20th century
Feast: December 1
A dissolute French cavalry officer who lost his faith, found it again in a Moroccan mosque, and spent his last years living alone in the Sahara as a hermit — murdered before a single person joined the order he dreamed of founding.
Charles de Foucauld's early life was a mess. He inherited a fortune, blew through it on parties and mistresses, was expelled from military school for indiscipline, and was so fat that his fellow officers mocked him. Then he went to Morocco on a geographic expedition, disguised as a Jewish rabbi, and something about the absolute faith of the Muslims he encountered shook him. He came home, went to a church in Paris, and told a priest, 'I don't believe in God.' The priest said, 'Kneel and confess, and you will believe.' He did. The conversion was total and sudden. He spent years as a Trappist monk, then as a hermit in Nazareth, then moved to the Sahara to live alone among the Tuareg people. He learned their language, compiled a dictionary, and lived in a small stone hermitage. He wanted to found a community of 'Little Brothers' who would simply be present among the poorest people in the world — not preaching, not converting, just being there. Nobody joined. He lived alone for years. On December 1, 1916, a band of Senussi raiders attacked the hermitage and shot him. He was fifty-eight. The religious communities he dreamed of — the Little Brothers and Little Sisters of Jesus — were not founded until after his death, inspired by his writings.