Saint Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort

Saint Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort was a French priest and popular missionary. He wrote the Treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin and founded the Company of Mary and the congregation of the Daughters of Wisdom. His memorial falls on April 28.

He was born on January 31, 1673, in Montfort in Brittany, the son of a lawyer. Later he himself added the name Mary to his own, out of love for the Mother of God. He studied at the Jesuit college in Rennes, and in 1693 he set out on foot for Paris to study theology; according to the bull of canonization, he exchanged clothes with a beggar along the way. He prepared for the priesthood at the seminary of Saint-Sulpice and was ordained on June 5, 1700.

As chaplain of the hospital in Poitiers he served the poor and the sick, and there he laid the foundations of the congregation of the Daughters of Wisdom: in 1703 he received into it Marie-Louise Trichet, later beatified, who became its head. Faced with the hostility of some of those around him, he had to leave the hospital, and in the end the bishop forbade him to minister in the diocese of Poitiers. In 1706 he went on foot to Rome. He wished to preach the Gospel among the pagans, but Pope Clement XI told him to work in France and gave him the title of apostolic missionary.

From then on, for ten years until his death, he preached parish missions in Brittany, the Vendée, and other regions of western France; the bull of canonization speaks of more than two hundred missions. He preached the love of God alone, the mystery of Eternal Wisdom and of Christ crucified, the consecration of oneself to Jesus through Mary, and the Rosary, and he urged the faithful to renew their baptismal promises. He set up crosses and calvaries. The bishop of Nantes would not allow the calvary he built with the help of the faithful at Pontchâteau to be blessed, and it was torn down on the orders of King Louis XIV. So that the fruits of the missions would last, he gathered missionary priests into the Company of Mary, for which he wrote a rule in 1713.

His best known work is the Treatise on True Devotion. The manuscript remained unknown for more than a hundred years; it was found in 1842 and published a year later. Karol Wojtyła read this book in his youth, and as pope he wrote that his motto Totus tuus was inspired by the saint’s teaching.

In the spring of 1716, although his health was already failing, he was preaching a mission in Saint-Laurent-sur-Sèvre, and after a sermon given in the presence of the bishop he fell seriously ill. He died there on the seventh day of his illness, April 28, 1716, at the age of 43. According to the bull of canonization, before his death he still sang a mission hymn, and the people who came in crowds to his body kept saying that a saint had died.

Pope Leo XIII beatified him on January 22, 1888, and Pius XII canonized him on July 20, 1947. In 1996 John Paul II inscribed his memorial in the General Roman Calendar, and in September of that year he prayed at his tomb.