Anne-Marie Javouhey was born on November 10th, 1779, in Chamblanc, Bourgogne (France), in a simple and faith-filled background. She was still a child when the French Revolution broke out, bringing great turmoil in the Church due to the persecution of Christians and religious orders. Such persecution did not facilitate Anne-Marie's discernment, since she did not have a spiritual director to turn to. However, on November 11, 1798, Anne-Marie Javouhey consecrated herself to God in secret. She became a professed nun in Chalon-sur-Saône on May 12, 1807, giving birth to the Congregation of the Sisters of Saint Joseph.
Teaching and educating the poor were the cornerstones of her work, which led her to open schools for minors. In addition, during the war with Spain in 1810, she and her sisters provided hospital care. In 1812, her father bought the former Récollets’ convent in Cluny, where she organized her first novitiate. From that moment on, the name Cluny became linked to the nuns of Saint Joseph.
Thanks to her ability in educational work, she was recommended to Desbassyns de Richemont, the administrator of Ile Bourbon, a French department in the Indian Ocean (known as La Réunion Island), who asked her to educate the local youth. Anne-Marie Javouhey had prepared herself all her life for such a task and so, on January 16, 1817, four young sisters left Rochefort to begin their missionary work. Soon the horizons of her Congregation expanded and after La Réunion, the Congregation of the Sisters of Saint Joseph reached Saint-Louis, Senegal and Gorée in 1819, Guyana and Guadeloupe in 1822, Martinique, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in 1826, Pondicherry in 1827, Tahiti in 1844, some small islands in Madagascar and Mayotte in 1846, the Marquesas Islands in 1847.
Anne-Marie Javouhey dreamed of forming local "apostles" who could speak better than anyone else to their brothers and sisters about God. Therefore, she committed to bringing young Africans to France so that her Congregation would educate them to become priests or teachers. Three arrived to the priesthood in 1840 and became the first African priests.
Anne-Marie Javouhey became more aware of her mission in Africa: to educate everyone so that they could take ownership of their lives, be self-sufficient and integrate into society, recognize human dignity and racial equality (including the abolition of slavery), and promote evangelization to the local people through believers who belonged to the same community, and to whom she could open the doors of the priesthood.
During her service, she had to overcome prejudices, face maliciousness, fight against hostility not only from settlers, but also from religious men and women, and was subjected to persecution by ecclesiastical authorities, who tried to bring the Congregation she founded back to the diocese. Convinced that all are children of the same Father, Mother Javouhey lived a complete trust in God: "Never be afraid of your strength when you entrust yourselves to Him. Only God can take you away from everything." Mother Javouhey died in Paris on July 15, 1851, and was proclaimed blessed by Pope Pius XII on October 15, 1950.