Do you dream of a romantic life, filled with sulphurous adventures, between Corto Maltese, Indiana Jones and Don Camillo? Curious mixture, and yet, because today is the feast of Blessed Charles de Foucauld, who, as his name does not indicate, is Alsatian. We still have a nice panel of people who wear the halo in Alsace, eh. Charles Eugène de Foucauld de Pontbriand, viscount of Foucauld, was born on September 15, 1858 in Strasbourg, 163 years ago. Orphan, Charles de Foucauld was raised by his maternal grandfather, Colonel Beaudet de Morlet. He joined the well-classified special military school of Saint-Cyr, he chose the cavalry. At the Saumur Cavalry School, his schoolboy humor, his dissolute life led thanks to the inheritance perceived at the death of his grandfather, are a stain on his CV to follow.
At 23, he resigned to explore Morocco pretending to be a Jew. The quality of his work on Morocco earned him the gold medal of the Geographical Society and great fame following the publication of his book Reconnaissance au Maroc. Back in France, he found his faith again and became a monk with the Trappists in 1890. The Trappists were rich, his ideal was poverty, self-sacrifice and penance: he sent everything for a walk and became a hermit in 1897. He then lived in Palestine, and writes his meditations (including the famous prayer of abandonment). He was ordained a priest in 1901, and settled in the Algerian Sahara at Béni-Abbès, where he would fight against slavery. He lives with the Berbers and is interested in local cultures. In order to get to know the Tuareg better, he studied their culture for over 12 years, publishing the first Tuareg-French dictionary under a pseudonym. And it is still a reference! On December 1, 1916, Charles de Foucauld was assassinated at the door of his hermitage. He was quickly considered a martyr and was the object of real veneration, supported by the success of the biography written by René Bazin. Charles de Foucauld was declared venerable on April 24, 2001 by John Paul II, then blessed on November 13, 2005 by Benedict XVI.
He will probably be canonized at last, he will become a saint, the ultimate in the hierarchy of Catholicism on May 15, 2022. Today is his feast day, on the date of his death, you also have a beautiful statue of him in Strasbourg in front of Saint-Pierre-le-Jeune Catholique, next to the tribunal, because that is where he was baptized. And I haven’t said everything about his life, it’s truly incredible, a true adventure and spirituality novel!