Jesus Caritas

Having lost his faith during an unsettled youth, Charles rediscovered God at the age of 28. It was his contact with the faith of the Muslim people during an expedition to Morocco that was the start of his journey back to God. Br Charles at Beni-Abbes In 1901 he wrote: 

"As soon as I believed there was a God I understood that my only choice was to live for him alone. My religious vocation dates from the same hour as my faith."

Charles de Foucauld also known as Brother Charles of Jesus Charles outside his hermitage in Beni-Abbes, Algeria

Brother Charles understood his call to be that of following Jesus of Nazareth. This was to shape his vision of a life of prayer and adoration, of poverty and manual work, of availability to God and to those around him. He felt called not so much to preach the Gospel through his words, but through the way he lived. 

He spent the remainder of his life discovering what 'Nazareth' meant for him. His journey led him to become a Trappist monk, then to live in Nazareth itself and finally to go back to Algeria. He first lived near the Moroccan border in the small oasis of Beni-Abbes and then in Tamanrasset among the Toareg people, where he was killed in 1916.