Brazil Centro-Norte promotes formation on the biographer of Saint Marcellin Champagnat
The Province of Brasil Centro-Norte is promoting formation sessions which will cover the contents and intersections of the work of Brother Jean-Baptiste Furet, biographer of Champagnat, with new writings on Champagnat and Marist Spirituality. The initiative is taking place on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the death of the biographer of Saint Marcellin. The first meeting took place on August 22, and the next will be held on September 19 and October 24.
“Educator, formator and chronicler. The voice of Champagnat after death”, is how Heloisa Afonso Almeida defines Jean-Baptiste Furet’s profile. Heloisa, member of the Patrimony and Spirituality Commission of the Province and former director of the Marist Study Center (CEM), was one of the presenters at the first meeting, together with Edigar Barraqui, Mission Advisor of the ColĂ©gio Marista Nossa Senhora da Penha. She spoke about remarkable moments in Furet’s trajectory and works. The works of Br. Furet are the fruit of the habit he had of recording for future generations the life of the Institute, something that Champagnat himself asked him to do. Brother Jean-Baptiste was also a voracious reader, especially on religious topics, which supported him in writing more than 600 letters and 12 books. He was also Assistant General to Brother François Rivat, who succeeded Champagnat. “He had a more spiritual than administrative profile, he was joyful, available, easy to get along with, and rigorous with his studies”, Heloisa points out. He died in 1872, at the age of 65.
The course will continue, on September 19, with Brother Rafael Ferreira, currently a member of the international community of Notre-Dame de L’Hermitage, who will speak on the resonance of the Furet’s works, and on October 24, with Brother Paulo Soares, director of the Marist College of Our Lady of Nazareth, on the actuality of Jean-Baptiste.
Published 16 years after Champagnat’s death in 1840, the Life of Saint Marcellin Joseph Benedict Champagnat, the first biography of the Marist founder, is one of Jean-Baptiste’s best-known works.