Little Sister Magdeleine began by sharing the life of semi-nomads on the outskirts of a Saharan oasis.
Already as a young child, when on holidays with her grandmother in Seuzey, only 30 miles from the German border, she experienced the growing tensions between France and Germany.
As a young army doctor in Tunisia, injured in a fall from a horse, he nevertheless jeopardized both his health and his career by riding fifty kilometers to collect some serum to save the life of a small Arab child ill with diphtheria.
Any treatment she followed made no difference and in despair a specialist encouraged her to leave and go to live in a completely dry climate: "like the Sahara", he added.
She left for Algiers on 6 October 1936 with her elderly mother and Anne Cadoret, a young woman who shared her desire to go and live in the Sahara.
On her arrival in Algiers, a priest asked her to help him open a social centre in Boghari, a village situated in the High Plateaux.
[3] In October she went to live in the midst of nomads on the periphery of Touggourt, an oasis 700 km to the south of Algiers.
She traveled throughout France, giving more than 600 conferences to speak of the message of Charles de Foucauld, to make known this new form of religious life lived in Muslim lands, and to seek funds for the construction of the house in Sidi Boujnan.
Soon other young women were interested in joining the Congregation and in August, 1941, the first novices moved into a house called "the Tubet" near Aix-en-Provence.
In 1944 Magdeleine was nearly executed in Grenoble by French military who mistook her for a spy disguised as a religious.
Charles de Provenchères was named Bishop of Aix-en-Provence and he gave all his support to this new form of religious life.
The Sisters also did unskilled jobs to share in the working conditions of ordinary people and to support themselves financially.
[5] Inspired by Charles de Foucauld, the sisters live a life of simplicity and contemplative prayer as they serve among the very poor.
Members of the congregation began to become involved in outside paid jobs: In 1946 two Little sisters were employed at Zenith light bulb factory in Aix-en-Provence.
1948 foundations were established in the Middle East, inspired by her search to be among Arab Christians and enable the Communities to belong to the different Oriental Rites.
"Our mission here, as everywhere, can be summed up in three words: prayer, communal and work life, friendship with people.
Magdeleine remained foundress and mother and was free to continue to prepare future foundations.
In 1950 she made a pilgrimage to Tamanrasset, Hoggar, where Charles de Foucauld had lived and to the hermitage at Assekrem.
[5] In London, they are part of the Hoxton parish in Hackney, where they take ordinary jobs to pay the rent.
When on the roads of Eastern Europe she would carry her work on the Constitutions, wrapped in a red scarf which she called ‘the Mother House’.
1964 In Soviet Russia for the first time Creation of special groups of communities: among nomads, fairground workers, gypsies, in circuses also among the sick, prisoners and victims of prostitution and drugs.
1988 Definitive approval of the Constitutions 1989 Chiara Lubich, who founded the Focolare Movement, visited Tre Fontane.
Little Sister Magdeleine died on 6 November 1989 at Tre Fontane, Rome, in the little room prepared for young people travelling the roads.