Blessed Francinaina Cirer Carbonell founded the Sisters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul of Mallorca and later assumed the name of “Francinaina of the Sorrowful Mother of God”. She was illiterate but later founded the Community of the Sisters of Charity despite this impediment. She also experienced angelic visions on numerous occasions.

The first United States-born canonized Saint and foundress of the Sisters of Charity of Saint Joseph’s, the first community of religious women founded in the United States, are attributed to St. Elizabeth Ann Seton. She was a wife, mother, then a widow, and a teacher.

St. Joan Antida Thouret’s desire to commit herself to Christ and to her religious vocation gave her the courage to flee France during the chaos of the French Revolution, on foot and alone.

Pierre-René Rogue accepted state money for priestly ministry for “his view was that he had done the work and therefore should be paid.” During the troubles of the Revolution, he convinced the superior of the seminary not to take an oath to be loyal to the state, the law and the King.

Louis Joseph François “was one of the most zealous and best defenders of the Catholic religion against the oath demanded from priests by the French National Assembly.” He was thrown out of a window, where a group of women battered him to death with wooden clubs, for his faith.

Odile Baumgarten “was regarded to be one of the strongest opponents of the revolutionary ideas, and believed to have influenced many other sisters to resist what the civil authorities wanted to do.”

St. Francis Regis Clet was a Vincentian priest who in 1820 was found guilty of deceiving the Chinese people by preaching Christianity and was sentenced to strangulation on a cross.

Marguerite Rutan entered the Company of the Daughters of Charity to be near those who were suffering, marginalized or excluded. Her faithfulness to Christ and the Church lead her to martyrdom at the time of the French Revolution.

“Saint Louis parish was taken over by priests who had taken the oath of fidelity to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which asserted that the Pope had no authority in France and provided for election of bishops and priests by panels of citizens.” Jean-Henri Gruyer left and went to Paris to ask for temporary accommodation in Saint-Firmin only to be held captive and killed within a day.

Marie-Anne Vaillot comforted Odile Baumgarten as they were waiting execution by saying “We will have the happiness of seeing God and possessing him for all eternity… and we will be possessed by him without fear of being ever separated from him.”