Venerable Claudine Thévenet

Claudine Thévenet, RJM (30 March 1774 – 3 February 1837), religious name Marie of Saint Ignatius, was a French Catholic religious sister and the founder of the Religious of Jesus and Mary. Thévenet witnessed the horrors of the French Revolution – she saw two of her brothers executed – and went on to cater to the needs of children while using her congregation to provide local girls with a religious education. Thévenet was beatified on 4 October 1981 and was later canonized as a saint on 21 March 1993. Claudine Thévenet was born in the Kingdom of France, on 30 March 1774, as the second of seven children. During her adolescence, Thévenet studied at the Saint-Pierre-les-Nonnains convent. The French Revolution saw the destruction of the old government and the formation of a new one that soon led to a violent massacre in her hometown in which two of her brothers were guillotined in public on 5 January 1794. Her brothers died forgiving their killers and the pair beseeched their distraught sister to do the same; their final words to her were: "Forgive them as we forgive". Not long after this she began to work with working women in her town and soon came into contact with the priest André Coindre. Coindre was vicar of the Church of Saint-Bruno des Chartreux. In 1816, he had established the "Providence of St. Bruno", on the premises of the former Carthusian monastery. This was a charitable institution that sheltered orphans and the children of very poor families and provided room, board, religious instruction, and taught them a trade so that they could earn a living. Together with Coindre she formed a small group, the "Pious Union", an association for ladies and young women with the aim of working to raise and educate girls. In 1817, Coindre established the “Providence of the Sacred Heart”, which he organized for girls at the Carthusian site. He then entrusted its operation to the members of the Pious Union, which becomes known as the Association of the Sacred Heart.