Bl. William Joseph Chaminade

William Joseph Chaminade was born in 1761 in Périgueux, France, the fourteenth child of a devout family. He was ordained a priest in 1785.

During the French Revolution he refused to take the oath of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, a law that put the Church under the control of the state. For years he ministered in secret in Bordeaux at the risk of his life. He also helped about fifty priests who had taken the oath to be reconciled with the Church.

Forced into exile, he spent three years in Zaragoza, Spain, near the shrine of Our Lady of the Pillar. There he decided to build a family of religious and lay people dedicated to Mary. Back in Bordeaux in 1800 he started lay groups, then founded the Daughters of Mary Immaculate (1816) and the Society of Mary, the Marianists (1817). He died in 1850 and was beatified in 2000.

William Joseph Chaminade was beatified in 2000.

Beatification allows public veneration, usually in a particular region or religious family. Canonization extends it to the whole Church.