Priest and Founder 

     Blessed William Joseph Chaminade was born in Périgueux, France, in 1761.  He was the 14th child of a deeply Christian family.  Three of his brothers were priests.  In 1771 he entered the minor seminary of Mussidan. He was ordained a priest in 1785.  In 1790 after the outbreak of the French Revolution, he moved to Bordeaux, where he spent most of his life. In 1791 he refused to take the oath of the so-called ‘Civil Constitution of the Clergy’ and clandestinely exercised his priestly ministry, putting his life in constant danger.

     At this time he came to know Marie-Thérèse­-Charlotte de Lamourous (1754-1836), who was one of his closest collaborators and whom he later helped to found the ‘Misericorde’ in Bordeaux to aid fallen women.

     In 1795 he was given the delicate task of receiving back into the Church priests who had taken the constitutional oath. He facilitated the reconciliation of some 50 priests. 

In 1797 he was forced to emigrate to Saragossa, Spain, where he lived for three years. Near the Shrine of Our Lady of the Pillar, he forged his Marian-apostolic convictions and was inspired to found a family of religious and laity, dedicated to Mary. In November 1800 he returned to Bordeaux and refounded the old Marian Sodality on a new basis. He made every effort to give his sodalists a solid religious formation and directed them toward precise apostolic objectives, encouraging them to offer to an indifferent society “the spectacle of a people of saints.”

In 1801 he received the title of Missionary Apostolic from the Holy See. It was the official confirmation of his insights into the Church in this new era. Father Chaminade viewed his own ministry and that of the Marian Sodalities, as a permanent mission, directed toward formation in the faith, using new methods and working in close alliance with Mary.

     In 1816, together with the Venerable Adele de Batz d Trenquelléon (1789-1828), he founded at Agen the Institute of the Daughters of Mary Immaculate (FMI), an the following year, at Bordeaux, the Society of Mary (SM)

     His first members, who would later be called Marianist: were members of the Marian Sodalities, men and women who wished to respond to the Lord with a more radical commitment.  The two Institutes in 1839 received the ‘Decretum laudis’ from Pope Gregory XVI. Since teaching was a primary need at that time, both Institutes of Marianists dedicate themselves to primary and secondary schools and to trade schools. They taught in order to educate and form the pupils in the faith.

     The last 10 years of Chaminade's life were a time of severe trial. He faced all difficulties with great confidence in Mary. He died peacefully in Bordeaux, surrounded by many of his sons, on January 22, 1850. 

      On September 3, 2000, in St. Peter’s Square the Beatification of Father Chaminade was officially declared by His Holiness Pope John Paul II.