Saint Marcellin Champagnat

Saint Marcellin Champagnat was a French priest of the Society of Mary and the founder of the Institute of the Little Brothers of Mary, known today as the Marist Brothers, who devote themselves to the Christian education of children and young people. The Church remembers him on June 6, the anniversary of his death.

He was born on May 20, 1789, in the hamlet of Le Rosey in the commune of Marlhes, the ninth child of Jean-Baptiste Champagnat and Marie Chirat. He learned the faith from his mother and from his aunt, a nun driven from her convent during the Revolution. His schooling was meager. When he was fourteen, a priest helped him discover that God was calling him to the priesthood.

Despite difficulties in his studies, he entered the seminary at Verrières in 1805, and in 1813 he moved on to the major seminary in Lyon. Among his classmates there were John Vianney, the future Curé of Ars, and Jean-Claude Colin, the future founder of the Marist Fathers. With a group of seminarians he resolved to found the Society of Mary, which under the protection of the Mother of God was to evangelize France anew. Marcellin wanted the priests to be accompanied by religious brothers who would be catechists and teachers. He was ordained a priest in July 1816, and the next day, together with his companions, he consecrated himself to Mary at the shrine of Fourvière.

He became curate in La Valla, a sprawling mountain parish. He taught the children the catechism and denied himself much in order to help the poorest. One day he was called to a dying seventeen-year-old who did not even know that God exists. Champagnat prepared him for death, and, moved by the thought of how many young people lived without schooling and without faith, on January 2, 1817, he gathered the first two young men to live in community. This was the beginning of the Institute of the Little Brothers of Mary.

The community grew quickly, so together with the brothers he built near Saint-Chamond a large house dedicated to Mary, named Notre-Dame de l’Hermitage. In 1825 he was released from his parish duties so that he could devote himself entirely to the brothers. Despite criticism and obstacles, he remained faithful to the will of God. He taught the brothers to live Christ after the example of Mary and wanted them to be a family united by love; in his testament he asked that it might be said of them what was said of the first Christians: “See how they love one another.” When in 1836 the Holy See approved the Society of Mary and entrusted it with the missions in Oceania, Champagnat made his vows in it and sent three brothers with the first missionaries.

Worn out by work and illness, he died in Saint-Chamond on June 6, 1840, at the age of 51. He left behind more than 280 brothers, who taught children in 48 schools. Pope Pius XII beatified him on May 29, 1955, and John Paul II canonized him on April 18, 1999, in Saint Peter’s Square. In his homily the pope spoke of him as a priest captivated by the love of Jesus and Mary, sensitive to the religious ignorance and neglect of the young, and the following day he called him an apostle of youth.