Charles de Foucauld

Charles de Foucauld was born on September 15, 1858, in Strasbourg, France, into a noble family. Orphaned at six, he was raised with tenderness by his maternal grandfather, yet as a teenager he drifted from the faith and lived for a time in restlessness and excess. Trained at the Saint-Cyr Military Academy, he served as a cavalry officer and traveled widely in North Africa and the Middle East, becoming an accomplished explorer and student of desert peoples. God gradually led him back to belief, and his conversion ripened into a radical desire to belong wholly to Jesus. He entered the Trappists, later became a priest, and in 1901 was ordained in Viviers. Taking the name Charles of Jesus, he chose a hidden life in the Algerian Sahara—first at Béni Abbès, then among the Tuareg near Tamanrasset—seeking to evangelize not by many words but by humble presence, friendship, and prayer. He was killed at his hermitage on December 1, 1916, and is venerated as a martyr whose writings inspired new spiritual families. He is patron of Duhovni kutak. His feast day is December 1.