ABOUT US
WHERE DID WE COME FROM?
From 1885, the idea of a consecrated life in the world matured in Jeanne Leplâtre under the influence of the Holy Spirit. Each person belonging to the community was to lead an apostolic life in his or her existing life situation. Everything was to be based on Dominican spirituality. In 1890, Jeanne met Father Rajmund Boulanger OP, an event that confirmed her original idea and provided the impetus for the creation of The Little Dominican Group of Jesus Crucified.
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THE FOUNDRESS
Jeanne Leplâtre was born on 1 February 1864 in Patay, in the Loiret department of France, where her father was a notary. However, she lived in Orléans from an early age. In her twenties, struck down by a serious illness, she spent 10 years confined to a bed or armchair. This experience, important for her spiritual life, did not limit her intentions and activities. Bringing together a group of like-minded women around her ideas, she created a centre of deep spiritual life in Orléans, which not only ensured the religious and intellectual development of the women members of the group, but, by carrying out apostolic activities in the city, radiated out to other communities. Fascinated by the legacy of Fr. H. Lacordaire OP, she believed that Dominican spirituality was best suited to the work she was creating. However, it was an unusual work at the time. She therefore encountered various difficulties. A turning point came when she met - in 1890 - Fr Rajmund Boulanger OP, an eminent preacher and later Provincial, who not only understood the foundations of the Little Group, but then accompanied it in its development, and in 1904 drew up for it a "Rule of Life" approved by the local bishop. This laid the institutional foundations of the Small Group, which later - after half a century - gave birth to the Secular Dominican Institute of Orléans. Joan Leplâtre died in 1928.