“The first Son of Charity was the Word, the eternal Son of God.  He came to reveal to the world Charity, God’s love.  We, too, are called to make known God’s Charity, God’s love, to the poor and the disinherited, with our lives, our example, and our words . . . .”

Emile Anizan

He was born January 6, 1853, in Artenay, France, near Orleans.  His father was a physician, his mother a homemaker.  Emile Anizan was ordained a priest on December 22, 1877.  His reason for entering the seminary had more to do with his bishop’s insistence than with his personal desire. A series of experiences helped him discover his call to be a priest for the poor and the workers in the religious community of the Brothers of St. Vincent de Paul.  It would be twelve years, however, before he would be able to realize his dream.   

After finally getting his bishop’s permission, Anizan pronounced his first vows as a religious on December 8, 1888 and began a ministry in the working-class neighborhood of Charonne in the 11^th arrondissement of Paris.  Not limiting himself to his congregation’s youth centers, he walked the alleyways and visited the attic apartments in the neighborhood, where thousands of families lived crowded together in poverty.  He visited families, helped them and got them organized, and started many apostolic initiatives with them.        

In 1894, he was elected first assistant in his congregation’s general council.

In 1898, he was named vice-president of the Union of Catholic Works of France. 

In 1907, he was elected superior general of the Brothers of St. Vincent de Paul.

On January 24, 1914, accused of “social modernism” by certain groups, Anizan and his entire council were deposed by the Vatican in a wave of anti-modernism.  He would call this experience “the great trial.”  The evangelization of the people, fraternal charity, and communion with the Church’s leadership—the basic orientations of his life—were shattered.  He withdrew to the monastery of Pleterje in what is Slovenia today, and he emerged from this mystical night more dedicated than ever to God’s will and strengthened in his vocation to make known to the people God’s charity.  The first thing he did was go to the Verdun front during World War I as a volunteer military chaplain to be with those who were suffering there.  The new pope, Benedict XV, encouraged him to found a new congregation, and the pope himself suggested the name, the Sons of Charity.  The congregation was founded on December 25, 1918.  Father Anizan died May 1, 1928.   

Certain places have special meaning for us, because they mark out our founder’s spiritual and apostolic journey. 

The Anizan Chapel at 22, rue Abbé Derry, in Issy-les-Moulineaux (near Paris), which houses our founder’s tomb.  His vocation to serve the poor was forged in this city, where he attended St. Sulpice Seminary and where he visited the gasworks of the time.  He wanted to be buried in a working-class city. 

Artenay (near Orleans), where he was born and spent his earliest years.  A plaque in his memory has been erected there, next to the church’s baptismal font.  Anizan began his pastoral life as a priest of the diocese of Orleans in Olivet, and later in Saint Laurent.  During his nine years there, he wrote prayers that were filled with ardor and passion, hoping that someday he would be able to live out his vocation as a religious in service of the people. 

The Charonne neighborhood, a poor neighborhood in the 20^th arrondissement of Paris, between La Nation square and the Père Lachaise cemetery.  It holds the memory of Fr. Anizan’s intense pastoral work from 1887 to 1894. We see from his diary that he would set out from the Sainte Anne center on rue Planchat and make the rounds of the neighborhood, visiting the poor and destitute families of workers.        

Verdun, Damloup (in eastern France near the German border).  In August, 1914, at the age of 61, Fr. Anizan volunteered to be an unpaid military chaplain on the war front at Verdun.  It was his way of trying to “do God’s work among those combatants who have to face hell.”  Damloup was his base.  Today, there is a 4-mile symbolic walk in which we can follow his footsteps as he served the soldiers and the civilian population of that hellish time.  Anizan wanted to do “the work of Charity in the midst of the works of hate and blood” among those people. 

Ask for the guidebook, “Verdun, in the footsteps of Fr. Anizan,” by Pierre Tritz (itinerary, texts, and prayers).