The French cleric Charles de Foucauld will become a saint of the Catholic Church this Sunday. The man of faith lived in the Sahara among the Tuareg, for whom he signed a translation dictionary into French. In 2005, the Vatican recognized him as “blessed” after a beatification ceremony performed by John Paul II.
This Sunday, Charles de Foucauld, a French religious hermit famous for his work on the Tuaregs, will be canonized.
Born September 15, 1858 in Strasbourg, in a family of good rank, Charles-Eugène de Foucauld quickly became an orphan, at the age of 6 years. He was then raised by his maternal grandfather, a colonel in the French army. He extended this military tradition by becoming a wedding officer, after studying at Saint-Cyr.
A cavalry officer in 1882, he decided to leave the army to undertake a reconnaissance trip to Morocco. He then turned into an explorer, alongside Henri Duveyrier, with whom he wrote “Reconnaisance du Maroc” in 1888, a travel diary on the territories of North Africa.
Imitate the life of Christ
In 1886, then aged 28, he opened up to faith again when he met the parish priest of the Saint-Augustin church in Paris. His goal in life was, therefore, to imitate the life of Christ. He led the life of a monk for seven years, between La Trappe de Notre-Dame-des-Neiges (Ardèche), where he received the name of Marie-Albéric, and Akbès (Syria), before living as a hermit in Nazareth and Jerusalem. .
Let us remember today Blessed Charles de Foucauld, who said: faith is seeing Jesus in every human being.
— Pope Francis (@Pontifex_fr) December 1, 2016
From 1904, he lived his religious life among the Tuaregs of the Sahara, whose language he learned and with whom he was the “marabout”. From then on, Charles de Foucauld wrote several books on the nomadic community, including a “Tuareg-French dictionary, Ahaggar dialect”, still serving as a reference. He also translated more than 6,000 verses of Tuareg poetry.
Assassination, beatification and canonization
The life of the “religious-explorer” came to an abrupt end on December 1, 1916, in Tamanrasset, in the fort where he had taken refuge. He was then shot dead by looters in strange circumstances. His body now rests in El Menia, a city located in central Algeria, nearly 1,000 km south of Algiers.
Recognizing the “heroism” of Charles de Foucauld, the Church launched the beatification process in the 1930s. He was officially recognized as “blessed” in 2005, in a ceremony led by Pope John Paul II. This is a first step towards canonization.
The religious accesses the latter thanks to a miracle recognized by the Catholic Church. In 2016, in the town of Saumur (Maine-et-Loire), a carpenter survived a fall of 15 meters and an impalement on a wooden dart. As the accident took place on the day of the centenary of Charles de Foucauld’s death, the man’s survival was attributed to the “religious intercession” of the former hermit.
Nine other “blessed” will attain Sainthood this Sunday. Among them, César de Bus, a French priest who lived at the end of the 16th century. He founded the Congregation of the Fathers of Christian Doctrine in 1592, participating in the renewal of Catholicism in the south of France.