversary of her beatification and the two hundredth anniversary of her entrance into heaven. Here we would like to recall some words of our Holy Foundress who also inspired the Thouret Foundation in her gaze turned to human promotion and the development of peoples, to aid to the sick and the poor and to the promotion of youth, especially women.

Mother Thouret’s words, in fact, are always full of tenderness, warmth, and maternal spirit. They are the light that inspires the choice of projects for the Foundation. The Thouret Foundation is a philanthropic organization that aims to support projects and activities which will benefit the poor and other disadvantaged people. St. Jeanne Antide was a natural collaborator with God’s tender love. God’s love called her to give herself immeasurably in caring for the sick in body and spirit. She teaches us to serve the poor and see, in them, the person of Jesus Christ himself. St. Jeanne Antide writes: “… the poor, these precious members of the suffering Jesus Christ, will be helped and consoled in all their spiritual and temporal miseries; ». “The poor must be the objects of your zeal and tender care.” These are very warm and tender words. These words inspire the projects the Foundation undertakes. It has helped to open many medical clinics, health centers, and in some cases, hospitals in our missions. The Thouret Foundation is committed to sending economic and often professional support with the help of generous benefactors and volunteers. The authentic vocation to tenderness colors the charity of St. Jeanne Antide. It direct it towards the various poor: “It is a very precious duty and very dear to our hearts, to draw from ignorance and vice where it ordinarily rots, a poor and abandoned youth. Poor girls will be the moving object of our most ardent zeal, of our most accurate and tender charity.”

In fact, the Foundation supports foyers and shelters all over the world. With the help of sisters, it contributes to making them a place of growth and formation but, above all, a “home.” Here young people can rediscover the warmth of a family, the affection of a mother for those young women who have lost their loved ones or who have been victims of violence. It provides scholarships for many young people and allows many of them to obtain a degree. Thus, they are able to choose the path of their future and be promoters of a new society based on respect and gender equality. Mother Thouret tells us: “Certainly, these poor afflicted people will be the object of our most detailed care; we will always consider them as brothers and our fellow men before God, and it will be our greatest happiness to dry our tears and stop groaning.”With the aim of responding effectively to the urgencies of charity in its many forms, the Foundation is attentive to the signs of the times and to the emerging needs of contemporary men and women. It has developed an original style of charity based on the example of St. Jeanne Antide and on the direct encounter with one’s neighbour.

The Foundation seeks to be at the side of the Sisters of Charity who do not abandon populations wounded by natural disasters or by disastrous violence dictated by hatred. It intervenes in Lebanon, Syria, South Sudan, Ethiopia each plagued by the war. And in Myanmar, Vietnam, and Pakistan where floods and earthquakes have occurred.The immense love for her Lord that St. Jeanne Antide encountered in the faces of the poor she served is still, today, the compass that orients the work of the Sisters of Charity of St. Jeanne Antide and, consequently, the work of the Thouret Foundation. The Foundation finds its full expression in carrying out projects that promote the dignity of every human being, justice, peace, and the protection of the planet. Thus, it gives meaning to the name of St. Jeanne Antide Thouret and to God.

Sr Maria Luisa Caruso