Bl. Jean-Martin Moye

Jean-Martin Moye was born in 1730 in Lorraine, France, the sixth of thirteen children, and was ordained for the Diocese of Metz in 1754. He was concerned that country children had no schooling. In 1763 he began sending women to set up schools in villages, and in 1767, despite opposition, the Sisters of Divine Providence were founded.

In 1769 he joined the Paris Foreign Missions Seminary, and by 1773 he was working in Sichuan, China. Nine years of work there, often interrupted by persecution and prison, convinced him that the mission needed local help. In 1782 he founded the "Christian Virgins", Chinese women who cared for the sick and taught women and children in their homes. He returned to France in 1784. The Revolution drove him into exile in Trier, where he nursed typhoid patients with his sisters, caught the disease and died in 1793. He was beatified in 1954.

Jean-Martin Moye was beatified in 1954.

Beatification allows public veneration, usually in a particular region or religious family. Canonization extends it to the whole Church.