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St. John Baptist De La Salle
Founder of the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, educational reformer, and father of modern pedagogy, was born at Reims, April 30, 1651, and died at Saint-Yon, Rouen, on Good Friday, April 7, 1719.
Near the end of his life, De La Salle told his friends, “If I had known in the beginning where God would lead me, I would never have had the courage to begin. But God was gentle with me. He led me step by step without me knowing in advance where the road would end.”
He was the eldest of seven surviving children born to a wealthy and landed family in the city of Rheims, France.
As a child, he was fascinated by the stories of the saints that he heard at his maternal grandmother’s feet. He learned to recite the divine office from his maternal grandfather. |
