St. Louis de Montfort

Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort is one of the most energetic and occasionally controversial missionaries of the early eighteenth century. He was born in Brittany in 1673, educated at Paris with the Sulpicians, and ordained in 1700. What followed was a missionary career of extraordinary productivity and almost equally extraordinary difficulty. He preached popular missions across western France — especially in Brittany and the Vendée — drawing crowds and leaving lasting results in restored religious practice and organized confraternities. But his methods were aggressive, his personality uncompromising, and he found opposition not only from nominal Catholics but sometimes from clergy who found his work irregular or resented his bypassing of ordinary parish structures.

He was forbidden to preach in various dioceses, made the long journey to Rome, was confirmed in his apostolate by Pope Clement XI, and returned to continue. His great works were written in periods of enforced withdrawal — the Treatise on True Devotion to Mary did not become widely known until the manuscript was discovered a hundred and fifty years after his death, yet it has since shaped Marian devotion on a large scale. His genuine holiness and the genuine difficulty his temperament presented to those around him must both be acknowledged. The Company of Mary — now the Montfort Fathers — and the Daughters of Wisdom were his two foundations, both built on the principle of total consecration to God through Mary that runs through all his writing. He died in 1716 and was beatified in 1888 and canonized in 1947.