Our Founder
PETER JULIAN EYMARD, founder of the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament, was born in La Mure, France, on February 4th 1811. He was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Grenoble in 1834 and entered the Marist Congregation in 1839.
One dominant thought burned with fierce intensity in the mind of this saintly priest: “The Eucharist is everything; we need nothing more”. He was filled with the desire to “bring everybody to love Our Lord, and to preach only Christ, and Christ in the Eucharist”.
For this purpose he founded the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament in 1856, a body of men devoted to the Eucharist.
He died in his home town of La Mure on 1st August 1868.
The Congregation spread rapidly and now has over a thousand religious in the major cities of twenty five countries throughout the World.
On December 9th 1962, the Pope Blessed John XXIII canonised Peter Julian as the Apostle of the Eucharist.
Our Mission
We are an apostolic group of men whose mission is:
- To assist the Church in its efforts to form Christian communities whose centre of life is the Eucharist;
- To allow the mystery of the Eucharist to take hold of our lives so completely that we will live this
mystery fully and proclaim its meaning through various apostolates; - To respond to the hungers of the human family with the riches of God’s love manifested in the Eucharist;
- To strive to make Christ in the Eucharist better known and loved through prayer in the Presence of
the Eucharist and an active apostolic life; - To proclaim the Eucharist as a powerful force of renewal for Church and Society.
We commit ourselves to carry out this mission in collaboration with the laity.
We combine prayer and work in order that the entire world may be totally transformed into the people of God the Body of the Lord and temple of the Holy Spirit. In solidarity with those who are working for genuine human advancement, we are alert to the social implications of our actions. We carry out our Eucharistic mission especially
in city-centre shrines and parishes. “Our shrines are centres of Eucharistic Community and evangelisation, places of adoration, celebration and reconciliation, oases of peace in the heart of the city.”
“We make our parishes into authentic Communities shaped by the Eucharist, source and centre of their life”
