Post-Revolution

Jeanne Marie Fontbonne (1759–1843) was born in Bas-en-Basset, Haute Loire. She was the youngest child of Michel Fontbonne and Jeanne Theillère. At the age of 18, she and her older Sister, Marie, joined their aunt, Sister St. Francis, in making a new foundation of Sisters of St. Joseph in Monistrol. In 1785, Sister St. John was named superior of the Monistrol school and hospital.

However, the French Revolution forced many people in religious orders to flee for their lives. The two Sisters returned to their parental home in 1792. The following year, they were arrested and imprisoned. After months of misery, they were sentenced to be executed in July 1794. On the very eve of the fateful day, the tyrant, Robespierre, was himself assassinated and the prisoners were set free. Again, Sister St. Jeanne returned to her family where she and a few companions continued their good works among the poor for the next 13 years.

In 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte took power and began to revive the Catholic Church in France. Here and there, scattered groups of religious women came together to restore religious communities or begin new ones. One such group, Les Filles Noire, had settled in two locations in St. Etienne in the diocese of Lyon. Cardinal Fesch arranged for Mother St. Jeanne to undertake their formation in the manner and spirit of the Sisters of St. Joseph. In 1807, she began the work of refounding the congregation.
 

Lyon -- 1808
Mother St. Jeanne Fontbonne

Mother St. Jeanne Fontbonne worked to restore the congregation as she knew it before the Revolution: with small groups of Sisters living close to the people, wearing ordinary dress, visiting the homes of people who were sick and poor and helping all in need. But soon, the Sisters were required by the government to organize into a new pattern, much of it contrary to the vision of the founding Sisters. Their major work would be education, although the people they served would not be abandoned. The formerly independent small houses would be no more; instead, centralization into diocesan congregations would be the order of the day.

Although this move deprived the Sisters of the autonomy that allowed them to adapt readily to local conditions and the needs of the people, it provided the means for expansion. The Sisters spread out in France and to other countries as well. By the end of the 19th century, they were to be found in Italy, the United States, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Russia, India, England, Switzerland, Armenia, Algeria, Brazil and Argentina.

By 1830, the Sisters were wearing an official habit for the first time. All these changes, so far removed from their previous simplicity, were a source of great pain to Mother St. Jeanne. Nevertheless, she submitted to the will of the state-dominated Church. She died in 1843 after establishing more than 200 religious houses in France and planting the seeds of more than 40 new Congregations of Sisters of St. Joseph in the world.

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Chambéry -- 1812
Mother Saint John Marcoux

After the revolutionary torment, the communities formed again increasingly, with Lyon becoming the origin of most of the Congregations of Saint Joseph throughout the world. On July 14, 1808, twelve young women took the habit under the tutelage of Mother Saint Jeanne Fontbonne, a former sister who had escaped from the revolutionary prisons. From among them, Mother Saint John Marcoux was sent to Savoy in 1812. As founder of the Congregation of Chambéry, she in turn sent sisters to Saint Jean de Maurienne and to Moûtiers in Savoy, to Turin and to Pignerole in the Piedmont, thus giving rise to new branches of Saint Joseph sisters.

From 1851 on, the sisters of Savoy went to India to strengthen the mission of the Sisters of Annecy, to Carondelet in the United States, and became established in the center of France. As the first Catholic religious to go to Scandinavia after the Reformation, they spread to Denmark (1856), Sweden (1862), Norway (1865), and Iceland (1896). In the meantime, their mission was extended to Brazil (1858) and to Russia (1863), from where they would be expelled by the Revolution. In 1872, a branch in Rome, founded by Turin, united with Chambéry.

The expansion continues in the XXth century, in Europe (Belgium Switzerland, Germany, Ireland, Wales and the Czech Republic), and also to Pakistan, to Madagascar, where the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Aosta took over the mission, to Liberia, where the mission had to be abandoned during the civil war there and to Bolivia.

The seat of the congregation was moved to Rome in 1946. At the beginning of the 21st century, other missions are established in Tanzania and in Mozambique. For the last thirty years, associate members have shared the richness of our spirituality.
 

Annecy -- 1833

Communities of the Sisters of St. Joseph spread very fast throughout central France. During the turmoil of the French Revolution the Sisters were dispersed and some were imprisoned or guillotined. Mother St. Jeanne Fontbonne, a heroic woman who narrowly escaped execution, was the graced person to refound the Congregation in Lyon on 14 ^th July 1808.

It was she, as Superior General, who undertook the consolidation and expansion of the Congregation which spread to other parts of France.
 
In response to a request from Bishop Rey who had previously worked with them in Pignerol, Italy, five Sisters, specially chosen by him, arrived in Annecy on May 7, 1833, and joined the communities which were already in the Diocese. Thus, the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Annecy came into being in response to the needs of the time in a struggling world.

In response to a request from Fr. Neyret, four pioneer missionary Sisters of St. Joseph of Annecy made a brave and touching farewell to their companions and set out for India on 7 ^th July 1849 - landing on Indian soil on 5 ^th December. In response to further requests three Sisters left for a new English mission in 1864 (two of them coming from India) and then to Switzerland in 1878.  In 1957 a mission opened in Algeria and  in Senegal in 1960. More missions in Africa were to follow: Tanzania in 2004, Congo in 2012 and in Kenya 2015.
 

USA -- 1836

On March 5, 1836, six Sisters of St. Joseph arrived in America at the request of Bishop Joseph Rosati, the first bishop of the Diocese of St. Louis. Among the Sisters were two nieces of Mother St. Jeanne: Sisters Febronia and Delphine Fontbonne.

Sister Febronia was sent to Cahokia (across the river in Illinois) to teach the children of the French-Canadian settlers. Sister Delphine went to Carondelet, near St. Louis, where she was appointed superior despite being only 22-years-old. Their home, which also served as a school, was a two-room log cabin with an attic reached by an outside ladder. The Sisters found hardships aplenty. They had gone from the comforts of a former castle in Lyons to a straggling village at the junction of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. They had to contend with a new language, cramped quarters, severe winters and poor Creole farmers whose children had little taste for education.  

In the following year, two more Sisters arrived to teach the deaf. The first American candidate to become a Sister was received in January 1838. She was a new addition to the log house. In 1844, a catastrophic flood forced the abandonment of the Cahokia mission. Several Sisters, including Mother Febronia, returned to France because of poor health. The others, however, continued courageously to care for those in need. A house was opened in the city of St. Louis in 1840 and from there new foundations were made in Philadelphia and St. Paul, Minnesota. Eventually, new novitiates, orphanages, hospitals and schools flourished all over the country.

In 1850, Sister Delphine Fontbonne was sent to Philadelphia as superior of St. John’s Orphanage and novice director. The following year, she came to Toronto with three companions. The city was filled with Irish immigrants who had fled the ravages of famine at home, and the Sisters attended to the needs of the orphans, widows and people who were sick and dying.
 

Canada -- 1851

Marie Antoinette Fontbonne was born in Bas-en-Basset, France on Dec. 24, 1813. She was the eleventh child of Claude Fontbonne and Marie-Francoise Pleynet. Educated by the Sisters of St. Joseph, Marie-Antoinette became a Sister herself in 1832, taking the name Sister Delphine Fontbonne, following in the footsteps of her aunt, Mother St. Jeanne Fontbonne.

In 1836, Sister Delphine and five members of her community left France for America, responding to a plea from Bishop Rosati of St. Louis, Missouri. Sister Delphine was appointed superior of Carondelet (St. Louis), the congregation's first motherhouse in the States. In 1850, she was appointed superior of a novitiate and orphanage in Philadelphia.

In 1851, Toronto's Bishop de Charbonnel learned of the work of the Sisters of St. Joseph in Philadelphia. He asked Bishop Kenrick of Philadelphia to release Mother Delphine to look after an orphanage in Toronto. As a result, Mother Delphine, Sisters Martha von Bunning, Alphonsus Margerum and Bernard Dinan arrived in Toronto on Oct. 7, 1851 to care for the orphans, the sick, the poor and the vulnerable.

As early as 1852, Mother Delphine, at the request of the diocese, sent Sister Martha von Bunning to found an orphanage in Hamilton. Two Sisters began teaching at St. Patrick's School in Toronto. In 1854, they built a new motherhouse near St. Paul's Church. The following year, at Bishop de Charbonnel's request, Mother Delphine began planning the House of Providence.
 

Many thanks to the  Sisters of St. Joseph of Toronto, Canada, for their contributions to this history of the Congregation