1900 - Jeanne-Marie Kerguin

July 9, 1900

Taiyuan, Shanxi

Jeanne-Marie Kerguin. [CRBC]

Born on May 5, 1864, at Bretagne in France, Jeanne-Marie Kerguin grew up in a peasant family in a remote farming district. She loved the outdoors, and frequently took walks in the mountains. When she was a young girl, Jeanne-Marie’s mother died, and the burden of housework fell on her shoulders. After finding Christ in her teens, Kerguin entered a novitiate where she adopted the name Marie de Sainte Nathalie (Mary of St. Nathalie), and set out on a life of service with the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary. That path took her, somewhat unexpectedly, to Carthage in North Africa where she fell gravely ill and was sent back to France to recuperate. While there, she was chosen by Bishop Fogolla to join the group of seven sisters at Taiyuan in Shanxi Province.

After arriving in China, Kerguin assisted with the medical and orphanage work, doing everything heart. No request seemed burdensome to her, whether it be doing laundry or treating a sick patient. The love of God in Jeanne-Marie’s heart overflowed to those around her.

During her time in China, Kerguin battled illness, but accepted it without complaining. She said, “I am happy to suffer, because suffering detaches me from the world. By it, God wants me to prove that I love Him above all things.”[1] She also told her friends back in France, “I am happy to be in China because I feel this is my vocation, and I want to win many souls to God.”[2] The final act of her devotion came on July 9, 1900, when Jeanne-Marie Kerguin (a.k.a. Marie de Sainte Nathalie) gave her life as a living sacrifice for God and the Chinese people. The priests were slain first in the hope the macabre sight would cause the nuns to abandon their faith. Instead,

“They knelt in prayer with eyes lifted to heaven, praying for the martyrs, for the conversion of their persecutors and for the perseverance of the Christians. The blasphemies, the taunts, the tumult, nothing disturbed their calm as they waited their turn to die. The nuns embraced each other, intoned the Te Deum, and presented their heads to the executioners—a stroke of the sword and all was over!”[3]