Saint Eugene de Mazenod

Saint Eugene de Mazenod was bishop of Marseille and founder of the Congregation of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, established to proclaim the Gospel to the poor. He was born in 1782 in Aix-en-Provence and died in 1861 in Marseille. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on May 21, the anniversary of his death.

He was born on August 1, 1782, into a noble family. He was eight years old when the French Revolution forced his family to flee the country. For eleven years they wandered through Italy, growing ever poorer: by way of Turin, Venice, and Naples they reached Palermo. In Venice a priest, Father Bartolo Zinelli, took the boy under his care, taught him, and introduced him to a life of prayer. Eugene returned to France in 1802, at the age of twenty.

He found the country transformed and the Church humiliated by the Revolution. He himself was going through a time of disorientation. The turning point came on a Good Friday, when before the Cross he was deeply moved, and this turned him toward God and toward the poor. Against his mother’s opposition he entered the Seminary of Saint-Sulpice in Paris, and on December 21, 1811, he was ordained a priest in Amiens.

After returning to Aix he did not confine himself to parish work but devoted himself to the most abandoned: young people, prisoners, servants, and the rural population. He gathered several priests around him, and on January 25, 1816, began a common life with them as the Missionaries of Provence. They preached missions in the villages in Provençal, the language of ordinary people. On February 17, 1826, Pope Leo XII approved the community as the Congregation of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate.

When his uncle Fortuné de Mazenod became bishop of the restored Diocese of Marseille, Eugene served as his vicar general. In 1832 he received episcopal ordination in Rome, which caused a dispute with the French government, and in 1837 he became bishop of Marseille. He created new parishes, built churches, and founded seminaries; he made pastoral visitations, preached a great deal, and cared for the clergy and for the poor. He defended the rights of the Church and of the Holy See. John Paul II recalled that through patient work on himself he mastered a difficult character.

From 1841 the Oblates set out on missions to other continents, among them to Canada, the United States, Ceylon, and South Africa. Pope Pius XI later called them specialists in difficult missions. Eugene died in Marseille on May 21, 1861. On his deathbed he left the Oblates a testament: among yourselves charity, charity, charity, and outside, zeal for the salvation of souls.

Pope Paul VI beatified him on October 19, 1975, World Mission Sunday. John Paul II canonized him on December 3, 1995, in Saint Peter’s Basilica, on the First Sunday of Advent, calling him a man of Advent and an apostle of his time.