Anne-Marie Javouhey
| Blessed Anne-Marie Javouhey | |
|---|---|
A holy card of Blessed Anne-Marie Javouhey
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| Liberator of the Slaves | |
| Born |
10 November 1779 Jallanges, Côte-d'Or, France |
| Died | 15 July 1851 (aged 71) Paris, France |
| Venerated in | Roman Catholic Church |
| Beatified | 15 October 1950 by Pope Pius XII |
| Feast | 15 July |
Blessed Anne-Marie Javouhey (November 10, 1779 – July 15, 1851) was a French nun who founded the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Cluny. She is venerated in the Roman Catholic Church. She is known as the Liberator of the Slaves in the New World, and as the mother of the town of Mana, French Guiana.
She was born in the commune of Jallanges, Côte-d'Or, the fifth of ten children of a local wealthy farm couple, Balthazar and Claudine Javouhey. When she was very young, she smelled wine and was about to drink the wine when one of the servants saw her and asked her not to drink the wine. She always added water to her wine for the rest of her life. Through her teen years, she helped to hide and care for a number of priests persecuted by the French Revolution, including keeping watch for them as they said Mass. She made a private vow when she was nineteen years old, but was not able to become a nun because the revolutionary government had closed convents and churches. Later on, she joined the Sisters of Charity at Besançon. While there is reported to have a vision of St. Teresa of Avila entrusting children of different races to her. She did not understand its meaning at the time, but it would profoundly influence her later life.
She moved from convent to convent, never being fully satisfied, until she and eight others founded the Institute of Saint Joseph of Cluny at Cabillon in 1805. The order was recognized by the local bishop in 1807. In 1812, they bought a former monastery and moved the congregation to Cluny. She founded the congregation to educate children and to help reduce the miseries which arose out of the French Revolution. In 1819, the scope of the order expanded to include missionary work in what is now the Island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean, and it established a mission presence in Gorée, Senegal in 1822. Two years later, she left for St. Mary's in Gambia, where she worked tirelessly to help the victims of an epidemic in the area. She also worked in Sierra Leone. She returned to Senegal later, and received the help of the government in her attempt to develop native-born Catholic priests after educating them in Europe. Eight of the candidates were ordained to the priesthood and some of them returned to Africa to minister to their people. This plan was later abandoned, as a number of the potential missionaries died trying to acclimatize themselves.
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