Saint Louis Grignion de Montfort
Priest
- Feast Day
- April 28
- Life
- 1673–1716
- Canonized
- 1947
- Order
- Company of Mary (Montfort Missionaries); Daughters of Wisdom
- Born
- Montfort-sur-Meu, Brittany, France
Louis-Marie Grignion was born on January 31, 1673, at Montfort-sur-Meu in Brittany, the eldest of eighteen children. After studies at the Jesuit College in Rennes and the seminary of Saint-Sulpice in Paris, he was ordained priest in 1700.
Refused stable parish work because of his unconventional preaching style, he received from Pope Clement XI in 1706 the title of Apostolic Missionary, with a commission to preach throughout western France. For the next ten years he traveled the dioceses of Nantes, Lucon, La Rochelle, and Poitiers, conducting parish missions, restoring shrines (notably at Saumur and Saint-Laurent-sur-Sevre), and establishing schools for the poor. He composed numerous hymns for popular use.
He founded two religious congregations: the Daughters of Wisdom (1703) for the care of the sick and poor, and the Company of Mary (later known as the Montfort Missionaries, 1705) for itinerant parish missions.
His principal writings include True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, written about 1712 but lost during the French Revolution and rediscovered in 1842, and The Secret of Mary, which together set out his theology of total consecration to Jesus through Mary, expressed in the formula totus tuus, ego sum (I am all yours).
He died at Saint-Laurent-sur-Sevre on April 28, 1716, while conducting a parish mission. He was beatified by Pope Leo XIII on January 22, 1888, and canonized by Pope Pius XII on July 20, 1947.
Saint Louis Grignion de Montfort gave the modern Church its principal theology of Marian consecration. His phrase totus tuus was adopted as the personal motto of Pope Saint John Paul II, who in his 1994 encyclical preparation for the Jubilee year, the apostolic letter Tertio Millennio Adveniente, and elsewhere described Montfort's writings as having shaped his entire spiritual life. True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary remains a foundational text of Catholic Marian spirituality.
Patronages
preachers · the Legion of Mary
Catholic Churches Named After Saint Louis Grignion de Montfort
1 parish on Catholic Church Times share Saint Louis Grignion de Montfort's name. Find their Mass times, confession schedules, and adoration hours:
Sources