Blessed Anne Marie’s Vision on Education

“I have promised God to give myself wholly to the service of the sick and the instruction of little children”, she wrote in one of her letters to her father. Her programme of education gives us a keen insight into how she envisions a human being. She believed that all people are equal and have a right to human and spiritual formation and that education consists in helping a person “to be more” rather than in helping him/her “to have more”. And she says, “It is not sufficient to have taught them how to work and satisfy this purely material needs, they must also know how live with others and themselves and to realize what they owe to God and their brethren”. This prefigures what “vatll” would say about education. “A true education aims at the formation of the human person in the pursuit of his ultimate end of the good of societies”

The Cluny History

July 15th 2003 is 152nd death anniversary of our foundress Bl.Anne Marie Javouhey.(1779-1851)

Anne Marie Javouhey familiarly known as Nanette was born in Burgundy, France on 10th Nov.1779.

She grew up at a time when the country was in the grip of the French Revolution. Churches and schools were closed, priests, religious and believers were persecuted. It was under these circumstances that Anne Marie as a young girl tried to meet the spiritual needs of the people around her, by teaching catechism, preparing them for the Sacraments etc.

Anne Marie Javouhvey guided by the impulses of the Holy Spirit founded the Society of St. Joseph of Cluny on 12th May 1807, where she along with her three sisters and five others, made their profession in Chalon – sur – saone, and later established themselves in a house in Cluny (France). The Congregation from then on began to be called the Sisters of St. Joseph of Cluny.

Anne Marie Javouhey cared for the orphans, educated children, worked for the human development of all. She worked for the formation of the African Clergy and was the outstanding liberator of slaves.

In her own life time, her missionary activities were extended to the five continents. she was so recognised for her devotedness, ingenuity and audacity that she was acclaimed as the “Liberator of salves, The Valiant Woman, The Apostle of Negroes, and The Mother of Black – Races”

She died on 15th July 1851 was beatified on 15th October 1950.

The first house in India was opened in Pondicherry in 1827.

Today there are about 3000 sisters engaged in evangelisation through : Education – Health – Social and Pastoral ministries.

Cluny in South West India (Bangalore)

Her light is not put out in the dark. She lives in her 299 sisters of this province in four states : 11 houses in Karnataka, 15 houses in Tamil Nadu, 3 houses in Kerala, 4 houses in Goa through school, hospitals, centres for the mentally and physically disabled, opportunity schools for the slow learners, children’s homes, prison – ministry and non-formal education.