Benildus Romançon

Pierre Romançon was born on 14 June 1805 in Thuret, a farming village in the Puy-de-Dôme department of the Auvergne in central France. He was the second of three children of a modest rural family. From childhood he showed a serious piety and a desire for religious life. Although of unusually small stature, which at first made recruiters hesitate, he was accepted into the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, the congregation founded by Saint John Baptist de La Salle for the Christian education of poor boys. He entered the novitiate at Clermont-Ferrand in 1820, at about fifteen years of age, and received the religious name Brother Bénilde, known in Latin and English as Benildus.

After formation and profession he taught in several of the Institute’s schools in the Auvergne. In 1841 he was sent as director to the Brothers’ school in Saugues, a remote town in the mountainous Haute-Loire. He remained there for more than twenty years, until his death. He devoted himself to the instruction of poor rural children, combining firmness with patience and a gift for making lessons accessible. He also opened evening classes for adults who had never been to school, and he became a trusted counsellor to families in the town and the surrounding countryside. Although superiors at times considered moving him to larger houses, he preferred to stay in this humble and demanding assignment.

Contemporaries remembered him for a regular life of prayer, devotion to the Eucharist and to the Virgin Mary, and practical charity, especially toward the sick. He suffered for years from rheumatism and other ailments. He died in Saugues on 13 August 1862.

A local reputation for holiness continued after his death and led to a cause for beatification. Pope Pius XII beatified him on 4 April 1948. Pope Paul VI canonized him on 29 October 1967, making Benildus the first member of the Brothers of the Christian Schools other than the founder to be declared a saint. His liturgical memorial is kept on 13 August. In the Lasallian tradition he is held up as a model of the teaching brother and of fidelity to an ordinary, hidden apostolate among the poor.