As with many of the founders of new religious congregations around the end of the 18th century, especially those dedicated to teaching, Marcellin Champagnat lived in a time of rapid change.
The wars of the previous centuries associated with religion devastated the European countryside. They provoked a cultural change that included resistance to religious controls and to Christian faith. They also weakened economies and so increased poverty in the countryside, encouraging poor people to move to the towns where there was often little employment. The French Revolution into which Marcellin was born, was a shock to the existing social order and to faith.
The needs of children for support and for education, particularly in faith prompted energetic Catholic women and men to open schools for children, colleges to teach teachers and to form them in faith. This led to their forming congregations where generous volunteers could find companionship in faith and could found schools where children received a free education.
Marcellin Champagnat was born at the beginning of the French Revolution to a poor family near Lyon. He was the ninth child and had little education. When he felt called to be a priest he worked on a farm for a year to support his entry to a seminary school. After he was dismissed for failing an exam, he was readmitted through the persistence of his mother and the support of his parish priest. In his final years there he joined the ‘Happy Gang’, a group of seminarians who met regularly at the local hotel and sat lightly to seminary life. The rebuke of the seminary rector had a deep effect, and on graduating to the adult seminary in Lyon he showed academic gifts and was part of a fervent group of students who wanted to form an association of priests to provide education to poor children. He and Jean-Claude Colin, who later founded the Marist Fathers, were leaders in the project, that continued after their ordination as priests.
A decisive turn in Marcellin’s ministry came when he was appointed to serve in the village of La Valla. There he saw how disadvantaged in faith and human culture were rural Catholics. He was miraculously rescued from death when caught in a snowstorm on the mountains. On visiting a dying teenage boy, Jean-Baptiste Montagne he was deeply shocked that Christian faith was a foreign country to him.
Such experiences confirmed his belief in the importance of education for the human and faith development of children. He gathered young men who shared his commitment and opened a school for teachers in La Valla. He soon opened a first school which offered low fees. As demand for education grew, he went to live with his teachers and opened more schools. Love, both of Christ and of the students, was central to his vision for the school.
When the French government entrusted elementary schooling to the Catholic Church his schools expanded both in France and overseas. The Society of Mary, founded by Jean-Claude Colin, had already spread through Oceania. The Marist brothers came to Australia in 1872. Marcellin drew up a rule for his teachers which was approved in Rome, and was the first Superior of the Congregation.
St Marcellin Champagnat
20 May 1789- 6 June 1840
Feast day: 6 June
Patron saint: Education, teachers