Marie-Eugène de l'Enfant-Jésus
French monk (1894-1967)
Feast: 4 February (not on the universal Roman calendar; kept in the Roman Martyrology or local calendars)
The Vatican record
- 3 March 2016 — Miracle through their intercession approved (decree list, 2016)
Who they were
Henri Grialou was born on 2 December 1894 at Le Gua, in the Aveyron in southern France, the third of five children of a miner. He became a Discalced Carmelite, taking the name Marie-Eugène of the Child Jesus, and founded the secular institute Notre-Dame de Vie.
His teaching on prayer, given first in Marseilles and then far and wide, became the classic of spiritual theology 'I Want to See God', published in one volume in 1957. He died on 27 March 1967.
The miracles
A newborn baby — France — 1980s
A baby born with large cysts had surgery, and afterwards fluid kept draining heavily from a wound in the chest; at 28 days old the baby weighed only 3.2 kg and doctors feared for the child's life. The baby's great-aunt prayed for Father Marie-Eugène's intercession on the day she received the parents' letter saying the situation was hopeless. That same day, without any prior improvement, the draining stopped.
Why that counted as sanctity
On 19 December 2011 the Church declared that this life showed the Christian virtues to a heroic degree, and gave the title Venerable. The case of a newborn baby was examined by the Church's doctors and theologians and approved as a miracle on 3 March 2016, opening the way to beatification. Beatification followed on 19 November 2016 by Cardinal Angelo Amato, for Pope Francis.
- Dicastery for the Causes of Saints - biography of Blessed Marie-Eugène of the Child Jesus
- Cath.ch - beatification of Father Marie-Eugène in Avignon
- Vatican Radio archive, 19 Nov 2016 - beatification of the Carmelite Marie-Eugène
- Dicastery for the Causes of Saints — promulgated decrees (causesanti.va), summarised in our own words
- Wikidata Q3291767 — dates, feast day and identifiers (CC0)
- English Wikipedia — Marie-Eugène de l'Enfant-Jésus (CC BY-SA)
Checked against the sources listed on 21 September 2026. Corrections welcome.