Jean-Martin Moye (written later in his life as Moÿe)[1] 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.

Moye was born on 27 January 1730 in the village of Cutting, then located within the Bailiwick of Dieuze, within the autonomous Duchy of Lorriane, a part of the Holy Roman Empire, now in the French Department of Moselle.

He was the sixth of the thirteen children of Jean Moye and Anne Catharine Demange,[2] part of a long-established and prosperous farming family of the region.

He 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.

There one of his professors included Canon François Thiébaut, a noted Biblical scholar of the era, who would later serve as the representative of the local clergy to the Estates General.

Upon his ordination, he was granted a benefice by King Stanislas Leszczynski, the last Duke of Lorraine, of the income generated from the Chapel of St. Andrew in the cemetery of Dieuze.

Out of the desire to provide the faithful of the parish with means to deepen their spiritual lives, Moye began to publish some tracts, in collaboration with a younger colleague, the Abbé Louis Jobal de Pagny (1737–1766).

As this was his native region, Moye did not consider it a punishment, but worried about the future of his volunteers, who were coming to be called the "poor Sisters".

This time the bishop responded more severely, and, during Holy Week of 1767, the most sacred period of the Christian year, Moye was suspended from his post.

He 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.

After completing the training period at the seminary, Moye was assigned to serve in the Apostolic Vicariate of Szechwan (Sichuan, western China).

Nine years of mission work, frequently interrupted by persecution and imprisonment, made him realize the necessity of Chinese help.

After the capture of the city by the French troops, typhoid fever broke out and, helped by his Sisters, he devoted himself to hospital work.