St. Louis de Montfort

Their story

Louis-Marie Grignion was born in 1673 in Montfort, a small town in Brittany, in western France, one of eighteen children. Even as a boy he loved to pray before the Blessed Sacrament and to honor the Virgin Mary. He walked to Paris to study for the priesthood, giving away his money and his good clothes to beggars along the way, and he was ordained in 1700. Louis worked for a time as a chaplain in a hospital for the poor in Poitiers, and then he found his true calling: preaching missions in the towns and villages of western France. He was a fiery, joyful preacher who called people to conversion, taught them to pray the rosary and led them in hymns he wrote himself. Crowds loved him, but some clergy and officials found him too zealous and drove him out of one diocese after another. He walked to Rome to ask the pope's advice, and the pope named him a missionary and sent him back to France to keep preaching. Louis is best known for his book True Devotion to Mary, which teaches how to give ourselves completely to Jesus through Mary. He believed that Mary always leads us to her Son. The book was lost for over a century and only rediscovered in 1842, and it has inspired many people since, including Pope St. John Paul II, whose motto Totus Tuus, "totally yours," came from it. Louis also founded two religious communities that continue his work. Worn out by his labors, he died on April 28, 1716, at the age of 43. He was canonized in 1947.