Saint Charles de Foucauld

Saint Charles de Foucauld, known as Brother Charles of Jesus, was a French officer and explorer who, after years of unbelief, found God again, became a priest, and settled as a hermit among the Tuareg in the Sahara. He wanted to be a brother to every person and to proclaim the Gospel with his whole life. The Church commemorates him on December 1, the day of his death.

He was born on September 15, 1858, in Strasbourg, into a deeply Christian family. At the age of six he lost both parents; together with his sister Marie he was raised by his maternal grandfather. As a teenager he lost his faith. In 1876 he entered the military academy of Saint-Cyr, became an officer at the age of twenty, and then served in Algeria.

After a few years he left the army, and in 1883-1884 he traveled across Morocco, then closed to Europeans. The faith of the Muslims awakened in him the question of God. He prayed, “My God, if you exist, let me come to know you.” At the end of October 1886, in the Church of Saint Augustine in Paris, he made his confession to Father Huvelin and received Holy Communion. He later wrote that as soon as he believed in God, he understood that he could live only for him.

A pilgrimage to the Holy Land revealed his vocation to him: to imitate Jesus in the hidden life of Nazareth. In 1890 he entered the Trappists and spent seven years in monasteries in France and in Syria. Seeking a still greater poverty, he left the order and settled in Nazareth as a servant of the Poor Clares. There he spent long hours in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and in meditation on the Gospel. From his writings comes the prayer of abandonment, in which he entrusts himself to the Father and accepts whatever he may wish to do with him.

He was ordained a priest on June 9, 1901, in Viviers, and that same year he left for the Sahara. He settled first in the oasis of Beni Abbès in Algeria, near the border with Morocco. He opened his hermitage to everyone who knocked at the door. He wanted Christians, Muslims, and Jews to see in him their brother, the “universal brother.” He opposed the slavery that he found there.

In 1905 he moved deeper into the desert, to Tamanrasset in the Hoggar Mountains, among the Tuareg. He learned their language and came to know their customs and culture, and one fruit of this patient work was a Tuareg-French dictionary. He dreamed of brothers who would share his life, but to the end he lived alone. On the evening of December 1, 1916, during the First World War, attackers surrounded his house. During the looting Brother Charles was killed by a gunshot.

Benedict XVI enrolled Charles de Foucauld among the blessed on November 13, 2005, and Pope Francis canonized him on May 15, 2022, in Saint Peter’s Square. His spiritual family today is made up of religious congregations, secular institutes, and associations of the faithful that arose after his death, among them the Little Brothers of Jesus and the Little Sisters of Jesus.