Saint Michael Garicoïts

He was born on April 15, 1797, at Ibarre, a village of the Basque country in the diocese of Bayonne, not far from the Spanish border, to Arnaud Garicoïts and Gratianne Etcheverry. ³⁵ The diocese of Bayonne calls him the eldest of six children; the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints and Vatican News count five. ³⁴⁵ It was the Revolution, and the sources tell his baptism two ways. The diocese says he was baptized in secret, in a house in the village, by a priest who had refused the oath, and that his father sheltered such priests and sometimes guided them into Spain. ⁵ The Dicastery says his parents crossed into Spain both to be married in church and to have their children baptized, and that his grandmother hid a priest at the risk of her life, who later repaid her by giving the boy his first lessons. ³

He was sent out to keep sheep. ³ The Dicastery says the other shepherds called him "the little doctor" for the way he talked. ³ The diocese gives a less tidy boy: strong for his age, quarrelsome and quick with his fists, and his own verdict, translated here from the French: "Without my mother, I would have become a scoundrel." ⁵

First Communion was a long wait. The Dicastery says he could not receive it before he was fourteen, and that it grieved him. ³ The diocese explains that he was judged ready at eleven but his mother, afraid of a bad confession, held him back three years, and that during that time, out with the flock, he had an experience of inner light so strong that he came to himself only when he walked into a boundary stone. ⁵

His father, who had a large family and little money, hired him out as a farm servant and was counting on his eldest. ⁵ At sixteen Michael was turning the soil in a vineyard with his parents when his grandmother, then eighty, said he should be allowed to study. ⁵ The next day, the diocese says, she walked eight leagues, about thirty kilometers, to Saint-Palais to see the dean, the Abbé Borda, who agreed to take the boy as a day pupil at the college there in return for his service in the presbytery. ⁵

He served Mass, carried wood, looked after the horse and helped the cook, and studied on the road, at meals and at night. ⁵ From Saint-Palais he went on to Bayonne, again earning his keep, this time in the bishop's household. ⁵ The diocese has him enter the seminary of Aire-sur-l'Adour in 1818 and the major seminary of Dax in 1819; the Dicastery has him enter at Dax in 1819. ³⁵ In 1821 he was set to teach at the minor seminary of Larressore while finishing his theology, and he was ordained a priest on December 20, 1823. ⁵

His first post, in 1824, was as curate at Cambo, where the old parish priest was paralyzed and left everything to him. ⁵ He preached plainly, sat whole days in the confessional, taught the children their catechism himself, founded a confraternity of the Sacred Heart, and on feast days watched the games of pelota with everybody else. ⁵ People called him the holy priest. ⁵

At the end of 1825 he was named professor of philosophy at the major seminary of Bétharram, and its bursar. ³⁵ The diocese describes a house in disorder under a superior nearly eighty years old, and quotes Garicoïts's own account, translated here: the seminary "passed for the refuge of every kind of cassock." ⁵ He became superior in 1831, put the rule back in force, and then saw the bishop transfer the seminary to Bayonne, which left him, in the diocese's words, superior of four walls. ⁵

He spent the freed time hearing confessions, and several times a week served the Daughters of the Cross at Igon, nearby, whose foundress was Jeanne-Élisabeth Bichier des Ages. ³⁵ Pius XII, the day after canonizing them both, quoted what Garicoïts said of her, translated here from the French: "It is to her, after God, that I owe the little I am; yes, I tell you, it was she who converted me." ² The pope, noting the saints' habit of handing each other the credit, added that the young curate who had lived very poorly used to wear elegant shoes in place of his shepherd's clogs, and that her poverty cured him of it; his cassocks, the pope said, became as legendary as her habit. ² The Dicastery adds that through these years he heard many visiting bishops lament the insubordination of priests, and made total obedience to his bishop the foundation of what he would build. ³

He thought of becoming a Jesuit. ⁵ At the end of a retreat at Toulouse in 1832, the diocese says, a Jesuit, Father Leblanc, told him, in words translated here: "God wants you to be more than a Jesuit." ⁵ He went back to Bétharram and, with the bishop's agreement, gathered three priests. ⁵ The dates vary. Vatican News has a first group in 1833 and the congregation two years later; the Dicastery dates the foundation to 1835. ³⁴

Pius XII's Latin homily says he founded a society of priests to bring Christian life back to villages, towns and cities, and above all among the working poor. ¹ The Dicastery says it was conceived for the service of the Church and the clergy, sending its men to help in seminaries, parishes and colleges. ³ His word for its spirit was "Here I am!", which he called, in the diocese's quotation, the first act of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and he wanted his priests to be, as he put it, a flying camp ready to go wherever they were sent, above all to the hardest work nobody else wanted. ⁴⁵

He opened a primary school at Bétharram in November 1837, over the objections of some of his own men, and soon had two hundred pupils. ⁵ Pius XII listed the rest: the sanctuary and Calvary of Bétharram, colleges, agricultural and trade orphanages, brothers trained as teachers, and a mission to Argentina and then Uruguay. ² He also helped other people's foundations. The pope named the Capuchins driven out of Spain, the new Missionaries of the Immaculate Conception, the Jesuits settling at Pau and Father Cestac's Notre-Dame du Refuge, and his direction of Carmelites, Ursulines and Dominicans. ²

The congregation did not have the standing he wanted while he lived. The Dicastery says his bishop wished to keep it within the diocese, and that the pontifical recognition he sought came only in 1875, after his death. ³⁵

Vatican News says that in 1858 the bishop of Tarbes twice sent him to meet Bernadette Soubirous, during the apparitions at nearby Lourdes, and that he became one of her strongest supporters. ⁴ By then he was already ill. A paralysis struck him in 1853, and although he recovered from it, illness kept him mostly in bed for nine years. ³ He died at Bétharram on May 14, 1863. ⁵⁶ Pius XI beatified him on May 10, 1923, and Pius XII canonized him on July 6, 1947. ³

Pius XII compared him to an etching: the sharp lines cut in copper, the strong light and deep shadow, of a vigorous character. ² Self-mastery, the pope said, had put the gentleness of grace into the rough nature of the mountain man, and he applied to him the riddle of Samson, out of the strong came forth sweetness. ²

None of the sources consulted for this page names a patronage for him, so none is given here. ¹²³⁵ Pius XII invoked his intercession, with that of Bichier des Ages, for the Priests of the Sacred Heart, for the Daughters of the Cross, and for all those they served. ²

Saint Michael Garicoïts's feast is May 14, the day he died at Bétharram in 1863. ⁵⁶ The date was set in the formula of canonization itself, in which Pius XII directed that his memory be kept each year on May 14, and that of Jeanne-Élisabeth Bichier des Ages on August 26. ¹ The Roman Martyrology enters him on May 14 as the founder of the Society of the Missionary Priests of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. ⁶

Pius XII used the French address to warn the two congregations against a particular mistake. Let your zeal be ardent and adapted to every age, he told them, but be deaf to the temptation to sacrifice your religious life and your own sanctification to the apostolate; that would be to cut the flowers from a tree for a bouquet and then look for fruit on the stripped branches. ² The Latin homily says that whenever a sudden difficulty came, Garicoïts did not trust himself but went and prayed at the altar. ¹

He owed a great deal to women who are easy to overlook. A grandmother of eighty walked thirty kilometers so that he could study. ⁵ A mother he feared gave him the conscience he credited with saving him. ⁵ And a foundress older than he was, he said, converted him. ²

The last nine years were spent mostly in bed. ³ The man of whom Pius XII said he could hardly be imagined doing so many tasks at once ended unable to do most of them, and the congregation was still waiting for the recognition he had wanted when he died. ²³