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Vatican News: "France's Camille Costa de Beauregard to be beatified on May 17, 2025".
The date of the French priest's beatification has been announced by the three dioceses of Savoie: the mass will be held in Chambéry cathedral. The Pope had promulgated the decree recognizing a miracle attributed to him on March 14, 2024, thus enabling the beatification of this man from Chambéry.
Father Camille Costa de Beauregard (© Diocèses de Savoie)
Camille Costa de Beauregard, declared venerable by John Paul II in 1991, will be beatified on May 17, 2025 in Chambéry Cathedral. Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, will be present for the occasion. " All the people of Savoie are already invited to take part in this great event," states a press release from the three dioceses of Savoie (Chambéry, Maurienne and Tarentaise).
The beatification will take place one month after the interdiocesan pilgrimage to Rome, in April 2025, during the Jubilee year. The process will enable the Savoy faithful to discover the places in Rome that Camille Costa de Beuregard knew, when he was a seminarian in Rome," explains Raphaëlle de Maisonneuve, episcopal delegate for information in the Savoy dioceses.
A priest at the service of young people
Born in 1841, Camille Costa de Beauregard lost his faith in his youth before his conversion at the age of 22. Trained at the French seminary in Rome, he was destined for great things in the church, but chose to take up the humble post of fourth curate at the cathedral in Chambéry, to look after the workers. In 1867, the year he arrived in Chambéry, cholera struck the Savoyard town, and Camille decided to look after the children orphaned by the epidemic.
At his orphanage in Le Bocage, which took in up to 125 children, he chose to draw his inspiration from the Salesians of Don Bosco, in contrast to the strict education of the time. A great deal of time was given over to leisure activities (theater, music, sports, games), and the emphasis was placed on trust and mutual affection in relationships.
Father Camille Costa de Beauregard.
Even before her death in 1910, her reputation for holiness spread beyond Chambéry, and her cause for beatification was soon filed in 1925. Today, two establishments under Salesian auspices continue her work: a children's home and an agricultural high school.
A miraculous cure
The cause for the beatification of Camille Costa de Beauregard is based in particular on a miracle recognized by Pope Francis in the decree of March 14, 2024. In 1910, when a young boy from the Bocage region of France was suffering from a serious eye injury and his condition was worsening, a religious nurse had the idea of applying a piece of cloth that had touched objects belonging to Father Costa de Beauregard. Two days later, on the last day of the novena invoking the priest who had founded this establishment, doctors removed the cloth used to dress the eye and found that it had inexplicably healed. A few days later, it no longer bore any trace of the inflammation, and had regained its normal color and appearance.
Read the article on www.vaticannews.va
By Vianney Groussin and Jean-Benoît Harel - Vatican City
Published April 15, 2024
