St. Charles de Foucauld

Who they were

Charles de Foucauld was an orphaned French aristocrat who ate through his inheritance as the fattest, laziest, most cheerfully scandalous officer in his regiment, then stunned everyone by mounting a rigorous disguised exploration of forbidden Morocco that won the Geographical Society's gold medal.

What Morocco actually gave him was the sight of Muslims praying, which unsettled the atheist explorer profoundly. Back in Paris, his famous prayer, my God, if you exist, let me know it, was answered in a confessional in 1886, and his verdict thereafter was that as soon as he believed there was a God, he understood he could do nothing else but live for him alone. The rest was a long descent by choice: Trappist, then handyman hermit in Nazareth, then priest, then the Sahara. At Tamanrasset, deep in the Hoggar mountains, he lived among the Tuareg for fifteen years seeking no converts but total presence: learning the language, compiling the Tuareg dictionary still used by scholars, being a neighbour. He called it the apostolate of Nazareth, the thirty hidden years as a way of life. Killed at his hermitage door in 1916 amid wartime raiding, he died as obscure as he intended. The family of spiritual movements descended from his notes now spans the world, and he was canonized in 2022.

Why people turn to St. Charles de Foucauld

Everyone whose life is hidden and wondering if it counts, since his entire message is that Nazareth was most of the Lord's life on purpose. And people living or working among those of other faiths, as neighbours first.

How to ask their intercession

Ask his intercession over the unseen work, the caregiving, the small shop, the quiet years that no one will ever applaud. His Prayer of Abandonment, which begins Father, I abandon myself into your hands, is the one to look up and pray as written.