Jacques-Francois Dujarié

Jacques-François Dujarié (1767-1838) was a French Catholic priest who served the people of France at the start of the 19th century. To this end, he founded a congregation of Religious Sisters and another one of Brothers.

Dujarié was born in Rennes-en-Grenouilles, France on December 9, 1767, and was a seminarian in Angers when the French Revolution broke out in 1789. Beginning in 1789, the parishes, convents and monasteries that had provided most of the country’s education and health care were closed and their assets seized. In 1791, when the Revolutionary government required all clergy to take an oath of loyalty to the state, the seminary disbanded and Dujarié returned home. Priests and religious who did not take the oath were forced into hiding to avoid imprisonment, deportation, or even execution. For several years, Dujarié traveled from village to village, disguising himself as a shepherd in order to assist the priests who were ministering “underground.”

In July 1795, he resumed his studies for the priesthood in secret with a pastor in Ruillé-sur-Loir. On December 26 of that same year, he was secretly ordained a priest in Paris. Throughout the Revolutionary period he ministered to the Catholic faithful as an "underground priest" throughout northwestern France, particularly in the countryside around Ruillé-sur-Loir, in the former province of Maine. At times he even posed as a peddler to go out through the countryside tending the people.

After the restoration of the Catholic Church, Abbé Dujarié was installed as parish priest of the town of Ruillé on 27 May 1803. He worked tirelessly to rebuild the parish, but he became profoundly concerned about the state of affairs in which the Revolution had left the Church and the state of education, especially in the poorest region outside the town, known as the "Heights".

In 1806 Dujarié recruited two young women of the region to teach girls and care for the sick. He had the Little House of Providence built for them in that locale. Immediately the women set up a school, dispensary and a routine of visiting and caring for the ill. Within just a few years the group of women spread out to surrounding parishes to carry out Dujarié's vision. They group had grown so much by March 1821 that he began the building of a larger house for them on the outskirts of the town, called the Great House of Providence. In 1831 they were recognized religious congregation, called the Sisters of Providence. Their motto became: Deus providebit (God will provide).

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