Vatican: ten church figures proclaimed saints including Charles de Foucauld
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Vatican, May 15, 2022: Pope Francis beatified ten church figures in St. Peter's Square, including Charles de Foucauld, and called on political leaders to be protagonists of peace and not of war.
REUTERS - REMO CASILLI
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4 mins
Pope Francis canonized this Sunday, May 15 ten "figures" of the church including three French who will thus become saints for the Catholic Church.
Charles de Foucauld, a hermit monk who lived in the Algerian desert alongside Muslims at the beginning of the 20th century, is the most famous of them.
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In front of some 45,000 faithful from all over the world gathered in St. Peter's Square in Rome, Francis "canonized" the French religious Marie Rivier (1768-1838) and César de Bus (1544-1607) as well as the Dutch priest and journalist Titus Brandsma , known for his commitment against Nazi propaganda during the Second World War and killed in Dachau in 1942, reports AFP.
Another saint of the day, the Indian Devasahayam (Lazare) Pillai (1712-1752), a Hindu converted to Christianity: he was the first Indian layman to become a “saint”, according to the Vatican.
Arrested, he was tortured for three years and then executed, having refused to recant his faith.
But the most famous, at least for the French, is Charles de Foucauld, the hermit monk, who died in Algeria.
Photo of Charles de Foucauld in the Hoggar around 1907. © Edsdet/wikimedia.org
"A Universal Brother"
Nicknamed "the hermit of the desert",
Charles de Foucauld
first led the life of a French officer before devoting himself to the faith.
He settled in Tamanrasset, Algeria.
Coming, at the beginning, with the desire to convert the inhabitants to Christianity, he then renounces it to end up developing a close relationship with the local population: the Tuaregs.
Joined by RFI, Father Christophe Roucou, from the Al Mowafaqa Institute of Islamic-Christian Relations in Morocco, recounts the privileged relationship between religion and Africa.
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Charles de Foucauld first settled in the Maghreb because he had made a first trip which marked him a lot.
He took advantage of this trip to read both the Koran and the Bible.
Then, during his personal journey of conversion, he said to himself: it is a question of making Jesus discover to the Muslims who do not know him and therefore his idea was to find the desert.
What will happen is that he will be very touched by the poor populations and then, he realizes that he does not make many conversions but at the same time, he discovers that his vocation is to to be a universal brother and, as he is interested in the Tuareg people among whom he is, he begins to learn their language and more than that, it is he who will produce the first French dictionary in Tifinagh script which is one of the scripts of the Tamashek language,
the language of the Tuaregs of Algeria.
It is a dictionary which remains a precious instrument until today.
.
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► To listen also: Saint Charles de Foucauld / The Gospel in the Land of Smiles (Religions of the world)
Canonization requires three conditions: to have been dead for at least five years (Charles de Foucauld died assassinated in 1916 in Tamanrasset), to have led an exemplary Christian life and to have performed at least two miracles.
Charles de Foucauld's beatification process began in the 1930s. He was declared "blessed" in
2005 by Pope Benedict XVI
.
His miracles: after recovering from cancer in 1984, a second miracle was attributed to Charles de Foucauld by the Vatican: the unusual story of a young carpenter who survived a 15-meter fall on a bench in 2016 , despite a pierced abdomen.
The second miracle of Charles de Foucauld
His name is also Charles but without the s at the end.
He is a carpenter in Saumur in the West of France, in the diocese which in 2012 chose Charles de Foucauld as patron.
In 2016, Charles fell more than 15 meters, crossing the vault of a chapel he was working on.
He lands on a wooden bench which pierces his abdomen.
After such an accident, the chances of survival were estimated at 2%.
Three days later, he is sitting on his bed and, barely two months later, he returns to the site.
For the church, all the elements are there for the opening of an investigation.
Nine doctors are consulted and confirm that the state of health of the young man does not correspond to the fall endured.
Moreover, the facts occurred while in the neighboring church a prayer was ending, in honor of Charles de Foucauld, so that a miracle could be attributed to him and he could thus be canonized.
All this exactly a century after his assassination in Algeria.
IN 2020, the miracle is recognized.
The carpenter, who declares himself a non-believer, has nevertheless accepted that his story contributes to the canonization of Charles de Foucauld, of whom he had never heard of before his accident.
(and with agencies)
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