St. John Baptist de la Salle

Confessor

Feast Day - May 15

John Baptist de la Salle was born of a noble family of Rheims and as a young man studied literature and philosophy at the academy in that city. Having become a cleric, he was made a canon of Rheims at the age of sixteen, and later he was received into the Sulpician seminary at Paris. After his ordination to the priesthood, he undertook the direction of the Sisters of the Child Jesus, whose work was the education of girls, and he guided and defended them most prudently. Turning his attention to the formation of boys from ordinary families in religion and good habits, after many difficulties he founded the Institute of Brothers of the Christian Schools. This institute was confirmed by Benedict XIII.

John Baptist resigned his canonry, gave away his goods to the poor, and in humility also resigned the governance of the institute he had founded. Full of virtues and merits, he fell asleep in the Lord in his sixty-eighth year of his age. Pope Leo XIII first included him in the list of the Blessed and then in that of the saints, and Pius XII appointed him the special heavenly patron of all teachers of boys and young men.

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