Who was Brother Salomon Leclercq ?
Born in Boulogne-sur-Mer on November 14, 1745, Guillaume-Louis-Nicolas Leclercq entered the novitiate of the Brothers of the Christian Schools (Lasallians), where he took the religious name of Brother Salomon and eventually became Superior-General.
Following the promulgation of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which gave the state control over the Church in France, he refused – along with most Lasallians – to take the required oath.
He was arrested on August 1, 1792 on suspicion of counter-revolutionary activism and imprisoned in the Carmes Convent in Paris along with many bishops, priests and religious. On September 2, he and 200 other church figures were killed by sword blow in the garden of the convent.
Salomon Leclercq thus became the first martyr for his congregation leading to his veneration by Lasallians around the world, particularly in Venezuela. It was there in 2011 that the Diocese of Caracas attributed the miraculous healing of a young girl bitten by a snake to the intercession of Blessed Salomon Leclercq to whom the religious sisters taking care of her had been praying.
What were the reasons for the September 1792 massacre?
Following the fall of the French monarchy in August 1792, hundreds of priests, religious and lay people, who had been arrested by the revolutionaries as enemies of the people and opponents of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, were imprisoned in various religious houses, including the Carmes Convent, which had been transformed into improvised prisons.
On September 2, amid panic among the revolutionaries caused by the Austro-Prussian invasion and by rumors of an internal conspiracy, the prisons were taken over by the sans-culottes who established a kangaroo court leading to the executions of more than 1,000 people. Of these, 191 people, comprising three bishops, 127 secular priests, 56 religious and five lay people, and including Salomon Leclercq, have since been recognized as martyrs of the faith. They were beatified in 1926. Continue reading
Sources
- Global Pulse, article by Clémence Houdaille, a journalist who works for Radio Notre Dame, Paris
- Image: Catholic News Agency
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