Our History

We began as six women in LePuy, a village in France, and have grown to over 24,000 sisters in 49 Congregations on four continents. The Sisters of St. Joseph of Medaille are one of those congregations, taking our name from the order's founder, Father Jean Pierre Medaille.

People say, "adversity builds character". Our congregation is certainly testament to that. The centuries have tested our dedication and the power of our charism with political, societal, even ecclesiastical upheaval.

Perhaps because of those tribulations, we have not only grown in numbers, but in the strength of our faith and purpose. Any Sister can look back now and draw tremendous energy from the achievements of those who walked the path before us.

A Foundation of Faith

Mgr. de Maupas, the bishop of Le Puy who welcomed the plan for a religious life.

The beginnings of the Sisters of St. Joseph are so obscure and hidden that we are not even sure of the actual day of our foundation. We do know that on October 15, 1650, (almost 350 years ago) Bishop Henry DeMaupas of the Diocese of LePuy, France, gave official Church recognition to this new institute of Sisters of St. Joseph. The women who formed the nucleus of this institute were Francoise Eyraud, Clauda Chastel, Marguerite Bardier, Anna Chaleyer, Anna Vey, and Anna Brun.

Later, on December 13,1651, these six Sisters of St. Joseph presented themselves to the Notary in LePuy, France, for the formal legal foundation. Only one, a widow, could sign her name and only two brought any kind of financial dowry. They had taken over the administration of the hospital-orphanage in the rue de Montferrand in LePuy and were connected with the work of a Jesuit priest, Jean Pierre Medaille, whom they considered their founder. Fr. Medaille S.J., well formed in Ignatian spirituality, was a skilled director of souls and a zealous priest whose life was divided between administrative posts in Jesuit communities and the home missions of his order in southern France.

The town of Le Puy saw the birth of the Sisters of St. Joseph.

The new Congregation enjoyed rapid growth, expanding into eighteen houses during the first decade. By the time of the French Revolution, almost 150 years later, the Sisters had spread to twelve dioceses in the southeast corner of France. In its pre-revolutionary development, our congregation was characterized by membership drawn from the people of the most ordinary means and education. We were one with them. Through activities in parishes, rudimentary hospitals and schools, the early sisters achieved direct participation of women in the pastoral care of the Church -- quite a feat, considering they were women without benefit of the wealth or privilege of the upper class, nor in many cases, even formal education.

Our Foundation is typical of the massive and radical alteration that was taking place in the Church's understanding of religious life for women at that time. The Council of Trent in the 1500's had defined religious life very strictly—women religious were those who had a rule of life, solemn vows, and cloister. The Sisters had anticipated the recognition of another form of religious life by nearly 300 years, that being the shifting perspective of religious life as a state necessarily set apart to one that was not.

What was the impetus for this? The needs of the times. In France of the 1650's there had been seven major famines followed by fever epidemics. There were over 40,000 homeless people in Paris alone. It was an age of tremendous change and uncertainty, and a time when everything depended on private charity. Father Medaille's "Little design" called the Sisters to make love tangible within the social order by practicing "all the spiritual and corporal works of mercy of which women are capable". Not restricted to any specific work, Sisters of St. Joseph were free to respond to the needs of a situation. The self-emptying love of Jesus in Philippians 2 was to be their model in living the Gospel mission "that all may be one" (John 17). St. Joseph, the just man who contemplated Jesus at close range in all his humanness, was to be their model in ministry, for they were to serve the "dear neighbor" with the same love with which St. Joseph cared for Jesus and Mary.

Entrance to the chapel of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Bourg Motherhouse.

Disbanded during the French Revolution, the Congregation was re-established in 1807 by Mother Saint John Fontbonne in Lyons, Frances. Dioceses throughout France requested the services of Sisters. Some of them went to Bourg in the Diocese of Belley under the leadership of Mother Saint Joseph Chaney

In 1823, Bishop Alexander Devie of the Diocese of Belley, France, effected the separation of the Sisters in his diocese from the Motherhouse of Lyons. The Sisters of St. Joseph of Bourg became a new congregation under the leadership of Reverend Mother Saint Benoit Cornillon.

Sisters from Bourg first came to the United States in 1854 to Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. Establishing a central house in New Orleans, Louisiana, the Sisters extended their ministry to the poor and suffering of Louisiana and Mississippi, opening schools, hospitals and an orphanage.

Sisters from the New Orleans group went to Cincinnati, Ohio in 1893 to care for the needs of the working girls in Sacred Heart Home, a boarding residence which came to be known as the Fontbonne. In time the Sisters also undertook educational and other apostolic ministries in Ohio.

The year 1903 saw six sisters dispatched from Bourg, France to staff a school in Argyle, Minnesota.

Two years later a school and convent were begun in Crookston, Minnesota. The Sisters soon staffed educational and health care institutions throughout the area, extending their presence in Minneapolis/St. Paul, and to Wisconsin, North Dakota, and Canada.

By 1962, the Bourg Congregation had six provinces, three in Europe and three in the United States, with missions in Africa and Latin America.

At the General Chapter of July 1977, delegates from all six provinces, after prayerful study and discernment, voted to become two separate congregations, one based in Europe, the other in America. On November 30, of the same year, Rome officially declared the three America provinces to be a new Congregation in the Church: the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Medaille. The name Medaille was chosen because it is the family name of the Jesuit priest who helped found the Sisters in 1650 and because the Sisters were geographically located in the north, central and southern areas of the United States. Sister Janet Roesener of Cincinnati, Ohio was chosen the first superior general.

Like a mustard seed... the smallest of all the seeds which becomes the largest of all the plants.

In 1986 and in 1994 decisions were made to merge the three provinces into five regions headed by a Congregational Leadership Office comprised of a president and three general councilors, in Cincinnati. The five regions of Baton Rouge, Cincinnati, Crookston, New Orleans, and the Twin Cities have become the structure with which we can best strengthen the unity of the group and provide more creative service to meet today's needs. We continue to be challenged by the Gospel of Jesus and inspired by the zeal of "the little design" of Jean-Pierre Medaille, S.J. in our efforts to be women of unity, reconciliation, and service.