John Baptist de La Salle was born on April 30, 1651 in Reims, France, during the reign of Louis XIV. The eldest of 11 children, De La Salle was raised in the midst of privilege and modest wealth, and made known his intention to enter the priesthood at the age of 11. At 16, De La Salle was named Canon of the Reims Cathedral, a position of great honor and financial benefit, and one that placed him on a course for high ecclesiastical power.

In March 1679, a chance encounter with Adrien Nyel, a layman and an administrator of social services for the poor, met the young priest at the doorway of a convent the two men happened to be visiting. De La Salle was recruited by Nyel to assist with the opening of a parish school for poor boys. It was a reluctant first step on a journey that led De La Salle to new places he never envisioned for himself, including the founding of many more schools for poor boys and a religious community of lay teachers—men he called “Brothers”—to conduct those schools.

Led by God from one commitment to another, De La Salle gradually found himself immersed in the world of the poor and their desperate need for education. Challenged by his Brothers to rely on Providence, he resigned his canonry in Reims and, over the next 30 years, established a wide array of institutions to meet the needs of the poor in France. De La Salle was regarded as an educational innovator because of his insistence that children be taught practical subjects and religion in their native tongue rather than Latin, and because of his use of the simultaneous method of instruction in lieu of private tutorials. He was, above all, a visionary who considered schools as communities of faith. “Teachers are ambassadors of Christ and ministers of grace,” he later wrote, “who stand in a providential and privileged relationship with their students.”

De la Salle died on April 7, 1719. His untiring faith and zeal inspired a modest revolution in Christian education in his day and continues to stir the hearts of educators everywhere. De La Salle was canonized a saint of the Catholic Church on May 24, 1900 and proclaimed patron of all teachers of youth by Pope Pius XII on May 15, 1950.