Today is the feast day of St. Charles de Foucauld who was canonized by Pope Francis on May 15, 2022.
Who was Charles de Foucauld?
De Foucauld, also known as Brother Charles of Jesus, was a soldier, explorer, Catholic revert, priest, hermit, and religious brother, who served among the Tuareg people in the Sahara desert in Algeria.
He was assassinated by a band of men at his hermitage in the Sahara on Dec. 1, 1916.
De Foucauld was born in Strasbourg in 1858. He was raised by his wealthy and aristocratic grandfather after being orphaned at the age of six.
He joined the French military, following in the footsteps of his grandfather. Having already lost his faith, as a young man he lived a life of indulgence and was known to have an immature sense of humor.
De Foucauld resigned from the military at age 23, and set off on a dangerous exploration of Morocco. Contact with strong Muslim believers there challenged him, and he began to repeat to himself: “My God, if you exist, let me come to know you.”
He returned to France and, with the guidance of a priest, came back to his Catholic faith in 1886, at the age of 28.
The following saying is attributed to him: “As soon as I believed in God, I understood that I could not do otherwise than to live for him alone.”
De Foucauld realized a vocation to “follow Jesus in his life at Nazareth” during a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He was a Trappist monk in France and Syria for seven years. He also lived as a hermit for a period near a convent of Poor Clares in Nazareth.
He was ordained a priest in 1901 at age 43 and left for northern Africa to serve among the Tuareg people, a nomadic ethnic group, saying he wanted to live among “the furthest removed, the most abandoned.”
In the Sahara he welcomed anyone who passed by, whether Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or pagan.
He was deeply respectful of the faiths and cultures he lived among. During his 13 years in the Saraha he learned about Tuareg culture and language, compiling a Tuareg-French dictionary, and being a “brother” to the people.
The priest said he wanted to “shout the Gospel with his life” and to conduct his life so that people would ask, “if such is the servant, what must the Master be like?”
De Foucauld was the inspiration for the founding of several lay associations, religious communities, and secular institutes of laity and priests, known collectively as “the spiritual family of Charles de Foucauld.”
At his beatification in 2005, Pope Benedict XVI said as a priest, de Foucauld “put the Eucharist and the Gospel at the center of his life.”
“He discovered that Jesus — who came to unite Himself to us in our humanity — invites us to that universal brotherhood which he later experienced in the Sahara, and to that love of which Christ set us the example,” he said.
After meeting with Cardinal Angelo Becciu, prefect of the congregation for saints’ causes, the pope approved a second miracle attributed to de Foucauld’s intercession, paving the way for his canonization on May 15.
This story was originally published on May 27, 2020.
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Pilgrims pray in front of St. Peter’s Basilica / Hannah Brockhaus/CNA
Rome, Italy, May 26, 2022 / 08:37 am (CNA).
When St. Philip Neri came to Rome from Florence in 1533, he encountered a city in upheaval. The Sack of Rome six years prior had left famine and plague in its wake. The Protestant Reformation was in full swing and the Church was rife with corruption.
The young Philip, who would spend around 16 years in Rome as a layman before becoming a priest, soon dedicated himself to caring for the city’s sick and poor.
The saint, whose feast day falls on May 26, also realized that Rome’s people were suffering from a spiritual sickness and tiredness as well, and so he set out to reinvigorate Catholics with the joy of the faith through song and dance — and jokes.
A historic illustration of the seven churches. Hannah Brockhaus/CNA
Part of St. Philip’s outreach was the revival of the Seven Churches visit. He may not be the originator of the idea of the pilgrimage to some of Rome’s most important churches, but he is credited with renewing its popularity.
After it fell out of use once again, St. Philip’s congregation of secular priests, the Oratory, revived it in the 1960s, including holding the walk one night each year, as close as possible to the way the saint would have done it.
Fr. Maurizio Botta, who led the pilgrimage, speaks at the start in front of Chiesa Nuova. Hannah Brockhaus/CNA
After a two-year pause, on the evening of May 13 into the morning of May 14, around 800 people walked 15 and a half miles in the footsteps of the saint and his followers.
Police officers in cruisers drove ahead of the urban pilgrimage to block traffic as a sea of Catholics from around Italy crossed busy intersections and passed Friday night diners while praying the rosary in unison and singing the Taizé chant “Laudate Dominum,” whose words say in Latin, “Praise the Lord, all people, Alleluia.”
Pilgrims, including scouts, walk through Rome’s Ostiense neighborhood. Hannah Brockhaus/CNA
The rosary was prayed four times during the pilgrimage, which took almost 10 hours to complete, including stops for a sack dinner at midnight and short lessons on the virtues led by priests of the Oratory.
Pilgrims, including scouts, walk through Rome’s Ostiense neighborhood. Hannah Brockhaus
The seven basilicas were chosen by the saint for their importance to Christianity, and the walk on May 13-14 followed the path laid out in a 16th-century document almost certainly seen and used by St. Philip — and likely even written by him.
This document, recreated and printed into a booklet for use on the annual pilgrimage today, gives St. Philip’s guidance for those making the Seven Churches visit.
Eating a sack dinner in the courtyard of a church. Hannah Brockhaus/CNA
“Before setting out to make this holy Pilgrimage, each of the Brethren must lift up his mind to God, offering him the sincerity of his heart, with the purpose of desiring the sole glory of his divine Majesty in all actions, and especially in this one,” it says.
Those participating can also earn an indulgence under the usual conditions, and are asked to pray for specific intentions. These include praying for the penance of sins, the amendment of lukewarmness and negligence in the service of God, in thanksgiving for the forgiveness of sins, for the pope and the Church, for sinners still in the darkness of an evil life, for the conversion of heretics, schismatics, and infidels, and for the holy souls in purgatory.
Pilgrims stop to pray on the way to St. Peter’s Basilica. Hannah Brockhaus/CNA
The pilgrimage began at Chiesa Nuova, the church built by St. Philip for the Oratory, and proceeded to St. Peter’s Basilica, reaching the site of St. Peter’s martyrdom at sunset.
Pilgrims walk on a path next to the Tiber River. Hannah Brockhaus/CNA
Each of the seven churches is associated with a moment of Christ’s Passion and Crucifixion. At each stop, an Oratory priest preached on a virtue and its opposing vice, before everyone joined in a prayer for an increase in that virtue and for the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
The virtues and vices were abstinence against gluttony, patience against ire, chastity against lust, generosity against avarice, fervor of spirit against acedia, charity against envy, and humility against pride.
A street sign marking Seven Churches Way. Hannah Brockhaus/CNA
After the Basilica of St. Paul, the pilgrimage followed an ancient street still called Seven Churches Way to arrive at the catacombs and the Basilica of St. Sebastian, a third-century Christian martyr.
As a layman in Rome, St. Philip Neri used to visit the catacombs of St. Sebastian to pray. One night in the catacombs, about 10 years after moving to Rome, as he prayed, a mystical ball of fire entered his mouth and went down into his chest, exploding his ribs and doubling the size of his heart with love of God.
St. Philip was changed, both physically and spiritually, by this event, which he only revealed shortly before his death.
Pilgrims outside the catacombs of St. Sebastian. Hannah Brockhaus/CNA
Pilgrims next arrived at the Domine Quo Vadis Church after a silent, moonlit walk through the ancient Appian Way Park, flanked by the silhouettes of Italian cypress trees.
The small church of medieval origin marks the spot where, according to tradition, Jesus appeared to St. Peter as he was fleeing Rome to avoid martyrdom.
Peter asked Jesus, “Domine quo vadis?” (“Lord, where are you going?”), to which Christ said, “Venio Romam iterum crucifigi,” (“I am coming to Rome to be crucified again.”) This rebuke caused Peter to turn around and face his own martyrdom.
Pilgrims walk along the ancient Aurelian Wall on their way to the Basilica of St. John Lateran. Hannah Brockhaus/CNA
The Basilica of St. Lawrence Outside the Walls was the penultimate stop. The church, which has the tomb of St. Lawrence, is located next to Rome’s Verano Monumental Cemetery, and was included among the Seven Churches by St. Philip Neri, Father Botta said, as a reminder of mortality.
Almost 2 weeks ago I went on St. Philip Neri’s 7 Churches Walk in Rome.
800 people walked over 15 miles during the 10-hour night pilgrimage.
During the last stretch, at 5:15am, we passed through Termini train station, and Francesco caught this video of the moment. pic.twitter.com/C2SPHn5yoR
— Hannah Brockhaus (@HannahBrockhaus) May 26, 2022
The final stretch of the walk passed through Rome’s main train station, Termini, where pilgrims sang the Marian antiphon “Salve Regina.”
Pilgrims walk through Termini train station singing the “Salve Regina”. Hannah Brockhaus/CNA
The pilgrimage finished shortly before 6:00 a.m. at the Basilica of St. Mary Major, the traditional end of the walk, where the “Salve Regina” hymn was sung again in honor of the Virgin Mary.
Pilgrims sing the “Salve Regina” outside the Basilica of St. Mary Major. Hannah Brockhaus/CNAA baby and his mom enjoy a moment with a new friend at the end of the pilgrimage. Hannah Brockhaus/CNAA statue of Mary on a column outside the Basilica of St. Mary Major. Hannah Brockhaus
Vatican City, Mar 12, 2020 / 05:15 am (CNA).- The suffering of the poor cannot be ignored during the coronavirus pandemic, Pope Francis said Thursday in his televised morning homily.
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Like Muhammad, De Foucauld was orphaned at the age of eight. But, unlike Muhammad, his turning point—to the Triune God—happened in a Paris confessional, rather than in a cave at Mt. Hira in Arabia where Muhammad discovered only a monolithic and therefore distant monotheism.
Three points:
FIRST, among the nominally Muslim Tuaregs De Foucauld gained many converts, not by conquest but by the witness of his personal poverty and simplicity. Of missionary work, he shunned today’s secularist option, “Neither does our role as Little Brothers include working for their adaptation to the Western materialistic, technological form of civilization, which, moreover, comes far from representing the only conceivable idea of a really human civilization.”
SECOND, as a possible message to plebiscite synodality in the West, his conversion (!) from a dissolute, comfortable and bored existence continued where, in Morocco, and “through the faith of an entire people of Muslims, he had glimpsed something of the greatness of God” (Rene Voillaume, Seeds of the Desert, Fides Publishers, 1964).
THIRD, about this “greatness of God,” and less flaccid than much post-Vatican II dialogue, and near the end of the Council, the lay observer Jean Guitton quoted the Muslim el Akkad (1956) who ventured a less ambiguous and less pluralist grip on things:
“It all comes down to knowing whether one should hold strictly to the fundamental religious values which were those of Abraham and Moses, on pain of falling into blasphemy—as the Muslims believe; OR WHETHER God has called men to approach him more closely, revealing to them little by little their fundamental condition as sinful men, and the forgiveness that transforms them and prepares them for the beatific vision—as Christian dogma teaches” (Jean Guitton, The Great Heresies and Church Councils, 1965).
Like Muhammad, De Foucauld was orphaned at the age of eight. But, unlike Muhammad, his turning point—to the Triune God—happened in a Paris confessional, rather than in a cave at Mt. Hira in Arabia where Muhammad discovered only a monolithic and therefore distant monotheism.
Three points:
FIRST, among the nominally Muslim Tuaregs De Foucauld gained many converts, not by conquest but by the witness of his personal poverty and simplicity. Of missionary work, he shunned today’s secularist option, “Neither does our role as Little Brothers include working for their adaptation to the Western materialistic, technological form of civilization, which, moreover, comes far from representing the only conceivable idea of a really human civilization.”
SECOND, as a possible message to plebiscite synodality in the West, his conversion (!) from a dissolute, comfortable and bored existence continued where, in Morocco, and “through the faith of an entire people of Muslims, he had glimpsed something of the greatness of God” (Rene Voillaume, Seeds of the Desert, Fides Publishers, 1964).
THIRD, about this “greatness of God,” and less flaccid than much post-Vatican II dialogue, and near the end of the Council, the lay observer Jean Guitton quoted the Muslim el Akkad (1956) who ventured a less ambiguous and less pluralist grip on things:
“It all comes down to knowing whether one should hold strictly to the fundamental religious values which were those of Abraham and Moses, on pain of falling into blasphemy—as the Muslims believe; OR WHETHER God has called men to approach him more closely, revealing to them little by little their fundamental condition as sinful men, and the forgiveness that transforms them and prepares them for the beatific vision—as Christian dogma teaches” (Jean Guitton, The Great Heresies and Church Councils, 1965).