Voting Station

Saint Jeanne Jugan

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Religious Figure

The Resume

Why she might be annoying:

    She was French.
    She doesn't seem to have been able to read or write very well.
    Her pictures make her look like a sourpuss.
    The Little Sisters of the Poor are more famous in the United States for suing the Obama presidential administration over its attempts to force them to buy birth control than their good works.
    She didn't start her order until she was over forty.
    Her group originally supported itself solely by begging.

Why she might not be annoying:

    She lost her father at the early age of 3 or 4.
    Growing up she had to work brutally hard as a shepherdess and maid and grew up in a one room cottage with her mother and eight brothers and sisters.
    She worked as nurse for many years but had to quit due to overwork and exhaustion.
    She taught religion to children as a teenager.
    After moving into a cottage with two other women; her ministry began when she brought a blind and partially paralyzed elderly woman home and let her sleep in her own bed.
    She never married and turned down two separate marriage proposals from the same man.
    By the time of her death her order had grown to over 2,400 members and it still remains one of the largest religious orders in the Catholic Church.
    She was removed as head of her order by a sexist bishop and replaced by a man who was later removed himself by order of the Vatican.
    For over one hundred years her group has done an incredible job of caring for the elderly.
    The Little Sisters of the Poor do not discriminate among who they help; serving Catholics and Protestants; Christians and non-Christians alike.
    After being removed as head of her order she was assigned duties as a beggar which she did without complaint and later went blind in her last years.
    After meeting her, Charles Dickens wrote, 'There is in this woman something so calm, and so holy, that in seeing her I know myself to be in the presence of a superior being. Her words went straight to my heart, so that my eyes, I know not how, filled with tears.'
    At her beatification, Pope John Paul II said, 'God could glorify no more humble a servant than she.'
    When he canonized her a saint, Pope Benedict XVI proclaimed that her life showed, 'Once again how living the faith is prodigious in good works and how sanctity is a healing balm for the wounds of humankind.'
    Her final words were, 'O Mary, my dear mother, come to me. you know I love you and how I long to see you.'

Credit: tom_jeffords


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 141 Votes: 47.52% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 4 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 31 Votes: 38.71% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 4 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 102 Votes: 51.96% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 102 Votes: 47.06% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 10 Votes: 50.0% Annoying