Saints celebrated on the 21st of May
SAINT EUGENE DE MAZENOD, BISHOP
Bishop of Marseilles, and founder of the Congregation of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, born at Aix, in Provence, August 1782; died at Marseilles May 21, 1861.
A PIOUS DISPOSITION
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.
HE BECAME A PRIEST
On December 21, 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, January 25, 1816, his Institute which was immediately prolific of much good among the people, and on February 17, 1826, was solemnly approved by Leo XII under the name of Congregation of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate.
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 October 14, 1832, consecrated titular Bishop of Icosium, which title he had, in the beginning of 1837, to exchange for that of Bioshop of Marseilles.
HE STROVE TO UPHOLD THE RIGHTS OF THE HOLY SEE
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.
HE WAS EVER A STRONG SUPPORTER OF PAPAL INFALLIBILITY
At the same time he watched 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.
Meanwhile he continued as Superior General of the religious family he had founded. 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.
Excerpts from Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913
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