In the XIX century, for over 50 years, Sister Rosalie Rendu ministered to the poor in one of the most deprived neighborhoods of Paris city, while raising the consciousness of society to their needs.

Sister Rosalie Rendu, D.C.

She ran a schoot a day-care center, a nursery school, an orphanage, a home for the elderly, a center for the distribution of food, a pharmacy, and a clothes dispensary. She organized the Children of Mary and the Ladies of Charity. She helped Frederick Ozanam in the founding of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. She cared far the sick and the dying during three cholera epidernics. She ministered to the wounded during two revolutions. No Daughter of Charity was better known in her lifetime than she.

Rosalie was very concrete and effective in the service of the poor. To use a modern term, she was an extrnordinary “networker.” Rich and poor, clergy and lay, men and women, the young and the elderly knocked on her door. She enlisted the poor themselves to serve the poor. She asked the askers to do something for others.

Rosalie’s prodigious works were the fruit of her enormous faith. She believed that Christ lives in the person of the poor. She trusted that God’s ]ove conquers all. Her faith radiated out in her tenderness, in her fearlessness, in her small, practical efforts at helping individuals, in her larger, creative, structured forms of serving the whole neighborhood. Her faith was transparent to others. They saw it. They admired it. They were drawn to it.