Prosper Guéranger

Prosper Louis Pascal Guéranger (; 4 April 1805 – 30 January 1875) was a French priest and Benedictine monk, who served for nearly 40 years as the abbot of the monastery of Solesmes (which he founded among the ruins of a former priory at Solesmes). Through the new Abbey of Solesmes, he became the founder of the French Benedictine Congregation (now the Solesmes Congregation), which re-established Benedictine monastic life in France after it had been wiped out by the French Revolution. Guéranger was the author of The Liturgical Year, a popular commentary which covers every day of the Catholic Church's liturgical cycles in 15 volumes. He was well regarded by Pope Pius IX, and was a proponent of the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and of papal infallibility.

Guéranger is credited with reviving the Benedictine Order in France, and with promoting the adoption of the liturgical books of the Roman Rite throughout France, an important element in the Liturgical Movement, which led to further development of aspects of the Mass of the Roman Rite beyond the form practised in his day. The cause for his beatification was opened in 2005, which has accorded him the title of a Servant of God.

Life Guéranger was born in Sablé-sur-Sarthe on 4 April 1805 into a working-class family. As a young boy, he frequently read The Genius of Christianity, a work written by François-René de Chateaubriand which defended the Catholic faith against the claims of the Enlightenment, and which had been published shortly before his birth.

As a teenager, Guéranger felt called to serve as a Catholic priest and in 1822 entered the minor seminary at Tours. During this time, he read and embraced the ultramontanist views then held by Hugues Felicité Robert de Lamennais. He also came to study the writings of the Desert Fathers and began to develop a strong interest in the history of the Church and of monastic life.

Ordained a diocesan priest on 7 October 1827, Denouncing what he saw as anti-liturgical tendencies in the French Church of his day, his writings drew the praise of the clergy but also the opposition of a vocal faction among the French bishops.

In 1831 the derelict Priory of Solesmes, which was about an hour's journey from Sablé, was put up for sale and Guéranger now saw a means of realizing his desire to re-establish, in this monastery, monastic life under the Rule of St. Benedict. His decision was made in June 1831, and in December 1832, thanks to private donations, the monastery became his property.