Saint Miguel Febres Cordero

He was born Francisco Febres Cordero at Cuenca on November 7, 1854. ¹³ The Christian Brothers of the Midwest describe him as the son of a professor and the grandson of General León Febres Cordero, one of the heroes of Ecuador's independence, and lasalle.org says his family was well known in the country's political life. ³⁵

He was born with deformed feet and frail health. ³⁵ Loyola Press says he could not stand alone until he was five, "when it was said he experienced a vision of Our Lady"; the Midwest Brothers describe the vision as "a lovely lady dressed in white with a blue mantle". ⁴⁵ John Paul II, at his canonization, said that not the least of his crosses was the malformation of his feet, which made walking painful. ²

In 1863 the Brothers of the Christian Schools opened a school at Cuenca, and he was among its first pupils. ¹ Loyola Press says instead that he was taught at home until he was fourteen and only then went to the Brothers' school, which does not fit the Holy See's account. ¹⁴ He soon wanted to join his teachers. ¹²

His parents wanted him to become a priest, and the Holy See biography says their opposition did not discourage him. ¹³ The Midwest Brothers say his father sent him to a seminary school to dissuade him, and that he stayed only three months. ⁵ John Paul II quoted a letter in which the boy, asking that its sentiments be passed on to his father, declared before God that he was called to the Brothers' institute and would be in his true place nowhere else. ²

On March 24, 1868, the eve of the Annunciation, his mother gave him permission to enter the novitiate, and on taking the habit he was given the name Brother Miguel. ¹³ lasalle.org adds that he was the first Ecuadorian admitted to the institute. ³ His father, according to the Holy See biography, did not write him a single line for five years. ¹

He began teaching in the Brothers' schools in Quito and excelled at Spanish language and literature. ¹³ Finding no suitable textbooks, he wrote them himself, and the Ecuadorian government adopted them for all the schools of the country. ¹³ The sources disagree about how young he started: Loyola Press says he published his first book, a Spanish grammar, at seventeen, while lasalle.org and De La Salle Institute say he was not yet twenty. ³⁴⁶

They also count his years in the classroom differently. Loyola Press says he taught for 32 years in Ecuador; the Midwest Brothers say he taught in Quito for almost forty, beginning with poor children at the school known as the Beaterio. ⁴⁵ John Paul II named the school of El Cebollar in Quito, where he prepared children for their first Communion. ²

His work in literature and philology, the Holy See biography says, opened the doors of the national academy to him. ¹ John Paul II says he was elected a full member of the Ecuadorian Academy of the Language, and lasalle.org and the Midwest Brothers add the Spanish Royal Academy. ²³⁵ "A community without books is like an empty barn," he used to say. ³

Catechesis was his preferred work. ¹ He wrote catechisms for children and always claimed for himself the preparation of children for first Communion, which he kept up until 1907. ¹³ John Paul II says he called those children, in a phrase translated here, "new living tabernacles". ² In 1888 he was in St. Peter's for the beatification of the Brothers' founder, John Baptist de La Salle, sent by the Brothers in Ecuador. ²⁵ The Midwest Brothers say he was director of novices in Quito in 1902 and again in 1906. ⁵

In 1904 French laws hostile to religious congregations drove many Brothers abroad, and a good number went to Spain and Latin America. ¹ To teach them Spanish quickly, his superiors called him to Europe in 1907 to write the textbooks. ¹³ The Holy See and lasalle.org say he spent a few months in Paris and then went to the Brothers' mother house at Lembecq-lez-Hal in Belgium. ¹³ Loyola Press says he stopped briefly in New York on the way. ⁴ The Belgian climate did not suit him, and he was moved to the Lasallian international center at Premià de Mar, near Barcelona. ¹

In July 1909, during what the Holy See biography calls the "Semana Trágica", anticlerical violence forced the superiors to move the young Brothers and their teachers to Barcelona, first to the jetty of the port and then to the school of Nuestra Señora de la Bonanova. ¹³ He took charge of the consecrated hosts from the chapel at Premià. ¹³ Loyola Press tells it more simply: he took the Blessed Sacrament from the chapel and led the novices across the bay to safety in Barcelona. ⁴

Once the trouble passed, the community returned to Premià. ¹ At the end of January 1910 he caught pneumonia, and after three days' agony he died on February 9, 1910. ¹³ Ecuador proclaimed national mourning. ¹³ He was buried in the cemetery of the Brothers' house at Premià. ⁵

The causes for his beatification opened in Quito and Cuenca in 1923 and in Barcelona in 1924. ¹ The Midwest Brothers say the house at Premià was sacked and its chapel burned on July 21, 1936, and that Ecuador's foreign minister then claimed his remains. ⁵ The Holy See biography dates their return to Ecuador to 1936, during the Spanish revolution, and describes a triumphant welcome; John Paul II says they were received "twenty-seven years" after his death, which would be 1937. ¹² Loyola Press says the people of Quito met him with a great procession through the streets. ⁴

The cure of Sister Clementina Flores Cordero opened the way to his beatification, and Pope Paul VI beatified him on October 30, 1977, with the Belgian Brother Mutien-Marie. ¹³ That same day, during the ceremony, Beatriz Gómez de Núñez, who had come to Rome with incurable myasthenia gravis, felt herself completely cured, according to the Holy See biography; that cure became the miracle for his canonization. ¹ At the consistory of June 25, 1984, John Paul II set the canonization for October 21 of the same year, and celebrated it on World Mission Sunday. ¹²

None of the sources consulted for this page names a patronage for him, so none is given here. ¹²³⁴ John Paul II proposed him as a model for Christian educators. ² De La Salle Institute's page on him notes that in 1993 the Christian Brothers opened the first of their San Miguel schools, for boys of great promise and limited means. ⁶

Every February 9 the Brothers of the Christian Schools celebrate the memory of Saint Brother Miguel, and Loyola Press and De La Salle Institute give the same day as his feast. ³⁴⁶ The Christian Brothers of the Midwest list February 9 as his day of remembrance. ⁵ It is the anniversary of his death in 1910. ¹

He walked in pain, on feet that were malformed from birth. ²³ John Paul II said the joy with which he bore it was what edified his community and his pupils. ²

His vocation cost him his father's letters for five years. ¹ In a letter meant for his father, he insisted that he would be in his place nowhere but among the Brothers. ² He was thirteen when he entered the novitiate. ¹

His scholarship was real, and it brought him into the national academy. ¹² It was put to the plainest uses: grammars for schoolchildren, catechisms for small children, and in his last years language books for Brothers who had lost their own country's schools. ¹³ John Paul II said he sought out above all the children who were poorest, materially, culturally and spiritually. ²

He spent his last months far from Ecuador, in a house that had just been through a week of violence, and died there of pneumonia. ¹ It was more than a quarter of a century before his body went home. ¹²