Eugène de Mazenod, OMI (born Charles-Joseph-Eugène de Mazenod; 1 August 1782 – 21 May 1861) was a French aristocrat and Catholic bishop who founded the congregation of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate.

When he was eight years old, Mazenod's family fled the French Revolution and left its considerable wealth behind. As refugees in Italy, they were poor and moved from place to place. He returned to France at the age of twenty and later became a priest. Initially focused on rebuilding the Church in France after the Revolution, his mission soon extended, particularly to British North America. Mazenod was appointed bishop of Marseille in 1837, and archbishop in 1851.

Mazenod was beatified on 19 October 1975. He was canonized twenty years later on 3 December 1995. The Catholic Church commemorates him with an optional memorial on 21 May, the anniversary of his death.

Biography

Refugee

Eugène de Mazenod was born on 1 August 1782 and baptized the following day in the Église de la Madeleine in Aix-en-Provence. His father, Charles Antoine de Mazenod, was one of the Presidents of the Court of Finances, and his mother was Marie Rose Joannis. Eugène began his schooling at the College Bourbon, but it was interrupted by the events of the French Revolution. With the approach of the French revolutionary forces, the family fled to Italy.

Eugène became a boarder at the College of Nobles in Turin (Piedmont), but a move to Venice meant the end to formal schooling. and began to search for meaning in more regular church involvement, reading and personal study, and charitable work among prisoners. His journey came to a climax on Good Friday, 1807 when he was 25 years old. Looking at the sight of the Cross, he had a religious experience. He recounted the spiritual experience in his retreat journal: <blockquote>Can I forget the bitter tears that the sight of the cross brought streaming from my eyes one Good Friday? Indeed they welled up from the heart, there was no checking them, they were too abundant for me to be able to hide them from those who like myself were assisting at that moving ceremony. I was in a state of mortal sin and it was precisely this that made me grieve…Blessed, a thousand times blessed, that He, this good Father, notwithstanding my unworthiness, lavished on me all the richness of his mercy.</blockquote>

Priest

In 1808, he began his studies for the priesthood at the Saint-Sulpice Seminary in Paris and was ordained a priest at Amiens (Picardy), on 21 December 1811. Since Napoleon had expelled the Sulpician priests from the seminary, Eugène stayed on as a formator for a semester. As a member of the seminary, notwithstanding personal risk, Eugène committed himself to serve and assist Pope Pius VII, who at this time was a prisoner of Emperor Napoleon I at Fontainebleau. In this way he experienced at firsthand the suffering of the post-Revolutionary Church.

On his return to Aix, Father de Mazenod asked not to be assigned to a parish but to dedicate himself fully to evangelising those who were not being reached by the structures of the local church: the poor who spoke only the Provençal language, prisoners, youth and the inhabitants of poor villages who were ignorant of their faith.

Oblate missions

In 1841, Bishop Ignace Bourget of Montreal invited the Oblates to Canada. At the same time, there was an outreach to the British Isles, which was the beginning of a history of missionary outreach to the most abandoned peoples in Canada, the United States, Mexico, England, Ireland, Algeria, Southern Africa and Ceylon during the founder's lifetime. In 200 years, the zeal spread and took root in the establishment of the Oblates in nearly 70 countries.

thumb|Bishop Mazenod

Bishop

Having for some while helped his uncle, , the aged bishop of Marseille, in the administration of his diocese, Mazenod was called to Rome and, on 14 October 1832, consecrated titular bishop of Icosium, which in 1837 he exchanged for that of bishop of Marseille, a position he held until his death in 1861. During his episcopacy, he commissioned Notre-Dame de la Garde, an ornate Neo-Byzantine basilica on the south side of the old port of Marseille. He favoured the moral teachings of Alphonsus Liguori, whose theological system he was the first to introduce in France, and whose first biography in French he caused to be written by one of the Oblates.

Though renowned for being outspoken, he was made a Peer of the French Empire. In 1851 Pope Pius IX gave him the pallium. On 15 January 1936, the cause was opened by the Sacred Congregation of Rites, and he was given the title Servant of God.

Five years later, after the same congregation attributed miracles of healing to Eugène's intercession, he was beatified by Pope Paul VI in Rome on 19 October 1975. the Pope proclaimed Saint Eugène a "Man of Advent", saying:

References

  • Who is Eugène de Mazenod?
  • JEAN LEFLON, Eugène de Mazenod. Bishop of Marseilles, Founder of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate. 1782-1861. Vol. 1
  • J. Leflon Eugène de Mazenod.... Vol. 3
  • J. Leflon Eugène de Mazenod.... Vol. 4
  • F. SANTUCCI, Eugène de Mazenod, Cooperator of Christ the Saviour, Communicates his Spirit
  • Biography of Eugène de Mazenod at OMI Lacombe
  • Biography of St. Eugène de Mazenod from American Catholic.org
  • Biography of St. Eugène de Mazenod from the Oblate Missions Website of National Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows website of The Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate