Blessed Rosalie Rendu

Blessed Rosalie Rendu was a French sister of the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul. For more than fifty years she served the poor in Mouffetard, at that time the poorest district of Paris. The Roman Martyrology commemorates her on February 7, the day of her death.

She was born on September 9, 1786, in Confort, near Gex in the Jura Mountains, the eldest of four daughters of mountain farmers. At baptism she received the names Jeanne Marie. During the French Revolution the Rendu family home was a refuge for priests who had refused the oath to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, and the girl made her First Communion at night, in the cellar, by candlelight. In 1796 she lost her father.

In Gex, where she was a pupil of the Ursulines, she came to know the hospital run by the Daughters of Charity and longed to join them. On May 25, 1802, not yet sixteen, she arrived at the motherhouse of the Company in Paris. When her health declined, she was sent to the sisters’ house in the Mouffetard district. She received the name Rosalie. She visited the sick and the poor and taught girls catechism and reading. In 1807 she made vows for the first time, and in 1815 she became superior of the community.

Over time Sister Rosalie opened in the district a clinic, a pharmacy, a school, an orphanage, a nursery, and a home for the elderly poor. She taught the sisters to receive the poor with respect, because Christ is hidden behind their rags. She used to say that a Daughter of Charity should be like a roadside stone on which everyone who is tired may lay down their burden. She drew her strength from prayer and, as John Paul II recalled, was never without her rosary.

Bishops, politicians, and students came to her parlor. From 1833 she advised the first members of the Conferences of Saint Vincent de Paul. It was she, as John Paul II recalled, who led the young Frédéric Ozanam and his companions to the poor of Mouffetard. During the cholera epidemics, especially in 1832, she nursed the sick at the risk of her life. During the street fighting of 1830 and 1848 she climbed the barricades to rescue the wounded of both sides. In 1852 Napoleon III awarded her the Cross of the Legion of Honor, which she accepted only at the order of her superior.

In the last two years of her life she gradually lost her sight. She died in Paris on February 7, 1856, after a short illness. After the funeral in the Church of Saint-Médard a great crowd accompanied the coffin to Montparnasse Cemetery. On the simple grave these words were engraved: “To good Mother Rosalie, her grateful friends, the rich and the poor.”

The beatification process was opened in Paris in 1953. John Paul II beatified Sister Rosalie on November 9, 2003, in Saint Peter’s Square in Rome. He said then that in a time of social conflicts she joyfully became the servant of the poorest, in order to restore dignity to each one, and that her secret was to see the face of Christ in every person.