Charles de Foucauld

Charles Eugène de Foucauld de Pontbriand, Viscount of Foucauld (15 September 1858 – 1 December 1916) was a French soldier, explorer, geographer, ethnographer, Catholic priest and hermit who lived among the Tuareg people in the Sahara in Algeria. He was assassinated in 1916. His inspiration and writings led to the founding of the Little Brothers of Jesus among other religious congregations.

Orphaned at the age of six, de Foucauld was brought up by his maternal grandfather, Colonel Beaudet de Morlet. He joined the Saint-Cyr Military Academy. Upon leaving the academy he opted to join the cavalry. He thus went to the Saumur Cavalry School, where he was known for his childish sense of humour, whilst living a life of debauchery enabled by an inheritance he received after his grandfather's death. He was assigned to the 4th Chasseurs d'Afrique Regiment. At the age of twenty-three, he decided to resign in order to explore Morocco by impersonating a Jew. The quality of his works earned him a gold medal from the Société de Géographie, as well as fame following publication of his book ''Reconnaissance au Maroc'' (1888).

Once back in France, he rekindled his Catholic faith and joined the Trappist order on 16 January 1890. Still with the Trappists, he then went to Syria. His quest of an even more radical ideal of poverty, altruism, and penitence, led him to leave the Trappists in order to become a hermit in 1897. He was then living in Palestine as a porter at convents of the Poor Clares in Nazareth and in Jerusalem, writing his meditations that became the cornerstone of his spirituality.

Ordained in Viviers in 1901, he decided to settle in the Algerian Sahara at Béni Abbès. His ambition was to form a new congregation, but nobody joined him. Taking the religious name "Brother Charles of Jesus", he lived with the Berbers, adopting a new apostolic approach, preaching not through sermons, but through his example. In order to become more familiar with the Tuareg, he studied their culture for over twelve years, using a pseudonym to publish the first Tuareg-French dictionary. He collected hundreds of Tuareg poems (paying a few sous to anyone who would bring poems to his hermitage) which he translated into French. He censored nothing in the poems, and never changed anything that might not conform to Catholic morality. De Foucauld's works are a reference point for the understanding of Tuareg culture.

On 1 December 1916, de Foucauld was assassinated at his hermitage. He was quickly considered to be a martyr of faith and was the object of veneration following the success of the biography written by René Bazin (1923). New religious congregations, spiritual families, and a renewal of eremitic life are inspired by Charles de Foucauld's life and writings.

His beatification process started in 1927 eleven years after his death. He was declared Venerable on 24 April 2001 by Pope John Paul II, then Blessed on 13 November 2005 by Pope Benedict XVI. On 27 May 2020, the Vatican announced that a miracle had been attributed to de Foucauld's intercession. In his 2020 encyclical ''Fratelli tutti'', Pope Francis wrote that "Blessed Charles directed his ideal of total surrender to God towards an identification with the poor, abandoned in the depths of the African desert. ... he expressed his desire to feel himself a brother to every human being, and asked a friend to 'pray to God that I truly be the brother of all'. He wanted to be, in the end, 'the universal brother'. Yet only by identifying with the least did he come at last to be the brother of all." De Foucauld was canonized as a saint by Pope Francis on 15 May 2022 in Rome.

Biography

Childhood

De Foucauld's family was originally from the Périgord region of France and part of the old French nobility; their motto being ''Jamais arrière'' ("Never behind"). Several of his ancestors took part in the crusades, a source of prestige within the French nobility. His great-great-uncle, Armand de Foucauld de Pontbriand, a vicar general and first cousin of the archbishop of Arles, Monseigneur Jean Marie du Lau d'Allemans, as well as the archbishop himself, were victims of the September massacres that took place during the French Revolution. His mother, Élisabeth de Morlet, was from the Lorraine aristocracy whilst his grandfather had made a fortune during the revolution as a republican. Élisabeth de Morlet married the viscount Édouard de Foucauld de Pontbriand, a forest inspector, in 1855. On 17 July 1857, their first child Charles was born, and died one month later. Their second son, whom they named Charles Eugène, was born in Strasbourg on 15 September 1858 in the family house on Place Broglie at what was previously mayor Dietrich's mansion, where La Marseillaise was sung for the first time, in 1792.

A few months after his birth, his father was transferred to Wissembourg. In 1861, Charles was three and a half years old when his sister, Marie-Inès-Rodolphine, was born. His profoundly religious mother educated him in the Catholic faith, steeped in acts of devotion and piety. She died following miscarriage on 13 March 1864, followed by her husband who suffered from neurasthenia, on 9 August. The now orphaned Charles (age 6) and his sister Marie (age 3) were put in the care of their paternal grandmother, Viscountess Clothilde de Foucauld, who died of a heart attack shortly afterwards.

The children were then taken in by their maternal grandparents, Colonel Beaudet de Morlet and his wife, who lived in Strasbourg. De Morlet, an alumnus of the École Polytechnique and engineering officer, provided his grandchildren with an affectionate upbringing. Charles wrote of him: "My grandfather whose beautiful intelligence I admired, whose infinite tenderness surrounded my childhood and youth with an atmosphere of love, the warmth of which I still feel emotionally."

Charles pursued his studies at the Saint-Arbogast episcopal school, and went to Strasbourg high school in 1868. At the time an introvert and short-tempered, he was often ill and pursued his education thanks to private tuition.

He spent the summer of 1868 with his aunt, Inès Moitessier, who felt responsible for her nephew. Her daughter, Marie Moitessier (later Marie de Bondy), eight years older than Charles, became fast friends with him. She was a fervent churchgoer who was very close to Charles, sometimes acting as a maternal figure for him.

In 1870 the de Morlet family fled the Franco-Prussian War and found refuge in Bern. Following the French defeat, the family moved to Nancy in October 1871. Charles had four years of secular highschool left. Jules Duvaux was a teacher of his, and he bonded with fellow student Gabriel Tourdes. Both students had a passion for classical literature, and Gabriel remained, according to Charles, one of the "two incomparable friends" of his life. His education in a secular school developed nurtured patriotic sentiment, alongside a mistrust for the German Empire. His First Communion took place on 28 April 1872, and his confirmation at the hands of Monseigneur Joseph-Alfred Foulon in Nancy followed shortly thereafter.

In October 1873, when he was 15, whilst in a Rhetoric class, he began to distance himself from the faith before becoming agnostic. He later affirmed : "The philosophers are all in discord. I spent twelve years not denying and believing nothing, despairing of the truth, not even believing in God. No proof to me seemed evident".'' This loss of the faith was accompanied by uneasiness : Charles found himself to be "all selfishness, all impiousness, all evil desire, I was as though distraught".''

On 11 April 1874, his cousin Marie married Olivier de Bondy. A few months later, on 12 August 1874, Charles obtained his baccalauréat with the distinction "mention bien" (equivalent to magna cum laude).

A dissipated youth

Charles was sent to the Sainte-Geneviève school (now located in Versailles), run by the Jesuits, at that time located in the Latin Quarter of Paris, in order to prepare the admission test for the Saint-Cyr Military Academy. Charles was opposed to the strictness of the boarding school and decided to abandon all religious practice. He obtained his second baccalauréat in August 1875. He led a dissipated lifestyle at that point in time and was expelled from the school for being "lazy and undisciplined" in March 1876.

He then returned to Nancy, where he studied tutoring whilst secretly perusing light readings. During his readings with Gabriel Tourdes, he wanted to "completely enjoy that which is pleasant to the mind and body". This reading introduced the two students to the works of Aristotle, Voltaire, Erasmus, Rabelais and Laurence Sterne.

In June 1876, he applied for entrance to the Saint-Cyr Military Academy, and was accepted eighty-second out of four hundred and twelve. He was one of the youngest in his class. His record at Saint-Cyr was a mixed one and he graduated 333rd out of a class of 386.

The death of Foucauld's grandfather and the receipt of a substantial inheritance, was followed by his entry into the French cavalry school at Saumur. Continuing to lead an extravagant life style, Foucauld was posted to the 4th Regiment of Chasseurs d'Afrique in Algeria. Bored with garrison service he travelled in Morocco (1883–84), the Sahara (1885), and Palestine (1888–89). While reverting to being a wealthy young socialite when in Paris, Foucauld became an increasingly serious student of the geography and culture of Algeria and Morocco. In 1885 the ''Societe de Geographie de Paris'' awarded him its gold medal in recognition of his exploration and research.

Religious life

On 14 January 1890, de Foucauld entered the Trappist monastery of Notre-Dame des Neiges, where he received, as a novice, the religious name ''Marie-Albéric'' on the feast of this saint 26 January. According to a plea which he sent to the abbot prior to his entrance in Notre-Dame des Neiges, after some months of novitiate Br. Marie-Albéric was sent to the abbey of La Trappe at Akbès on the Syrian-Turkish border. But despite the strict life of the Trappists according to their vow of poverty

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