Salomon Leclerc

Solomon Leclercq, FSC (born Guillaume-Nicolas-Louis Leclercq; 15 November 1745 – 2 September 1792) was a French religious brother of the Institute of the De La Salle Brothers.

Leclercq was killed in 1792 after he refused to take the oath of allegiance to the new French Revolutionary government almost two weeks before the kingdom was dissolved. He was killed in the garden of a Carmelite convent around a fortnight after he had been arrested and imprisoned in Paris. He was the first Brother of the Christian Schools to be martyred, and the first to be beatified. His canonization was celebrated on 16 October 2016; his feast day is September 2.

Life

Guillaume-Nicolas-Louis Leclercq was born to a family of merchants in Boulogne-sur-Mer, on 15 November 1745.

He entered the novitiate at the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools in Rouen on 25 March 1767.

In 1790, during the French Revolution, the institute was designated as being illegal due to the members who refused to take the oath of allegiance to the new French government following the toppling of King Louis XVI. In 1791, the Brothers were forced to give up their schools, and to retire into civilian life. Brother Solomon stayed on at their property in Paris, dressed in ordinary clothes and looking after the house. Leclercq too refused to take the oath and despite being watched, he penned letters to his relatives. His last letter was dated on 15 August 1792.

Following this, Solomon Leclercq's cause was separated from that of his compatriots and treated as a distinct cause. The 2007 occurrence regarded prima facie as a miracle, such as could lead to his eventual Canonization as a saint was investigated in the diocese of its origin in Venezuela from 19 January 2011 to 29 September 2011 and was then forwarded to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in Rome for further investigation. There the board of medical consultants approved the miracle on 3 March 2016, and the following month, on 5 April 2016, a panel of theologians approved it. The Congregation itself approved the miracle on 3 May 2016 and presented it to Pope Francis, who approved the decision on 9 May 2016 and decreed that Solomon Leclercq would be canonized.

The date of canonization was decided at a meeting of cardinals on 20 June 2016 and the canonization itself was celebrated by Pope Francis in the course of a solemn Mass in Saint Peter's Square on 16 October 2016.