On Sunday, at the end of the Mass for the beginning of his pontificate, Pope Leo XIV highlighted the beatification of P. Camille Costa de Beauregard, a French priest known for the work he developed with the children who were orphaned after an epidemic of cholera.
“In this dimension of communion of the saints I remember that yesterday in Chambéry, France, the priest Camille Costa de Beauregard was beatified, who lived between the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, witness of a great pastoral charity,” said the Holy Father before the tens of thousands of people gathered in the Plaza de San Pedro.
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The beatification of Fr. Camille Costa de Beauregard is the first of the Pontificate of Leo XIV. It was chaired on Saturday 17 by the Apostolic Nuncio in France, Mons. Celestino Migliore, in Chambéry, department of Savoy, where the new Blessed was born on February 17, 1841.
According Vatican Newsabout 4,000 people attended the Mass, of which more than 300 were “members of their family, including grandchildren and niece granddaughters.”
“Camille let the love, the charity of Jesus radiate around him and touch his hearts, especially in Savoy,” said the Chamberry archbishop, Mons. Tibault Verny, in charge of pronouncing the homily.
The new Blessed was the result of the marriage of Marqués Pantaleón and Doña Marta Saint-George de Verac. It was the fifth of 11 children.
According to Mons. Verny, a conversion lived between the pillars of the Cathedral of Chambéry “transformed his life. Jesus was not for him a distant figure, but a living presence that reached it in the deepest.”
Camille was ordained a priest on May 26, 1866 in the Basilica of San Juan de Letán, in Rome. After rejecting the possibility of entering the Academy of Ecclesiastical Nobles, where he could have initiated a diplomatic career, he returned to Chambéry, whose cathedral was appointed Vicepároco on August 3, 1867.
That year an epidemic of cholera was unleashed that took his lives at least 135 people. The website of the Causes of Saints He said that Blessed took the children who were orphaned and “gathered them in the presbytery of the Cathedral, dedicating himself completely to his education.” Then he would open the Le orphanage of Le Bocage, which came to receive 175 minors.
Mons. Verny said that Fr. Camille acknowledged in the orphans “the face of Jesus”, “contemplated Jesus to call him to become close.” Currently, Le Bocage is administered by the Salesians and welcomes almost 400 young people.
Blessed was also a jealous educator of young people, especially with regard to religious instruction. He was known in every saboya as “the father of the orphans” and, in order to attend his work, he twice rejected the Episcopate and donated what corresponded to his family’s wealth.
Fr. Camille Costa de Beauregard died on March 25, 1910.
On March 14, 2024, Pope Francis recognized the miracle worked by the intercession of the priest. This happened in November 1910 and consisted of the healing of René Jacquemond, an 11 -year -old boy who lived in the orphanage founded by Blessed and who, because of a blow, had remained with an ocular trauma “with injury of the cornea and injury of the conjunctiva”.
Eduardo Berdejo
Professional in Social Communication of the National University of San Marcos in Peru, I have more than 20 years of experience in Catholic digital journalism. As part of ACI Press, I have been sent to cover the trips of Pope Francis to Cuba, Mexico, Colombia and Peru, in addition to the Synod of Sinodality in the Vatican in 2023.