Jeanne Devos,ICM, (born 1935) is a Belgian religious sister and missionary who has spent her adult life serving the neediest people in India. She founded the National Domestic Workers Movement to advocate for one of the most powerless segments of society. For her work, she has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Devos was born in 1935 in Kortenaken, a village in the Province of Flemish Brabant. She attended the Heilig Hartinstituut in Heverlee, run by the Apostolic Sisters of the Annunciation, an active congregation of the Order of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, an enclosed religious order. [1]
As a teenager, Devos became introduced to the writings of Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore, from which she felt called to serve God in India. To follow this dream, in 1960 Devos entered the congregation of the Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary which had been founded in India by 1897, and whose motherhouse was located in Heverlee at that time. After completing the novitiate, in order to prepare for service in the missions, Devos was sent to be trained as a speech therapist. In 1965 she was sent to the missions of the congregation in Bombay, India. [2] In 1966 Sr. Jeanne founded a student’s movement (YCS/YSM) with the aim of linking students to the underprivileged. http://www.ycsysmindia.com/
In 1978 a survey was conducted by the Catholic Bishops Conference of India on the actual working conditions of domestic servants in India. The survey depicted slave-like conditions for domestic workers all across the nation. As a result, in 1980 Devos began to work with women and girls in the Dindigul district of the State of Tamil Nadu. She helped to organize small groups of domestic workers to help them in whatever way she could. She became upset about the situation of these workers and the general attitude held by both employers and society in general held towards them. They had no voice and had no means to stand up for their rights. They were invisible. She saw how women from the poorest segments of the population slaved as domestic servants, usually with illegally low wages and no rights. [3]
Devos gained a new sense of urgency "after meeting the 13-year-old girl Sangeeta who was raped, pregnant and had aborted – without understanding what had happened to her." To combat this situation, in 1985 she founded the Domestic Workers National Movement, based in Mumbai, which organizes and advocates for women and girls. It now operates in 18 states of the nation, working in 28 different languages. [2] Devos participated with the CosmoGolem project, founded in 2010 by Koen Vanmechelen, which sponsors wooden statues of the Golem travel the world as a symbol of universal children’s rights. [4]
The Missionaries of Charity is a Catholic centralised religious institute of consecrated life of Pontifical Right for women established in 1950 by Mother Teresa, now known in the Catholic Church as Saint Teresa of Calcutta. As of 2023, it consisted of 5,750 members religious sisters. Members of the order designate their affiliation using the order's initials, "M.C.". A member of the congregation must adhere to the vows of chastity, poverty, obedience, and the fourth vow, to give "wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor." Today, the order consists of both contemplative and active branches in several countries.
Mary Teresa Bojaxhiu MC, better known as Mother Teresa, was an Albanian-Indian Catholic nun and the founder of the Missionaries of Charity. Born in Skopje, then part of the Ottoman Empire, at the age of 18 she moved to Ireland and later to India, where she lived most of her life. On 4 September 2016, she was canonised by the Catholic Church as Saint Teresa of Calcutta. The anniversary of her death, 5 September, is her feast day.
Joan of France, was briefly Queen of France as wife of King Louis XII, in between the death of her brother, King Charles VIII, and the annulment of her marriage. After that, she retired to her domain, where she soon founded the monastic Order of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, where she served as abbess. From this Order later sprang the religious congregation of the Apostolic Sisters of the Annunciation, founded in 1787 to teach the children of the poor. She was canonized on 28 May 1950.
María Ascensión Nicol y Goñi, O.P., was a Spanish Roman Catholic religious sister of the Third Order of St. Dominic. She co-founded and was the first Prioress General of the Congregation of Dominican Missionary Sisters of the Rosary, which she helped to found in Peru.
The Assumptionists, formally known as the Congregation of the Augustinians of the Assumption, is a worldwide congregation of Catholic priests and brothers. It is active in many countries. The French branch played a major role in French political and social history in the 19th century.
The Sisters of the Apostolic Carmel are members of a Carmelite religious institute dedicated to female education. It was founded in the latter part of the 19th century by Mother Veronica of the Passion, OCD, under the guidance of her mentor, Bishop Marie Ephrem of the Sacred Heart, OCD, who had envisioned the birth of "a Carmel for the missions" in India, devoted to teaching and education.
Veronica of the Passion was a Roman Catholic nun who founded the Sisters of the Apostolic Carmel, a religious congregation for women based in India.
The Franciscan Missionaries of Mary are a Roman Catholic centralized religious institute of consecrated life of Pontifical Right for women founded by Mother Mary of the Passion at Ootacamund, then British India, in 1877. The missionaries form an international religious congregation of women representing 77 nationalities spread over 74 countries on five continents.
The Third Order of Saint Francis is a third order in the Franciscan tradition of Christianity, founded by the medieval Italian Catholic friar Francis of Assisi.
Ruth Manorama is a Dalit social activist from Bangalore, India who fights for Dalit women's rights, the rights of domestic workers and those in the unorganized labour sector, as well as urban slum dwellers. In 2006, she was awarded the Right Livelihood Award.
The Franciscan Missionaries of Christ the King (F.M.C.K.) is a Roman Catholic religious congregation for women that originated in what is now Pakistan and founded schools, orphanages, homes for the aged and disabled and hospitals throughout the country. They are distinct from the Franciscan Sisters of Christ the King in the United States.
Mother Marie Louise De Meester, M.C.R.S.A., founded the Missionary Canonesses of St. Augustine in Mulagumudu, then British India. They are now known as the Missionary Sisters of the "Immaculati Cordis Mariae" or Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (I.C.M.), an international religious institute serving in the fields of social and pastoral work, technology and medicine.
The Order of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, also known as Sisters of the Annunciation or Annonciades, is an enclosed religious order of contemplative nuns founded in honor of the Annunciation in 1501 at Bourges by Joan de Valois, also known as Joan of France, daughter of King Louis XI of France, and wife of Louis, the Duke of Orléans, later King Louis XII of France.
The Religious Congregations of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church are divided in Code of Canons of the Oriental Churches as Monasteries, Hermitages, Orders, Congregations, Societies of Common Life in the Manner of Religious, Secular Institutes and Societies of Apostolic Life.
Mother Mary of the Incarnation Martin, M.M.M. was the Irish foundress of the Catholic religious institute of the Medical Missionaries of Mary.
The Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God are an institute of religious sisters in the Roman Catholic Church. The congregation belongs to the Third Order Regular of St. Francis. They were founded in 1910 in Santarém, Brazil, by Armand August Bahlmann, OFM, and Mother Immaculata, both natives of Germany, to educate the children of the poor throughout the world.
Hélène Marie Philippine de Chappotin de Neuville, known as Mary of the Passion, was a French religious sister and missionary, who founded the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary in British India in 1877, currently one of the largest religious institutes in the Catholic Church.
The Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (I.C.M.) are a Roman Catholic religious institute of pontifical right of women, dedicated to the service of those in need in the Third World.
The Medical Missionaries of Mary are a religious institute of the Catholic Church dedicated to providing health care to the underdeveloped regions of the world. They follow a Benedictine spirituality, with its focus on life in community, shared prayer and hospitality.
Ana Julia Duque Heckner – in religious María Berenice – was a Colombian Roman Catholic professed religious and the founder of the Little Sisters of the Annunciation. Duque first entered the Dominican nuns in Bogotá in 1917 where she made her solemn profession after the completion of her novitiate period. It was after this that she spent the next three decades teaching children in various locations until she saw the plight of the poor and the minorities around her; she decided to establish a religious congregation that would cater to their needs and secured support from the Archbishop of Bogotá to achieve this.
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