Charles de Foucauld

Charles Eugène de Foucauld was born on 15 September 1858 in Strasbourg, France, into an aristocratic family. His father, Édouard de Foucauld de Pontbriand, and his mother, Élisabeth de Morlet, both died in 1864, leaving Charles and his younger sister Marie as orphans. They were raised in Nancy by their maternal grandfather, Colonel Beaudet de Morlet. In adolescence he drifted from the Catholic faith. He entered the military academy of Saint-Cyr and later the cavalry school at Saumur, where he acquired a reputation for indiscipline and luxurious living. Posted to Algeria with the 4th Hussars, he was later placed on inactive service. In 1883–1884 he undertook a dangerous geographical exploration of Morocco, traveling in disguise as a Jewish rabbi with the interpreter Mardochée Aby Serour. The resulting book, Reconnaissance au Maroc, established his reputation as a geographer and was awarded a gold medal by the Société de Géographie.

A conversion in late 1886 in Paris, under the spiritual direction of Abbé Henri Huvelin at the church of Saint-Augustin, restored him to the Catholic Church and redirected his life. After a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1888–1889, where he was deeply marked by Nazareth, he entered the Trappist abbey of Notre-Dame des Neiges in January 1890 and received the name Marie-Albéric. He was transferred to the poorer monastery of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart at Akbès in Ottoman Syria, but he came to believe that even Trappist life was not poor enough to match the hidden life of Jesus at Nazareth. With permission he left the order in 1897. He then lived for several years at Nazareth and Jerusalem as a hermit and servant of the Poor Clare nuns, practicing manual work, long hours of Eucharistic adoration, and meditation on the Gospel, and drafting a rule for a future congregation that was never founded in his lifetime.

He returned to France to prepare for the priesthood and was ordained on 9 June 1901 for the Diocese of Viviers. With the support of the Missionaries of Africa (White Fathers) and French ecclesiastical authorities, he settled first at Béni Abbès in the Algerian Sahara, where he built a hermitage intended as a place of hospitality. From 1905 he made Tamanrasset, a remote village in the Hoggar (Ahaggar) massif, his principal residence, living among the Kel Ahaggar Tuareg. He learned Tamacheq, compiled a large Tuareg–French dictionary, collected poems and proverbs, and translated portions of the Gospels. He sought not rapid conversions but a presence of friendship and prayer, calling himself a universal brother. He lived in extreme simplicity, sometimes in near isolation, and later constructed a small fortified hermitage as insecurity grew during the First World War.

On 1 December 1916 he was killed at Tamanrasset during a raid connected with the Senussi unrest. He was first buried near the hermitage; in 1929 his remains were transferred to El Goléa (now El Menia) in the Algerian Sahara. He founded no religious institute while alive, but his writings and example, especially his meditations on the hidden life of Nazareth, inspired René Voillaume to found the Little Brothers of Jesus in 1933 and Magdeleine Hutin (Little Sister Magdeleine of Jesus) to found the Little Sisters of Jesus in 1939, together with numerous other groups forming the spiritual family of Charles de Foucauld. He was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI on 13 November 2005 and canonized by Pope Francis on 15 May 2022 in Saint Peter’s Square. The Catholic Church keeps his feast on 1 December.