By RAY CAVANAUGH
This December 1 marks the 100th anniversary of the assassination of Charles de Foucauld, a French soldier, priest, adventurer, and ascetic who journeyed into the Sahara Desert to pursue a life of prayer and study.
But he did not always seem a plausible candidate for religious solitude. For some of his life, he was downright debauched and had more use for a drop of fine wine than for any religious notion.
De Foucauld was born in Strasbourg, France, on September 15, 1858. When he was six years old, his mother, father, and grandmother died in quick succession. The boy “kept his grief inside” as an introverted personality took form, according to Jean-Jacques Antier’s book Charles De Foucauld.
As an intelligent and rather aloof adolescent, he turned increasingly to books. Gradually, his Catholic faith dissipated until he had none, though, as Antier points out, he never became “militantly, aggressively atheistic or anticlerical.” When his grandfather and longtime guardian died, he came into possession of a large inheritance, and no one to “keep him from falling into a life of debauchery and gluttony.”
At the military college he attended, he was reprimanded time and again for indolence and recklessness. Meanwhile, he partook copiously in gourmet meals, smoked the priciest imported cigars, guzzled expensive wine, made frequent excursions to the red-light district, booked lavish hotel rooms, and — for added profligate good measure — often gambled.
Even among other bon vivants, De Foucauld’s antics were deemed excessive — and he was tagged with the nickname “Le Porc” (“The Pig”). He did little to oppose this title, as he ravenously devoured yet another helping of foie gras (duck or goose liver).
Having spent two years in military college, he became an officer. In October 1880, he was dispatched to Algeria. Though he had a falling out with his superiors — who reported on his “undeveloped character” and “[lack of] firmness and enthusiasm” for military duties — and resigned from the army in January 1882, his memories of the North African desert left an enduring impression on him.
So he proceeded to embark on a grand and perilous journey through Morocco. Upon returning to France, he seemed to have changed somewhat. In his own words, “Even though [he] wasn’t a believer [he] started going to church.” Then, at age 28, he had a conversion experience in Paris’ Église Saint-Augustin.
In January 1890, he joined the Trappist order. He took satisfaction in that way of life for several years but felt an increasing need to relocate to the Holy Land and live as Jesus had. So, in 1897, he left the Trappists and journeyed to Nazareth, where he labored as a servant for an outpost of Poor Clare nuns.
De Foucauld was not ordained as a priest until 1901, when he was age 43. Shortly after his Ordination, he came to Béni Abbès in western Algeria, where he ran a place known as “the fraternity,” which, in his own words, never stopped receiving people: “slaves, the poor, the sick, soldiers, travelers, and the curious.”
After three years at this location, he departed to go live among the Tuareg people, the leading ethnic group of the Sahara Desert. Joining their nomadic existence, living from camp to camp, he managed to translate the Holy Gospels into their native tongue. And he eventually established a hermitage in Tamanrasset, a mountain city in southern Algeria.
On December 1, 1916 , the 58-year-old De Foucauld heard a knock on the door. Assuming it was the postman, he opened the door, at which point he was dragged outside and held at gunpoint by bandits.
Their initial plan was to kidnap him for ransom, but two soldiers, by unlucky coincidence, appeared on the scene. They were shot by the bandits, and during this skirmish, the particular bandit guarding De Foucauld (a 15-year-old boy named Sermi ag Thora) panicked and shot him in the head fatally.
De Foucauld’s killing was witnessed by one of his personal helpers. His killer was ultimately tracked down and executed decades later in 1944, according to Anne Fremantle’s book Desert Calling: The Life of Charles de Foucauld.
The desert martyr was not especially famous at the time of his death, and even if he had been, people and the press at the time were preoccupied with a raging World War. In 1921, French author René Bazin published the first full-length biography on De Foucauld. It soon was translated into English. Also, the 1936 French film L’Appel du Silence (The Call of Silence) is based on his life.
The man once known as “The Pig” was declared as venerable in April 1978, and he was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI on November 13, 2005. His example has inspired such organizations as the Little Brothers of Jesus, founded by five French seminarians in 1933. To this day, its members share the “daily life and work of ordinary people,” according to jesuscaritas.info. He also has inspired the Jesus Caritas Fraternity of Priests, which numbers about 4,000 worldwide.
His legacy has “been very significant,” says Frank O’Sullivan, a member of the Boston Lay Fraternity of Charles de Foucauld, who cites De Foucauld’s “emphasis on the universal call to holiness” and the “role of the laity,” along with the “hidden life of Nazareth “ and a “profound respect for the non-Christian other.”
Events commemorating the centennial of his death are being held by The Montreal Lay Fraternity (charlesdefoucauld.ca), and on December 1, a centennial Mass will be held in Washington, D.C. (jesuscaritasusa.org).
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