Jean-Baptiste de La Salle

Who they were

Jean-Baptiste de La Salle was the eldest of ten children; orphaned at 21 while at the seminary, he had to care for his brothers and sisters, yet was ordained and took a doctorate in theology. Asked by the Archbishop of Reims to see to the education of the young, he found the teachers ill-trained and uninspired, so he took them into a rented house and trained them himself.

From them grew the Brothers of the Christian Schools, the first congregation made up entirely of lay teachers, whom he dressed in a black habit with white bands and bound to give their whole lives to their pupils. He taught in classes rather than one by one, taught reading in French before Latin, made his schools free, and opened night and Sunday schools for young workers. Attacked by clergy, civil authorities and rival schoolmasters, and even deposed as superior in 1702, he answered: 'If our institute is the work of men it will fall; if it is the work of God, nothing will destroy it.' When he died in 1719 there were 23 houses and ten thousand pupils.

The miracles

Pius XII named him patron of all teachers. His relics were brought to the Brothers' generalate in Rome in 1937.

Why that counted as sanctity

La Salle saw that the poor would only be saved from ignorance by teachers who gave their lives to it, and he built such a community from nothing, enduring slander and betrayal with prayer and trust that the work was God's.

Connected on this site

• Pius XII Venerable
  “Pius XII named him patron of all teachers.” — this site's research