Saint Charles de Foucauld

He was born into an aristocratic family in Strasbourg, orphaned at six, and raised by a devout grandfather. He "rejected the Catholic faith as a teenager, and joined the French army." ¹ Vatican News summarizes the whole arc in one line: "This wealthy young French aristocrat gave up everything." ²

Franciscan Media does not soften what came next. He inherited a great deal of money and "went to Algeria with his regiment, but not without his mistress, Mimi. When he declined to give her up, he was dismissed from the army." ¹

He stayed in Algeria, left Mimi, and reenlisted. ¹ Refused permission to explore Morocco scientifically, he resigned instead - and then did it anyway. "With the help of a Jewish rabbi, Charles disguised himself as a Jew and in 1883, began a one-year exploration that he recorded in a book that was well received." ¹

And there is the turn, which came from the people he was among rather than from anything Catholic. "Inspired by the Jews and Muslims whom he met, Charles de Foucauld resumed the practice of his Catholic faith when he returned to France in 1886." ¹

He joined the Trappists in the Ardeche, transferred to a monastery at Akbes in Syria, and left the order in 1897. ¹ Then he "worked as gardener and sacristan for the Poor Clare nuns in Nazareth and later in Jerusalem." ¹ A former officer and published explorer, sweeping a convent floor.

He returned to France and was ordained in 1901. Later that year he went to Beni-Abbes "intending to found a monastic religious community in North Africa that offered hospitality to Christians, Muslims, Jews, or people with no religion." ¹

Franciscan Media gives the result in one sentence, and it is the most important sentence about him: "He lived a peaceful, hidden life but attracted no companions." ¹

A former army comrade invited him to live among the Tuareg in Algeria, and from 1905 he lived at Tamanrasset for the rest of his life. ¹

What he did there was learn the language properly. He "learned their language enough to write a Tuareg-French and French-Tuareg dictionary, and to translate the Gospels into Tuareg." ¹ A two-volume collection of his Tuareg poetry was published after his death. ¹ He did not merely live among them; he made their language writable in his own, and his in theirs.

In 1909 he went to France and "established an association of laypeople who pledged to live by the Gospels. His return to Tamanrasset was welcomed by the Tuareg." ¹

In 1915 he wrote to Louis Massignon: "The love of God, the love for one's neighbor... All religion is found there... How to get to that point? Not in a day since it is perfection itself: it is the goal we must always aim for, which we must unceasingly try to reach and that we will only attain in heaven." ¹

The war reached him. "The outbreak of World War I led to attacks on the French in Algeria. Seized in a raid by another tribe, Charles and two French soldiers coming to visit him were shot to death on December 1, 1916." ¹ Vatican News states it as flatly: "He was murdered in 1916." ²

He belongs to missionaries who do not preach, to translators, and to anyone whose work has produced nothing visible. Neither source gives a formal list. ¹²

Five bodies now trace themselves to him: the Little Brothers of Jesus, the Little Sisters of the Sacred Heart, the Little Sisters of Jesus, the Little Brothers of the Gospel and the Little Sisters of the Gospel, all drawing on "the peaceful, largely hidden, yet hospitable life that characterized Charles." ¹ Every one of them was founded after he was dead.

The feast of Saint Charles de Foucauld is December 1, the day he was killed at Tamanrasset in 1916. ¹² Vatican News keeps his day page there. ²

He was beatified in 2005 and canonized in 2022 - a hundred and six years after his death. ¹

He came back to the faith because of Muslims and Jews. ¹ That sentence is worth resisting the urge to explain. He had been raised Catholic and dropped it, and what returned him to it was living for a year among people who prayed and did not share his religion.

Then the hidden life, which he chose on purpose and which failed on its own terms. He wanted a community that would take in Christians, Muslims, Jews and people with no religion at all, and he "attracted no companions." ¹ Not few. None. He lived that way for fifteen years anyway.

The dictionary is where the love is. ¹ Anybody can admire a people; he sat down and compiled their language in both directions and translated the Gospels into it and wrote poetry in it. That is years of unglamorous work with no audience, undertaken so that a small desert people could read in their own words.

And the letter to Massignon: the goal "we must unceasingly try to reach and that we will only attain in heaven." ¹ He wrote that a year before he was shot in a raid he had nothing to do with, having founded nothing and converted almost no one. Five religious families and a canonization followed, more than a century late, for a man whose plan did not work.