Moreau was able to receive a good primary education by the generosity of his parish priest Abbé Julian Le Provost who tutored him.

In 1814 Provost made arrangements for Moreau to enter the minor seminary at Chateau Gontier (today the Lycée Victor-Hugo ).

[2] In 1816 Moreau entered the diocesan seminary in Le Mans (located at St. Vincent's Abbey, today the Lycée Bellevue), when the hostilities of the Revolution toward the Church had subsided.

[6] As most of the pastors and teachers in France before the Revolution were priests and religious forced into exile, by the 1820s most of the nation was ill-catechized, illiterate, and without benefit of the sacraments.

[6] As a young priest and throughout his life, Moreau was an effective preacher who preached parish missions and offered the sacraments on an itinerant basis to rekindle the neglected faith in towns and villages throughout the region.

He founded a group of priests within the Diocese of Le Mans to assist diocesan clergy in his various endeavors to re-invigorate the Church, especially preaching parish missions.

There is evidence that Dujarié's dream was to found a religious community of three societies, priests, brothers, and sisters under one rule and one superior general.

[7] Taking his inspiration from Dujarié, Moreau named the societies the Salvatorists, the Josephites and the Marianites, after the three persons of the Holy Family.

It was Moreau's vision for the three societies to be united in a single religious institute, but Church norms did not allow for men and women to be so joined in a canonically recognised congregation.

[10] Moreau was beatified in Le Mans by Pope Benedict XVI on September 15, 2007, the feast day of Our Lady of Sorrows.

In 1841, Moreau sent Edward Sorin and six brothers to the Diocese of Vincennes, Indiana to assist the bishop is setting up a school for boys.

Dozens of other schools, colleges, and universities around the world have been erected under the auspices of the four congregations of Holy Cross who continue to follow in the footsteps of their founder.