1. Jean-Martin Moye was a French Catholic priest who served as a missionary in China and was the founder of the Sisters of the Congregation of Divine Providence.
23 Facts About Jean-Martin Moye
1. 2.
Jean-Martin Moye organized the first expression of consecrated life among the women of China.
3.
Jean-Martin Moye was beatified by the Catholic Church in 1954.
4.
Jean-Martin Moye was the sixth of the thirteen children of Jean Moye and Anne Catharine Demange, part of a long-established and prosperous farming family of the region.
5.
Jean-Martin Moye had an uneventful childhood, growing up on his family's extensive holdings.
6.
Jean-Martin Moye received his basic education from his older brother, Jean-Jacques, a seminarian, who taught him until his untimely death in 1744 at the age of 24.
7.
Jean-Martin Moye completed his education at the College of Pont-a-Mousson, following which he studied philosophy at the Jesuit College of Strasbourg.
8.
Jean-Martin Moye then undertook a number of different ministries as part of his service, among them acting as confessor for the seminarians of Saint-Simon.
9.
The parish extended well beyond the city limits, and Jean-Martin Moye undertook the spiritual care of the members of the parish living in the small and isolated hamlets in the countryside.
10.
Jean-Martin Moye conceived of a project to remedy this situation by placing volunteer teachers in these rural locations.
11.
Jean-Martin Moye would remain in this post without disturbance throughout the upheavals of the French Revolution.
12.
Out of the desire to provide the faithful of the parish with means to deepen their spiritual lives, Jean-Martin Moye began to publish some tracts, in collaboration with a younger colleague, the Abbe Louis Jobal de Pagny.
13.
Later, after the unexpected death of Jobal, Jean-Martin Moye published a small pamphlet entitled Recueil de diverses pratiques de piete.
14.
Jean-Martin Moye was accused with recklessness for his sending young women to live in the isolated hamlets of the countryside.
15.
Jean-Martin Moye was further accused of rigorism in his dealing with penitents, as well as making unfair criticisms of both the clergy and of midwives in his writings on Baptism.
16.
Jean-Martin Moye further transferred him from Metz to serve as vicar of Dieuze.
17.
Jean-Martin Moye was again accused of an extreme rigidity in his dealing with the people of the parish, such as those who came to him for confession.
18.
Jean-Martin Moye opposed the traditional festivities celebrated by the peasants during the year.
19.
Jean-Martin Moye came to the decision to offer his services as a missionary to Asia.
20.
Jean-Martin Moye returned to Lorraine the following spring, where he visited the volunteers, now a religious institute called the Sisters of Providence, as well as preaching parish missions throughout the region.
21.
Jean-Martin Moye then put the care of the Sisters of Providence in the hands of two colleagues who were admirers of their work, one of them being Raulin.
22.
Jean-Martin Moye appointed Marie Morel as their first Mother Superior.
23.
Jean-Martin Moye resumed the direction of the Sisters of Divine Providence and evangelized Lorraine and Alsace by preaching missions.