OUR HISTORY

Extraordinary Lives, Bringing Hope to Others

The Congregation of Holy Cross was founded in response to the need for education and evangelization in France following the devastation of the French Revolution. Our founder, Blessed Fr. Basil Moreau, C.S.C., brought together a group of brothers, auxiliary priests and for a period of time, sisters, to form a bold vision for a religious community modeled on the Holy Family. Fr. Moreau’s vision carried the men and women of Holy Cross beyond France to the United States in 1841, where the Congregation founded the University of Notre Dame.

In the ensuing decades, the Congregation evolved into an international religious community of brothers and priests who minister side by side in more than 15 countries throughout the world today.

History

Rev. Jacques-François Dujarié was a key figure in the foundation of the Congregation of Holy Cross. His heroic determination to serve the material and spiritual needs of the poor in France helped to lay the groundwork for the mission of Holy Cross throughout the world.

Rev Jacques Dujarie

Dujarié was born in Rennes-en-Grenouilles, France, on December 9, 1767. He grew up wanting to be a priest and was a seminarian in Angers when the French Revolution broke out in 1789. Two years later, in 1791, when the Revolutionary government required all clergy to take an oath of fidelity to the state, the seminary disbanded and Dujarié returned home.

Although most of the people in and around Rennes supported the priests and religious who remained loyal to the Church, it still was not safe. Priests and religious who did not take the oath were forced into hiding to avoid imprisonment, deportation, or even execution.

For several years, Dujarié traveled from village to village, disguising himself as a shepherd or lemonade salesman, so he could assist the priests who were ministering “underground.”

In July 1795, he resumed his studies for priesthood in secret under the tutelage of the pastor in Ruillé-sur-Loir. On December 26 of that same year, he was secretly ordained a priest in Paris.

Dujarié returned to Ruillé-sur-Loir and celebrated his first Mass in the middle of the night in a barn outside of the town. He celebrated many Masses and sacraments. If he went out during the day, it was in a disguise. Both the faithful and he lived at great risk in doing so.

Parish Church in Ruillé-sur-Loir

In 1801, an agreement between Napoleon and the Vatican restored public worship and reconstituted the Catholic Church in relationship with the state. The Church now faced the daunting task of rebuilding. The needs were legion, as the Revolution had confiscated Church property and effectively shuttered most of the Church’s schools and social institutions. Also many priests and religious had been exiled or even killed. In 1803, Dujarié was appointed pastor of the parish in Ruillé-sur-Loir, and he worked zealously to tend to the many needs of his flock.

To assist him, in 1806, Dujarié assembled a group of young women to teach the young in a nearby village. These women became the Sisters of Providence, and they were established as their own order in 1831.

A few years later, the clergy of the Diocese of Le Mans asked Fr. Dujarié to assemble a group of teaching brothers to serve in parishes, and he founded the Brothers of St. Joseph in 1820. The brothers grew quickly as many pastors sought their assistance.

Fundamental Act of Union

Fr. Dujarié realized that this fast-growing group of brothers was still tenuous, and he sought to assemble a group of diocesan priests to work with them and give cohesion to this structure. By now, his health was failing, and so Fr. Dujarié, with the bishop’s consent, selected Rev. Basile Moreau to continue his work.

Moreau moved the brothers to Sainte-Croix, a neighborhood of Le Mans, in 1835. Two years later in the Fundamental Act of Union, the Brothers of St. Joseph were formally united with Fr. Moreau’s group of auxiliary priests, thus creating the Congregation of Holy Cross.

At the invitation of Moreau, Dujarié lived the last years of his life in Sainte-Croix until his death on February 17, 1838.

Alfred Bessette was born in Quebec on August 9, 1845, and he was orphaned by the time he was 12. He had to work to support himself and had little formal education, but from an early age he had a lively faith and a strong devotion to St. Joseph. After a few years trying to find work in the United States, he returned to Quebec. There, his childhood pastor encouraged him to consider a vocation to religious life. He sent Alfred to the Congregation with a note that said, “I am sending you a saint.”

Initially, Holy Cross did not accept Alfred because of his poor health. He had been baptized right after birth because they had been afraid that he might not live more than a few days, and he was sickly all his life. Alfred, however, was not discouraged, with the assistance of the Archbishop of Montreal, received entrance into the Holy Cross Novitiate on December 27, 1870.

Upon entering the Novitiate, Alfred took the name André, which was the name of his childhood pastor. Given his frail health and lack of a formal education, Brother André was assigned as doorkeeper of Notre Dame College in Montreal. He continued this assignment as a professed brother. Among his many duties, he greeted visitors and tended to their needs.

Many people began to experience physical healings after praying with Brother André, and his reputation as a healer began to spread. So many people flocked to see him that the Congregation allowed him to see sick people at a trolley station across the street. Through it all, Brother André remained humble, often seeming confused that people would lavish such praise on him. He knew that the real source of these miraculous cures was St. Joseph’s intercession.

His desire to increase devotion to St. Joseph inspired him to found a shrine to his favorite saint across the street from Notre Dame College. He saved the money he earned from giving haircuts at five cents apiece, eventually earning the $200 he needed to construct a simple structure. This shrine opened on October 19, 1904, and in 1909, Brother André was released from his duties as doorkeeper and assigned full-time as the caretaker of the Oratory of St. Joseph.

The Oratory attracted large numbers of pilgrims, and plans were made to construct a large basilica. Brother André’s full-time ministry for the rest of his life was to receive the long lines of sick visitors who flocked to the Oratory to see him. He became known as the “Miracle Man of Montreal,” and thousands of miraculous healings were attributed to his intercession over the following decades.

Brother André died on January 6, 1937 at the age of 91. During the week that his body lay in state outside of St. Joseph’s Oratory, an estimated one million people braved the bitter Montreal winter to pay their respects. The basilica was eventually completed and remains a major pilgrimage site, attracting over two million visitors a year. The side chapels are filled with the crutches of people healed through St. André’s prayers.

On October 17, 2010, St. André Bessette became first saint of the Congregation of Holy Cross when he was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI. On this day, the Church recognized that God chose a very simple man for a remarkable life of service to the Church. He had previously been beatified by Blessed John Paul II on May 23, 1982.

Blessed Basile Moreau, the founder of the Congregation of Holy Cross, was born in Laigné-en-Belin, in the Diocese of Le Mans, France, on Feb. 11, 1799. In 1821, he was ordained a priest for the Diocese of LeMans. He later became a seminary professor, teaching philosophy and theology, while enthusiastically continuing to engage in pastoral work. He was known not only as an inspiring professor, but also a man of God who faithfully sought to grow in the image of Christ through prayer, personal asceticism, and service.

Moreau grew up amidst the turmoil of the French Revolution, and as a young priest he felt compelled to revitalize a Church devastated by years of civil war. With nearly two-thirds of France’s clergy and religious exiled or killed, Moreau organized a group of Auxiliary Priests to preach, teach, and bring the message of Christ to those in neglected towns and villages.

In 1835, his bishop asked him also to oversee the Brothers of St Joseph, which had been founded by Rev. Jacques Dujarié to work as educators in rural parishes. He merged the priests and the brothers in1837. This association took its name from the town where it was based, Sainte-Croix or Holy Cross.

Moreau’s vision was to maximize the spiritual vigor of this association by modeling it after the Holy Family. He completed the Holy Cross family by founding a group of sisters, known as the Marianites, who were also involved in education and evangelization.

Moreau gave to each of the three groups a patron. He consecrated the priests to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the brothers to the pure heart of St. Joseph, and the sisters to the Immaculate and Sorrowful Heart of Mary. He also established Mary, under her title of Our Lady of Sorrows, as patroness for all of Holy Cross.

Soon the Church outside of France began seeking the assistance of Moreau’s fledgling congregation. He sent priests, brothers and sisters to other countries, including Algeria, the United States, Canada, and Bangladesh.

The Holy See officially declared Moreau’s group to be a religious congregation – the Congregation of Holy Cross – in 1857 by approving the association's Constitutions. The Holy See required that the sisters be separate from this congregation of priests and brothers. The sisters later were approved as three separate congregations.

Moreau had composed the Constitutions that had been approved by the Holy See, as well as the set of Rules that accompanied them. He also had written Meditations, Spiritual Exercises, and a treatise on pedagogy entitled Christian Education to aid in the spiritual and ministerial formation of his religious. In this way, Moreau, the founder, always remained Moreau, the educator and teacher. He sought to teach his Congregation a particular spirituality and charism to serve the Church and the world.

Later, amid crises and controversies in the Congregation, including financial issues in France, Moreau resigned as Superior General. He lived his last days estranged from his community but remained active preaching missions until his health failed. The Marianites cared for him until his final days, when Moreau died in Le Mans on January 20, 1873.

Moreau was beatified, by order of Pope Benedict XVI, on September 15, 2007, the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, in Le Mans, France. Blessed Basile Moreau remains an inspiration to men and women who live his vision of bringing hope to others. Work continues today on his cause for canonization.

OUR HISTORY

OUR HISTORY

Extraordinary Lives, Bringing Hope to Others

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