According to Marian Mill Preminger’s biography, The Story of Charles de Foucauld, young Charles was hardly to the saintly manor born. “By general consensus,” she wrote, “he was one of the most perverse foot-stampers and blue-murder screamers in Strausbourg,” where he was born on September 15, 1856.

In the writer’s opinion, the only piety Charles absorbed in his child-hood was from his mother, Elizabeth de Morlet, who came from a line of professional soldiers.

Elizabeth was born in 1830, of Colonel de Morlet’s first wife, who died soon afterward. In her second year of marriage to Viscount de Foucauld, she gave birth to a son and named him Charles, who died in infancy two years before her second son, also named Charles, was born. In 1861, a sister came along, named Marie Ines Rodolphine.

When Charles was six years old, Marian writes Elizabeth might have become ill and died from worrying about her husband, who had given up his job, and in a state of depression, went to Paris to stay with his sister, Ines de Foucauld Moitessier, with whom he lived until he died, possibly having committed suicide. The boy and his sister were adopted by their maternal grandfather, Colonel de Morlet, and his second wife, nee Mlle. de Latouche. The kindly old gentleman spoiled Charles, and saw his temper tantrums as signs of character. Poor Marie’s complaints about her brother’s teasing went unpunished.

At the age of fourteen, Charles received his First Communion in Nancy Cathedral, for the grandfather had moved the family to Nancy when, after the Franco-German War, Alsace was given to Germany.

That same year, Charles began studies at Nancy Lycee, where he received above average grades in history and geography, below in Latin and religion, but yet managed to graduate at the age of sixteen, and was sent to Sainte-Genevieve in Paris, where the Jesuits were to prepare him for his entrance exams into Saint -Cyr, the West Point of France.

Although Charles admired the Jesuits and their teaching methods, he became a playboy, was bored with his life, and no longer believed in God. He later wrote:

“At seventeen I began my second year in the Rue des Postes. I was all selfishness, all vanity, all irreverence, consumed by desire for evil. I was completely disoriented.”

Every day, he wrote long letters to his grandfather, begging to come home to Nancy. The grandfather reminded the boy that no Foucauld could refuse to take the examination to Saint-Cyr, even though he might fail it miserably in the long run. Charles must remember the Foucauld coat-of-arms – Jamais Arriere! Never to the rear!

Eventually, through the help of a tutor, Charles passed the Saint-Cyr examinations close to the bottom of his class. When he applied in person to be admitted to the military, he was rejected for being over-weight. However, the Colonel intervened, and the young man was admitted to the academy.

Not surprisingly, Charles chose what subjects he would study, neglecting the rest, and received his highest marks in geography and topographical drawing, which would eventually hold him in good stead.

Since he was generous in sharing both his money and his debaucheries, he was popular with his classmates, which accounts for his graduating from Saint-Cyr in 1878, No. 333 in a class of 386, far below his classmate, Henri Philippe Petain, future Marshal of France.

His grandfather died earlier in the year, leaving to the twenty-year-old Viscount de Foucauld 840,000 gold francs.

When Second-lieutenant Charles de Foucauld was ordered to Saumur in the Loire valley for a year’s specialized training at the Cavalry School, he began to use his gold francs for pleasure, and almost ended his military career by his lavish, and, at times, scandalous lifestyle.

His beautiful cousin, Marie de Bondy, married with four children, tried to persuade Charles, eight years younger than she, to give up his affair with a young, effervescent party girl named Mimi. Charles explained to Marie why he could not do so: “She fills a great need. She is as sweet as she is pretty. She loves me in her own way without making a fuss about it. She doesn’t bother me when I’m thinking of other things. And she makes a highly-ornamental focus for an otherwise empty and aimless life.”

Marie replied: “Charles, I came to Saumur because I wanted to warn you that my father and mother are outraged by your reckless spending. My father is going to ask the appointment of a trustee to manage your finances.”

A few months later, eighty-eight second lieutenants graduated from Saumur Cavalry School; Lieutenant Charles de Foucauld was No. 87, and was assigned with his fellow subalterns to the Fourth Hussars, garrisoned in Lorraine.

The uniform of the Hussers mirrored the lavish lifestyle to which Charles devoted himself, decked out in the splendid plumed shako, the flowing cloak of the dress uniform, the magnificent gridiron of silken brandenburgs that covered the front of the sky-blue dolman, the scarlet trousers and the high-burnished shoes, well prepared to entertain his Mimi.

The parties came to an end when the Fourth Hussars were ordered to North Africa within the week, but Charles declared that Mimi was his wife, and crossed the Mediterranean with her in a deluxe cabin.

Monsieur le Vicomte de Foucauld was the first Foucauld to set foot on African soil in more than six hundred years. He was more interested in the swarm of grimy Arabs, who were doing the heavy work of disembarkation, than repulsed by them, especially when, at the drone of a muezzin from an unseen mosque, they stopped all their work, knelt, touched their foreheads to the ground and prayed.

He did not like his destination, Setif, a hundred miles inland, where he found a hotel suite arranged by Mimi with rugs, brasses, tooled leather, and other products of Arab handicrafts.

Since Mimi’s presence offended the officers’ wives, and Charles refused to send her packing, on March 20, 1881, Second-lieutenant Charles de Foucauld was placed on inactive service by reason of insubordination and conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.

He regretted leaving Africa, and took along books of the Arabic and Berber languages and copies of the Koran both in Arabic and in French translation.

Gradually, the social life began to pall, and Charles regretted having given up his military career. After a meeting at the War Ministry, he was restored to his rank in the cavalry and ordered to rejoin his old regiment in Africa. Mimi became but a memory.

At the foot of Africa’s Amour mountains, Charles found his former companions lean and hardened by combat. He made two new friends who would become an integral part of his life: Captain Henry de Castries, his troop commander, and Lieutenant Calassanti-Motylinski, language officer, interpreter, and Arab expert.

Charles began a serious study of Arabic and Berber. He became a disciplined military leader, and found himself impressed by the God-fearing qualities of the Moslems, especially when they would stop fighting, risking their lives to pray to Allah at the proscribed times. They took God seriously.

Under the aegis of the French Geographical Society, Charles again walked away from military life to explore and map out the region of Morocco. Gradually, through his relationship with the Moslems, he began to seek his discarded faith, and wrote: “As soon as I believed that there was a God, I understood that I could not do anything other than live for him. My religious vocation dates from the same moment as my faith.”

On February 19, 1886, he returned to Paris where he worked on the last draft of his book on Morocco, and at night led an active social life, where, at his Aunt Ines’ dinner parties, he became friends with Abbe Huvelin, who had been disabled by rheumatic paralysis, but, despite his sufferings, became a compassionate teacher.

One morning, Charles walked into Monsieur l’Abbe’s church, and headed for the confessional, where he made his confession and later received Communion.

From then on, he attended Mass regularly and began to appear happier to those who knew him. He told Monsieur l’Abbe that he would like to dedicate himself, to God, but was told: “Prepare. Travel. Walk the sacred ground where Our Lord has walked. Pray where He has prayed. When you return, we will discuss your future.”

Charles went off to Jerusalem to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane, and to follow the Via Dolorosa to Golgotha.

On Christmas Eve he was in Bethlehem, kneeling at the Shrine of the Nativity.

He lived with the Trappists in Syria. He left the Trappists and eventually was ordained a priest, forever seeking to lead the Christian life of simplicity. Shortly before his death, he wrote:

Jesus came to Nazareth, the place of the hidden life, of family life, of prayer, work, obscurity, silent virtues, practiced with no witnesses other than God, his friends and neighbors. Nazareth, the place where most people lead their lives. We must infinitely respect the least of our brothers ...
let us mingle with them. Let us be one of them to the extent that God wishes ...
and treat them fraternally in order to have the honor and joy of being accepted as one of them.

When Blessed Charles de Foucauld is canonized, I hope the ceremony will take place in Tamanrasset, where he quietly lived his Christian life alone, but united in service to all around him, preaching the Gospel without the need for words.

Not with bombs, nor with “shock and awe” will we win the hearts and minds of our brothers and sisters in the Middle East. Charles showed us the way, and in the end, could say with Paul:

I have fought the good fight, I have accomplished the course, I have kept the faith.
(II Timothy iv, 7)

Amen. Amen.

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