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The saints

St. Jane Frances de Chantal

A young widow with four children who forgave the man who shot her husband, and founded an order.

Feast: 12 August · 1572 to 1641 · Reformation and missions · Dijon and Annecy, France

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Portrait of St. Jane Frances de Chantal in a black veil and white wimple, a cross on her chest.

After Philippe de Champaigne. Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.

Home / The saints / St. Jane Frances de Chantal

Dijon, France, 1604

Jane was a happily married baroness until her husband was killed in a hunting accident.1

She was twenty-eight, with four young children, and her grief was deep.1

She heard Francis de Sales preach in Dijon, and he became her spiritual director and friend.

Patron of mothers, wives and widows1

01St. Jane Frances de Chantal

Forgiveness

Over time she forgave the man who had shot her husband, and even became godmother to his child.1

With Francis she founded the Visitation Sisters, open to women too old or sick for harsher orders.1

Live it this week

Take one step toward forgiving

Jane forgave the man who killed her husband, slowly. If there’s someone you haven’t forgiven, do one small, real act this week: pray for him, return a greeting, stop retelling the story.

Notes

How we know · 1 source for this page
  1. Franciscan Media, Saint of the Day: “Saint Jane Frances de Chantal”. franciscanmedia.org. franciscanmedia.org

The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) is in the public domain; we quote the New Advent edition. Texts of the Holy See are quoted briefly from vatican.va. Scripture: World English Bible, Catholic edition (public domain); Verse numbers are modern, with Douay-Rheims numbers in brackets where they differ. Photographs: Wikimedia Commons, credited under each image; full list on the photo credits page.

Lines in the narrator’s voice, without a note, are our reflection, not a historical claim. Stone & Incense restates Church teaching in plain words; our wording is not an official Church text. Report an errorCorrections.