Jacques-François Dujarié

Jacques-François Dujarié (1767-1838) was a French Catholic priest who served the people of France at the start of the 19th century. To this end, he founded a congregation of religious sisters and another one of brothers.

Early life Dujarié was born in Sainte-Marie-du-Bois, Mayenne, France on December 9, 1767, the son of Jacques and Françoise Leroux Dujarié. His was a religious family. He studied at the collège in Domfront, founded by the Eudists. He was a student at the Sulpician seminary in Angers when the French Revolution broke out in 1789. The parishes, convents and monasteries that had provided most of the country’s education and health care were closed and their assets seized. In 1791, when the Revolutionary government required all clergy to take an oath of loyalty to the state, the seminary disbanded and Dujarié returned home. Priests and religious who did not take the oath were forced into hiding to avoid imprisonment, deportation, or even execution.

In July 1795, Dujarié resumed his studies for the priesthood in secret with Joseph Jacquet de la Haye, pastor in Ruillé-sur-Loir. On December 26 of that same year, he was secretly ordained a priest in Paris. He celebrated his first Mass in the middle of the night in a barn outside of Ruillé-sur-Loir.

Throughout the Revolutionary period he ministered to the Catholic faithful as an "underground priest" throughout northwestern France, particularly in the countryside around Ruillé-sur-Loir, in the former province of Maine. He worked as a weaver, and disguised himself as a lemonade peddler as he went out through the countryside tending the people. He worked tirelessly to rebuild the parish, but he became profoundly concerned about the state of affairs in which the Revolution had left the Church and the state of education, especially in the poorest region outside the town, known as the "Heights".

The Sisters of Providence In 1806 Dujarié recruited two young women of the region to teach girls and care for the sick. Their motto became: Deus providebit (God will provide).

The Brothers of St. Joseph With the encouragement of Johann Michael Josef von Pidoll de Quitenbach, Bishop of Le Mans, in 1820 Dujarié also founded the Brothers of St. Joseph for the education of rural boys.

Death In October 1836, Dujarié retired to live with the Brothers at their motherhouse in Le Mans. He died there on 17 February 1838, the founder of two communities which would soon become three congregations: the Sisters of Providence (Ruillé-sur-Loir, France), the Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, (Indiana), and the Brothers of the Congregation of Holy Cross

Dujarié was buried in the cemetery of the Brothers. His remains, however, were transferred, at the Sisters' request to their motherhouse in Ruillé on 31 August 1873.