FOUCAULD, CHARLES-EUGÈNE de. - Missionary nobleman, b. 15 Sept. 1858 at Strasbourg, killed by the Touareg on 4 Dec. 1916 at Tamanrasset (Algerian Sahara).
Having left the military school of St-Cyr in Aug. 1878, on account of his dissolute life he was discharged from service in 1881; on 3 June 1881 he was reinstated as a lieutenant of hussars in the Army of Africa; six months later he requested his discharge (1883). From 1883 to 1884, disguised as a Jew, he organized a strategic reconnaissance in Morocco; and after a return to Paris, he took part in the South Algerian expedition from Sept. 1885 to Jan. 1886.
Converted to a Christian life through the work of d.
Huelin in Paris, he set out at the end of 1886 for the Holy Land and, having returned to France, entered the Trappist monastery of Notre-Dame des Neiges (1890), then passed to that of Chéïkhe (Armenia) until 1896; then to the Trappist monastery of Stacueli (Algeria), and to Rome to study theology. In 1897 he was authorized to leave the Order, and set out for Nazareth; in June 1898 he moved to Jerusalem, then to France, where he was incardinated in the diocese of Viviers and ordained a priest on 9 June 1901.
Driven by the desire for penance in the eremitic life and for the apostolate among the most abandoned beings of the Saharan desert, he lived as a nomadic religious in the South Oranais and near the Hoggar (Algeria), spending years full of holiness at Iseken, Amra, Ghardaïa, Beni-Abbès, Asekrem. In 1905 he fixed his dwelling in the Tamanrasset oasis in the Hoggar mountains, dedicating himself to the religious, moral and civil assistance of the Muslim tribes of that region, translating some sacred texts into their language; without, however, succeeding in converting them. He was assassinated in his hermitage by anti-French Senussists.
He had made for himself the motto "to sanctify souls by bringing myself among them in silence." At Pentecost of 1897 he had written this word: "your vocation: to preach the Gospel in silence, as Jesus in the hidden life, as Mary to Joseph." In 1920 his heart was deposited near the tomb of the French general Laperrine, his friend, at Tamanrasset; while his exhumed body was transferred to El-Golea. His cause for beatification has been introduced. In 1946 a commemorative exhibition of F. was held in Paris at the Musée des Invalides. His spiritual writings were published by René Bazin (Paris 1923). He left the project of a very austere congregation, of the "Little Brothers of the Sacred Heart," for the conversion of Muslims. In France, since 1919, the association "C. de F." has arisen for Catholic missions in the French colonies, and the "Mission de F.," a union of female apostolate in Muslim lands.
Bibliography5 works
Arnaldo M. Lana