Top Quotes & Sayings by Joan Antidea Thouret

Jeanne-Antide Thouret was born in Sancey, in the Franche-Comté region of eastern France, on November 27, 1765, the fifth child of a poor and "deeply Christian family". She was baptized the day she was born and was named after her godmother. She had three older brothers. Thouret "felt a strong attraction to the stricter religious life and at the same time to the service of the poor" at a young age. Her mother died when she was sixteen years old; she cared for her family and siblings, despite conflict with her aunt who disagreed with her father's decision to allow her to care for her siblings. When she was 22, against the wishes of her family who wanted her to marry, Thouret entered the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul to serve the poor and work in hospitals, first in Langres and then in Paris. While a postulant, she had what she described as her first "encounter" with St. Vincent de Paul, establishing what she considered the close father-daughter relationship with him that lasted her whole life.