Benildus Romançon

Benildus Romançon, F.S.C., (French: Bénilde) (June 14, 1805–August 13, 1862) was a French schoolteacher and member of the Brothers of the Christian Schools who has been declared a saint by the Catholic Church. His feast day is August 13.

Life

He was born Pierre Romançon on June 13, 1805, in the town of Thuret, Puy-de-Dôme, in France to a farming family. A small and fraillooking boy, he was not cut out physically to be a farmer, but his enrollment in a Christian Brothers school at Riom, led him to his calling as a teacher. He was so far ahead of his classmates in elementary school that when he was only 14 years old the Brothers often assigned him as a substitute teacher.

He joined the Brothers in 1820 and served at several Brothers’ schools in south-central France. In 1841 he was appointed Director of a school in Saugues, an isolated village on a barren plateau in southern France. For the next twenty years he worked quietly and effectively as teacher and principal to educate the boys in the village and some from the neighboring farms, many of whom were in their teens and had never been to school before.