Saint Who?
Saints Who Established Schools
Saint Marcellin Champagnat
Priest and founder († 1840)Feast: June 6
“We have undertaken to teach secular sciences only to make it easier to teach catechism every day.” Marcellin Champagnat was born in France in 1789, the ninth child of a prosperous peasant family. Yet he received little education. The French Revolution had destroyed most Church-run schools, and military conscription made good lay teachers a rarity. Little Marcellin was so distressed by the character of the first teacher he encountered that he refused to go back to school until he entered minor seminary in his teens.
But at first, in lieu of studies, his father gave him some lambs to raise. It was the earnings from this project that would enable Marcellin to pay for his seminary studies. He was ordained a diocesan priest. But he and some priest friends pledged themselves to found a teaching order. After giving last rites (and two hours of catechetical instruction) to a woefully ignorant teenage boy, Father Champagnat decided it was time to make this plan a reality.
He renovated a house for his fledgling community, which was dedicated to Our Lady and is known today as the Marists. With a special focus on country children, their educational plan was simple: “1. Catechism, 2. Prayer, 3. Reading; respect for the ministers of Jesus Christ; obedience to parents and to lawful rulers.” Champagnat died in 1840 and was canonized in 1999.
Loving Father, through the intercession of
Saint Marcellin, may students and teachers order
all secular learning to the knowledge of God.
