His father, Charles Antoine de Mazenod, was one of the Presidents of the Court of Finances, and his mother was Marie Rose Joannis.

One of their sons, the priest Bartolo Zinelli, took special care of Eugène and saw to his education in the well-provided family library where the young adolescent spent many hours each day.

Being part of the high society of Sicily became the opportunity for Eugène to rediscover his noble origins and to live a lavish style of life.

Gradually he became aware of how empty his life was,[3] and began to search for meaning in more regular church involvement, reading and personal study, and charitable work among prisoners.

He recounted the spiritual experience in his retreat journal: Can I forget the bitter tears that the sight of the cross brought streaming from my eyes one Good Friday?

I was in a state of mortal sin and it was precisely this that made me grieve…Blessed, a thousand times blessed, that He, this good Father, notwithstanding my unworthiness, lavished on me all the richness of his mercy.

As a member of the seminary, notwithstanding personal risk, Eugène committed himself to serve and assist Pope Pius VII, who at this time was a prisoner of Emperor Napoleon I at Fontainebleau.

On 25 January 1816, "impelled by a strong impulse from outside of himself" he invited other priests to join him in his life of total oblation to God and to the most abandoned of Provence.

Initially called "Missionaries of Provence", they dedicated themselves to evangelisation through preaching parish missions in the poor villages, youth and prison ministry.

During his episcopacy, he commissioned Notre-Dame de la Garde, an ornate Neo-Byzantine basilica on the south side of the old port of Marseille.

He favoured the moral teachings of Alphonsus Liguori, whose theological system he was the first to introduce in France, and whose first biography in French he caused to be written by one of the Oblates.

[6] Some forty-five years after his death, the Diocese of Marseille opened a three-year-long investigation for the cause for Bishop de Mazenod's canonization.

[9] Five years later, after the same congregation attributed miracles of healing to Eugène's intercession, he was beatified by Pope Paul VI in Rome on 19 October 1975.