Vicariate of France and Spain

France is the birthplace of the Betharram Congregation. According to the first biography of St Michael by Father Basilde Bourdonne, the saint of Betharram began assembling his first disciples. Once the Major Seminary had been transferred to Bayonne in 1833, he was left on his own “superior of the four walls of a huge building”. The first beginnings of the future Congregation emerged in the shadow of the Marian shrine, and it was here that Father Michael Garicoits assembled the first group of volunteers “ready to go wherever obedience called them”... (read more...)