Marcellin Champagnat’s early life was spent against the backdrop of the French Revolution. Though his father served as town clerk of Marlhes, Marcellin received almost no education up to the age of fourteen. This interfered with his desire to enter the priesthood. After entering the junior seminary at the age of sixteen, he was judged deficient and nearly sent home after the first semester. Nevertheless, after eight years he advanced to the major seminary and was ordained in 1816.
Marcellin was among a group of classmates who conceived of forming a Society of Mary, consisting of priests, sisters, and lay members. He advocated persistently for an institute of Teaching Brothers, and he was charged with pursuing this mission. While serving as a curate in a rural parish, he had occasion to attend to a dying youth, whose religious formation had been woefully neglected. This intensified Marcellin’s determination to start a teaching brotherhood that would combine basic education with religious formation. In 1817 this became the Marist Brothers. Although the institute quickly grew, it faced almost unrelenting obstacles, both from anticlerical forces and from within the wider Marist Society. Not everyone agreed with Marcellin’s progressive approach to education. He struggled to weed out harsh and oppressive pedagogical techniques. “I desire and wish,” he wrote, “that, following the example of Jesus, you have a tender love for the children.”

Marcellin Champagnat died on June 6, 1840. He was canonized in 1999.

“I cannot see a child without wanting to tell him how much Jesus loves him.” —St. Marcellin Champagnat