Brother Paul

Saint Salomon Leclercq was born Guillaume-Nicolas-Louis Leclercq in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France, in mid-November 1745, into a family of merchants. He received his early education from the Brothers of the Christian Schools, the teaching congregation founded by John Baptist de La Salle. Though his father hoped he would enter the family trade, the young man felt drawn instead to religious life. In 1767, at the age of twenty-one, he entered the brothers’ novitiate near Rouen and took the religious name Solomon. He spent the next two decades in the quiet work of the Institute: teaching, directing novices, managing finances, and serving as secretary to the superior general. Those who knew him described a reserved but steady man whose letters to his family reveal a simple, grounded piety and a concern for the education of the poor. The French Revolution shattered that regularity. In 1790 the Civil Constitution of the Clergy required priests and religious to swear an oath that placed the Church under the authority of the state. Like most of his brothers, Solomon refused. He went into hiding in Paris, continuing to correspond with his family and to hope that the storm would pass. On 15 August 1792 he was arrested and confined with dozens of other clergy and religious in the former Carmelite convent that had been turned into a prison. Seventeen days later, on 2 September, revolutionary crowds burst into the building. The prisoners were herded into the garden and put to the sword. Solomon, forty-six years old, died among them. He was the first member of the Brothers of the Christian Schools to be killed for the faith. His companions of that day were beatified together in 1926. Solomon himself was later recognized as a saint after the Church accepted as miraculous the sudden recovery of a Venezuelan child who had been bitten by a venomous snake. He was canonized in 2016. His feast is kept on 2 September, the day of his death, a reminder of a teacher who chose fidelity over safety and whose life ended in the same city where he had once taught children.

Saint Benilde Romançon was born Pierre Romançon on 14 June 1805 in the small farming village of Thuret in the Puy-de-Dôme region of central France. As a boy he was slight and frail, ill-suited to the physical demands of farm life that his family expected of him. His parents sent him to a school run by the Brothers of the Christian Schools in nearby Riom, where he quickly showed both intellectual ability and a strong attraction to the religious life of his teachers. By the age of fourteen he was already being used as a substitute instructor, so far had he advanced beyond his classmates. Despite parental reluctance and the initial hesitation of his superiors, who thought him too small and young, Pierre entered the novitiate of the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools in 1820 and received the religious name Benilde. For the next two decades he taught in various elementary schools across south-central France, earning a reputation for firm yet fair discipline and genuine care for his pupils. In 1841 he was appointed director of a newly opened school in the isolated highland village of Saugues. There he remained for the rest of his life, educating not only the local boys but also older youths from surrounding farms who had never before attended school. Under his quiet leadership the school became a center of both learning and community life; evening classes for adults and special attention to slower learners were among the practical innovations he introduced. Benilde’s greatest influence may have been vocational. More than two hundred of his former students later became Brothers themselves, and a substantial number entered the priesthood. He lived a hidden life of fidelity to the Rule of his Institute, constant prayer, and patient endurance of the ordinary hardships of teaching in a remote place. He died in Saugues on 13 August 1862. Recognized for having sanctified himself through the faithful performance of everyday duties, he was beatified in 1948 by Pope Pius XII and canonized in 1967 by Pope Paul VI, becoming the first member of his Institute after its founder to be declared a saint. His feast is observed on 13 August, and he is honored as a patron of teachers.