Marcellin Champagnat

Marcellin Joseph Benedict Champagnat, FMS (20 May 1789 – 6 June 1840) was a French Catholic priest who founded the Marist Brothers, a religious congregation of brothers devoted to Mary and dedicated to education. He was canonized in 1999 and his feast day is 6 June, his death anniversary.

Champagnat was born in the year of the storming of the Bastille, the start of the French Revolution. The religious, political, economic, and social unrest of the times he lived influenced his priorities and life path. Champagnat was ordained as a priest on 22 July 1816 and was part of a group led by Jean-Claude Colin, who founded the Society of Mary, a separate religious congregation.

With money he earned from raising sheep, he went to the Minor Seminary at Verrières-en-Forez. He entered in October 1805. Older than many of his classmates, at the age of 17, he failed his first year and was sent home. He was readmitted, through the efforts of his mother, his parish priest, and the superior of the seminary.

Champagnat, who by this time had developed from being timid and shy into a gregarious young man, was known to frequent the local pubs. As a consequence, he was eventually regarded as a member of a group known as the “Happy Gang,” made up of seminarians who were a familiar sight in the taverns of the town during their free time.

At the beginning of his second year, Champagnat settled down to a more sober lifestyle. He continued to apply himself to his studies throughout his second year at the seminary. Two events, occurring during the summer following the second year, also helped to moderate his exuberant behaviour. The first was the sudden death on 2 September 1807 of his friend, Denis Duplay. The second was a serious conversation with Father Linossier, who supervised the seminary, about improving Champagnat's general conduct. Champagnat left Verrières for St. Irenaeus, the major seminary near Lyons.

He then attended the major seminary at Saint Irenaeus in Lyon for his spiritual and theological formation as a priest. Among his companions were Jean-Marie Vianney and Jean-Claude Colin. He was no natural scholar but through hard work and the support of his mother and aunt he was finally ordained.

It was here that the idea for the Society of Mary was conceived and promoted by a group of seminarians, including Champagnat. He was ordained on 22 July 1816, at the age of twenty-seven, and the next day, travelled to the shrine of Our Lady of Fourviéres above Lyons with others interested in establishing a Society of Mary. The group of young men together dedicated themselves to Mary as "The Society of Mary". From the start, he announced the Society should include teaching Brothers to work with children deprived of Christian education in remote rural areas because others were not going to them.

After his ordination, Champagnat was appointed pastor in La Valla, on the slopes of Mont Pilat. Champagnat was struck by the isolation in which people lived and the lack of education in the rural area. At the end of October 1816, after attending Jean-Baptist Montagne, a dying sixteen-year-old completely ignorant of basic Catholic teaching, Champagnat acted upon his conviction of the need for religious Brothers.