Saint Jean-François-Régis Clet - February 18
The Holiness of the Church in the Nineteenth Century – Saint Francis Regis Clet
At the same place as Perboyre, but twenty years earlier, another Lazarist, the Blessed Francis Regis Clet, died a heroic death for Christ. He belongs to the glorious band of seventy-seven martyrs who, in the Jubilee year of 1900, were declared Blessed by Leo XIII. With the exception of two, all of these died within the nineteenth century. The birthplace of Blessed Francis Clet was Grenoble, and in 1769, when in his twenty-first year, he joined the Lazarists. After his ordination he taught moral theology for fifteen years, after which he became superior of the novitiate of Saint Lazarus at Paris. In the beginning of 1791 three missionaries were to set out for China. An unexpected impediment arising in the case of one of them, Father Clet urgently begged to be sent in his stead.
His petition was granted. For twenty-eight years he labored indefatigably in preaching …More