Blessed Daniel Brottier

Who was Blessed Daniel Brottier?

Blessed Daniel Brottier was a French priest of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit who lived three lives in one: missionary in Senegal, chaplain in the trenches of the First World War, and father to thousands of orphans at Auteuil, on the western edge of Paris. He suffered from violent headaches all his life, and he worked as if he never felt them. Pope John Paul II beatified him on November 25, 1984, the feast of Christ the King, together with St. Elizabeth of the Trinity. We keep his feast on February 28.

He was born on September 7, 1876, at La Ferté-Saint-Cyr in the Loir-et-Cher, where his father looked after the stables of the Marquis de Durfort. At five, the Spiritans' biography says, he announced to his mother that he wanted to be pope. He entered the minor seminary at Blois in 1887. At fourteen a typhoid fever left him with headaches that troubled him day and night for the rest of his life.

Priest, teacher, missionary

He was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Blois on October 22, 1899, and taught at the college of Pontlevoy. But he had wanted to be a missionary since boyhood. In September 1902, against the reluctance of his family and his bishop, he entered the novitiate of the Holy Ghost Fathers, and he made his profession on September 30, 1903. Two months later he landed at Dakar and went on to the mission of Saint-Louis in Senegal.

The town had just been struck by yellow fever, and anticlerical laws had driven the religious brothers and sisters out of its schools and hospitals. Father Brottier was given charge of the work with young people, and the Spiritans say he is still remembered there. His health broke down, and he was sent back to France.

From Paris he served the African mission in a new way. His bishop, Bishop Jalabert, named him vicar general and put him in charge of the Souvenir Africain, the appeal to build a cathedral in Dakar. He found more than 200,000 benefactors and raised some seven million francs.

Chaplain in the trenches

When war came in 1914, his health excused him from service. He volunteered anyway, joining the corps of volunteer chaplains, and spent the war in the trenches with the 26th Infantry Division, from 1914 to 1919. John Paul II recalled at his beatification that "he cared for and comforted the wounded by his courageous presence" and brought the help of God to dying soldiers. He came home with a chestful of decorations. After the war he founded the Union Nationale des Combattants, an association of veterans meant to keep alive the brotherhood born in the trenches.

The orphans of Auteuil

In 1923 he was asked to take over the Orphan Apprentices of Auteuil, a work for abandoned boys that was close to collapse. The teachers were threatening to sue and the boys were near revolt. After his first board meeting he said:

I consider the situation, humanly speaking, impossible to set right. In that case, it remains to turn to God and his saints. Thérèse of the Child Jesus has proved to me that for her, a miracle is a toy; I entrust our children to her and I remain completely at peace.

He did not sit still, though. He built a chapel to St. Thérèse of Lisieux at Auteuil to draw pilgrims and benefactors, used the work's magazines, posters on church doors and even advertisements in the Paris Métro, and wrote about a hundred letters a day in his own hand. Between 1928 and 1932 more than seven million francs went into new buildings and workshops, where the boys learned trades. The French state recognized the work as one of public utility in 1929.

A heart attack in 1933 forced him to rest. On February 2, 1936, the day the cathedral of Dakar was consecrated, his orphans held a small surprise party for him and he said a Mass of thanksgiving in the chapel of St. Thérèse. The next day he took to his bed. He died in the hospital at about four in the morning on February 28, 1936, and on April 23 he was buried in "his" chapel at Auteuil.

Beatification

John Paul II said of him that he worked "as if everything depended on him, but knowing that everything depends on God," and that "nothing stopped his charity when it was a question of welcoming, feeding and clothing children who had been abandoned and wounded by life."

• Approved: as for every beatification that is not a martyrdom, the Church approved a miracle attributed to his intercession before the ceremony of 1984.

Symbols of Blessed Daniel Brottier in art

Father Brottier lived in the age of photography, and his images follow the photographs. Look for:

• A long white beard and a black cassock: the way his photographs show him, in the habit of a Spiritan priest.
• War medals: his years as a chaplain at the front.
• Children or apprentices: the orphans of Auteuil.
• An image of St. Thérèse: the saint to whom he entrusted his work.

Feast day, tomb and prayer

We keep his feast on February 28. His tomb is in the chapel of St. Thérèse at the Fondation d'Auteuil, on the rue Jean-de-La-Fontaine in Paris, where the work he saved, now the Apprentis d'Auteuil, still cares for young people. See also the feast day calendar.

We have not found a widely used English prayer to Blessed Daniel Brottier. John Paul II said at his beatification that he is a helper to the poor who call on him. Let us ask him to pray for orphans and children without a home, for soldiers and veterans, and for all who raise money for the works of the Church. Blessed Daniel Brottier, pray for us.