Just 14 months removed from a stroke, Dr. Ludi Cueto is planning to be in Rome on Sunday to see Pope Benedict XVI canonize a 19th-century French nun.
The Baltimore physician figures she owes her one.
After her collapse last year, Cueto, her family and friends began petitioning Jeanne Jugan, who died in 1879, for help.
Today, she says, she is completely recovered. While the Catholic Church has not investigated her case, Cueto credits Jugan's intercession for her current good health.
She is one of about two dozen members, associates and friends of the Little Sisters of the Poor, the order that Jugan founded in France in the 1840s and which has its regional headquarters in Catonsville, who are making the trip from Maryland to St. Peter's Square for the Mass at which Jugan is to be recognized as a saint.
"This is very personal to me," Cueto said. "I feel like I'm a living miracle for Jeanne Jugan."
The Little Sisters, who number 2,700 women in 32 countries, see the canonization as recognition of their principal work: caring for more than 13,000 elderly residents in 202 homes around the world.
"It is a call to a renewal to live her spirit of love and concern for the elderly in today's world, to treat them with dignity and respect," said Sister Loraine Marie Maguire, provincial superior of the order in the Mid-Atlantic region. "Not only is she an example for us as Little Sisters in caring for the elderly with love and compassion, but for the whole world. The canonization of Jeanne Jugan is putting the elderly out in the forefront when oftentimes they are left behind."
A devout Catholic who had worked as a nurse's aide, Jugan was 47 in 1839 when she and two friends agreed to bring home and care for a blind and infirm elderly woman. They soon took in others, and by 1841, Jugan was traveling from door to door in the Brittany region of France, soliciting donations for the growing ministry. The tradition of relying on divine providence for support - as opposed to building and managing an endowment - continues today.
"When everything in our life is turned to the Father, that is the rule of God at work in us, and we will be blessed," the Rev. James Chalangady said last week during a Mass at St. Martin's Home in Catonsville to bless the local delegation before the journey to Rome. "Jeanne Jugan experienced that reign of God in her life when she was rejected, humiliated and tested in many ways. In her difficulties and trials, she had the confidence in God to say that it is good to have nothing and to depend on God for everything."
