Born Jozefa the Buysscher in
Borgerhout, she was the youngest of eight children. She obtained a degree in economics and worked for several years as a bookkeeper. During a summer job at a hospital, she came in contact with the Sisters Hospitallers of Antwerp. In 1949, she entered the monastery at the Augustinian Sisters Hospitallers of Brussels and worked as a nurse. Later she studied, at the suggestion of the chief doctor, medicine at the
Catholic University of Leuven, where she obtained her doctorate in 1964. For 25 years she was the director of the General Hospital of St John in the center of
Brussels. Sister Leontine also taught at the Higher Institute of Nursing and Physiotherapy and was a member of the board of the National Association of Catholic Flemish Nurses and Midwives (NVKVV) and the Association of care institutions (VVI). After her retirement in 1987 and inspired by the work of British nurse
Cicely Saunders, she went to study abroad the care of terminally ill patients. In 1990, Sister Leontine opened the first residential unit for palliative care in Belgium in the Hospital of St John. Her program was a "caring" alternative to
euthanasia. In 1991 the department was approved and subsidized by the government. Suffering from dementia, Sister Leontine spent her last days in the palliative care unit she founded. She died on 19 February 2012. == Works ==