MAZENOD, CHARLES-JOSEPH-EUGÈNE de. – Founder of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, born in Aix-en-Provence on 19 August 1782 into a noble family, died in Marseilles on 21 May 1861. Although he was an only child, he chose to embrace the ecclesiastical state, saying that his family could not end better than with a priest. Ordained in 1811, in 1816 he founded the Missionaries of Provence, later called the “Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate” by Leo XII, who approved their Constitutions in 1826. Appointed bishop of Marseilles against his will, he nonetheless remained the Superior General of the Oblates, whom he sent not only throughout Europe but also to foreign missions (Canada, Asia, Africa). As bishop, he devoted himself with zeal to numerous works in his diocese and was so concerned with the general interests of religion and of his country that he came to be regarded as a pioneer of Christian reconstruction in France after the devastation of the Revolution. From 1856 he was a senator of the Second Napoleonic Empire; he had been presented to the Pope for the purple, but died before 1861.
His cause of beatification is currently underway.