" . . . . At the outbreak of the Great War, de Foucauld immediately wished to return home and re-join the army as a military chaplain. The bishop, under whose authority he lived, told him to stay where he was. He obeyed. In any event, France was under attack in North Africa. The Ottoman Empire, fighting alongside Prussia, called for an expulsion of the infidel from the lands of Islam and a full restoration of the Caliphate. Some Saharan tribes responded to this call for jihad. Tamanrasset was far from French military aid, and so, with little by way of hindrance, in the early hours of December 1, 1916, an armed gang of fanatical Senussi set out to deal with the Christian hermit.

There was an eyewitness to what happened next. The dragging of the priest from his refuge, his silence and lack of resistance combined with what appeared to be a profound sense of peace; his being forced to kneel as his captors offered him the chance to renounce his Savior—to confess the Shahada. He declined to do so. Subsequently, during a disturbance, he was shot in the head. His body, still in a kneeling position with his hands tied behind his back, was left in the sand whilst his murderers ransacked his home and oratory, later getting drunk on altar wine. When they had left the next day, those living nearby came and buried the man they had come to regard as their friend.

Three weeks later, a French military patrol came across the scene. Local people showed the makeshift grave to the commanding officer. Thereafter, with flags lowered, the whole patrol stood to attention as a simple wooden cross was solemnly erected over the site.

The later military report stated the following:

Father de Foucauld, since his conversion, never for one day stopped thinking of that hour after which there are no others, and which is the supreme opportunity offered for our repentance and acquisition of merit. He died on the first Friday of December, the day consecrated to the Sacred Heart, and in the manner that he wished, having always desired a violent death dealt in hatred of the Christian name, accepted with love for the salvation of the infidels of his land of election—Africa.

Before the army left that day, the officer inspected what was left of the hermitage, and came across a monstrance, thrown down in the sand by the priest’s killers. What they hadn’t realized, and what that French Catholic did, was that it still contained the Sacred Species.

When the soldiers gathered to depart, their commanding officer came forth holding the monstrance wrapped respectfully in a linen cloth. And, as they proceeded to march back into the desert wastes, he rode at their head with the Blessed Sacrament exposed upon his saddle; and, whilst this unique Eucharistic Procession progressed, the sands of the desert, blown on by the scorching winds of the Sahara, slowly began to cover the grave of Charles de Foucauld.

…unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies…. "

Victim of Jihad: The Life and Death of Charles de Foucauld