September 24: The Little Sisters

Welcome to the American Catholic Daily Reader podcast. Today is September 24th, and our story is The Little Sisters. Sister Jean Jugan, the aged foundress of the Little Sisters of the Poor, loved her American postulants best, or so the postulants living at the French Formation House in the 1870s believed. She always favors the Americans, they grumbled. Why do the Americans get special treatment?

Jugan invariably replied that the Americans needed the extra attention, because it was heroic for young girls to come from so far away. It needed a double vocation. Judging by the rapid growth of Jugan's community in America, double vocations abounded in late 19th century America. In August 1868, the first group of little sisters arrived in New York. With the help of Father Isaac Hecker, founder of the Paulist Fathers, the Little Sisters set up a home in Brooklyn and took in the elderly poor, providing them with food, shelter, and medical care.

The Little Sisters had no endowment and wanted none. They begged for every dollar and every bed. After that, the order exploded in America. In less than three years, the Little Sisters of the Poor established nine houses across the country. In every city, people asked, What are you going to do in a house where there is nothing? Wait a few days, they replied. Sure enough, something always came. By the 1950s, the order had 52 homes in America, all solely funded by begging.

New nursing home regulations in the 1960s made it more difficult for the Little Sisters to operate. But even as the health care environment changed, they kept 30 homes open. Passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, however, called into question the future of those homes. Hoping to avert closing their doors, the Little Sisters of the Poor filed a class action lawsuit on September 24, 2013.

After two Supreme Court cases in the years that followed regarding the implementation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, in July 2020, the court upheld regulations put in place by the Trump administration that expanded exemptions to the contraceptive mandate to include organizations such as the Little Sisters of the Poor. The sisters had won their fight, for the time being. With a change in power at the White House, some wonder if the fight for religious liberty will continue for years to come. The Little Sisters show that faithful service does not require wealth or recognition.

Find one practical way to assist someone in need this week, whether through donation, time, or prayerful support. Thank you for listening to the American Catholic Daily Reader podcast. Join us tomorrow, September 25th, for another story of faith and courage in America.