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The saints

St. John Baptist de La Salle

A wealthy priest who gave everything away to train teachers for poor boys.

Feast: 7 April · 1651 to 1719 · Reformation and missions · Reims and Rouen, France

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Portrait of St. John Baptist de La Salle in a black cassock with a white collar.

Pierre Léger, 1600. Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.

Home / The saints / St. John Baptist de La Salle

Reims, France, 1680s

John Baptist came from a rich family and became a canon of the cathedral of Reims.1

He got involved, almost by accident, in helping start a school for poor boys.1

He realized the schoolmasters needed training, and he took them into his own home.

Patron of teachers1

01St. John Baptist de La Salle

The Christian Brothers

His family was horrified, and he gave away his fortune and became one of the teachers.1

He founded the Brothers of the Christian Schools, and pioneered teaching in the students’ language, not Latin, and training colleges for teachers.1

Live it this week

Thank a teacher, specifically

De La Salle lived for teachers and students. This week, write to a teacher (yours, or your child’s) and tell them exactly what they did that mattered.

Notes

How we know · 1 source for this page
  1. Franciscan Media, Saint of the Day: “Saint John Baptist de La Salle”. franciscanmedia.org. franciscanmedia.org

The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) is in the public domain; we quote the New Advent edition. Texts of the Holy See are quoted briefly from vatican.va. Scripture: World English Bible, Catholic edition (public domain); Verse numbers are modern, with Douay-Rheims numbers in brackets where they differ. Photographs: Wikimedia Commons, credited under each image; full list on the photo credits page.

Lines in the narrator’s voice, without a note, are our reflection, not a historical claim. Stone & Incense restates Church teaching in plain words; our wording is not an official Church text. Report an errorCorrections.