taught the young to read and write, and improved prison conditions. The hospital of St John the Evangelist in the province of Angers was the first hospital entrusted to the care of the Daughters of Charity. Louise de Marillac and Vincent de Paul both died in 1660, and by this time there were more than forty houses of the Daughters of Charity in France, and the sick poor were cared for in their own dwellings in twenty-six parishes in Paris. French Revolution Anticlerical forces in the French Revolution were determined to shut down all convents. In 1789 France had 426 houses; the sisters numbered about 6000 in Europe. In 1792, the sisters were ordered to quit the motherhouse; the community was officially disbanded in 1793. An oath to support the Revolution was imposed on all former members of religious orders who performed a service that was remunerated by the state. Taking this oath was seen as breaking off with the Church while those who refused to do so were considered counter-revolutionaries. In Angers, revolutionary authorities decided to make an example of sisters Marie-Anne Vaillot and Odile Baumgarten in order to demonstrate what refusal to take the oath would mean. In early 1794 they were publicly executed. At a ceremony in Rome on 19 February 1984 Pope John Paul II beatified ninety-nine persons who died for the faith in Angers, including Vaillot and Baumgarten. Their feast day is 1 February. Sister Marguerite Rutan was the Superior of the community that staffed the hospital at Dax. The six sisters had refused to take the revolutionary oath. The Revolutionary committee wanted to remove the Superior of the Sisters and looked for a motive to arrest her. A false testimony allowed them to say that Sr. Marguerite was unpatriotic, a fanatic against the principles of the Revolution and that she tried to convince the wounded soldiers to desert and join the royalist army of Vendéens. On 9 April 1794 Sister Marguerite Rutan was condemned to death and guillotined at Poyanne Place not far from the prison. She was beatified Sunday, 19 June 2011 in Dax, France. Her feast day is 26 June. Sisters Marie-Madeleine Fontaine, Marie-Françoise Lanel, Thérèse Fantou, and Jeanne Gérard from the House of Charity in Arras were guillotined in Cambrai 26 June 1794. Waiting for the cart to take them to the guillotine, the guards took their chaplets and, not knowing