St. Charles Joseph Eugene de Mazenod-The last of his noble lineage, he started a spiritual one
Bishop of Marseilles, and founder of the Congregation of the Oblates
of Mary Immaculate, b. at Aix, in Provence, 1 August, 1782; d. at
Marseilles 21 May, 1861. De Mazenod was the offspring of a noble family
of southern France, and even in his tender years he showed unmistakable
evidence of a pious disposition and a high and independent spirit.
Sharing the fate of most French noblemen at the time of the Revolution,
he passed some years as an exile in Italy, after which he studied for
the priesthood, though he was the last representative of his family.
On
21 December, 1811, he was ordained priest at Amiens, whither he had gone
to escape receiving orders at the hands of Cardinal Maury, who was then
governing the archdiocese of Paris against the wishes of the pope.
After some years of ecclesiastical labours at Aix, the young priest,
bewailing the sad fate of religion resulting among the masses from the
French Revolution, gathered together a little band of missionaries to
preach in the vernacular and to instruct the rural populations of
Provence. He commenced, 25 January, 1816, his Institute which was
immediately prolific of much good among the people, and on 17 February,
1826, was solemnly approved by Leo XII under the name of Congregation of
the Oblates of Mary Immaculate.
Photograph of St. Charles Joseph Eugene de Mazenod.
After having aided for some time his uncle, the aged Bishop of
Marseilles, in the administration of his diocese, Father De Mazenod was
called to Rome and, on 14 October, 1832, consecrated titular Bishop of
Icosium, which title he had, in the beginning of 1837, to exchange for
that of Bioshop of Marseilles. His episcopate was marked by measures
tending to the restoration in all its integrity of ecclesiastical
discipline. De Mazenod unceasingly strove to uphold the rights of the
Holy See, somewhat obscured in France by the pretensions of the Gallican
Church. He favoured the moral teachings of Blessed (now Saint)
Alphonsus Liguori, whose theological system he was the first to
introduce in France, and whose first life in French he caused to be
written by one of his disciples among the Oblates.
Notre-Dame de la Garde is picture behind St. Eugène.
At the same time he watched with a jealous eye over the education of
youth, and, in spite of the susceptibilities of the civil power, he
never swerved from what he considered the path of justice. In fact, by
the apostolic freedom of his public utterances he deserved to be
compared to St. Ambrose. He was ever a strong supporter of papal
infallibility and a devout advocate of Mary’s immaculate conception, in
the solemn definition of which (1854) he took an active part. In spite
of his well-known outspokenness, he was made a Peer of the French
Empire, and in 1851 Pius IX gave him the pallium.
From
1837 to 1861, Saint Eugène de Mazenod was the Bishop of Marseille,
France. 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 had Fr. Joseph-Marie Timon-David to found the Congregation
of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Marseille in 1852.
Meanwhile he continued as Superior General of the religious family he
had founded and whose fortunes will be found described in the article
on the Oblates of Mary Immaculate. Such was the esteem in which he was
held at Rome that the pope had marked him out as one of the cardinals he
was to create when death claimed him at the ripe age of almost
seventy-nine.
Cooke, Sketches of the Life of Mgr de Mazenod, Bishop of Marseilles (London and Dublin, 1879); Rambert, Vie de Mgr D. J. E. De Mazenod (Tours, 1883); Ricard, Mgr de Mazenod, évêque de Marseille (Paris, n. d.).
A. G. Morice (Catholic Encyclopedia)
