A "founders statue" created by Giacomo Parisini is located in an upper niche of the south nave of St. Peter's Basilica.

Listening to the stories of a local priest, the Abbé Julien Bellier, about his life as an itinerant missionary, Montfort was inspired to preach missions among the very poor.

[2][3] Under the guidance of Bellier and other priests, de Montfort began to develop his strong devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

When Montfort arrived in Paris, it was to find that his benefactor had not provided enough money for him, so he lodged in a succession of boarding houses, living among the very poor, in the meantime attending the Sorbonne University for lectures in theology.

[2] He was appointed the seminary's librarian, which gave him the opportunity to study most of the available works on spirituality and, in particular, on the Virgin Mary's place in the Christian life.

[5] One reason behind Montfort's showing such devotion to angels is that veneration of the pure spirits was an integral part of his training, and also of his culture.

Montfort's seminary training under the Sulpicians brought him into contact with the thought of Cardinal de Bérulle and Olier, both of whom had deep veneration for the angels.

[6] He began to consider forming a small company of priests to preach missions and retreats under the standard and protection of the Blessed Virgin.

[2] The Pope recognized his real vocation and, telling him there was plenty of scope for its exercise in France, sent him back with the title of Apostolic Missionary.

However, on the very eve of its blessing, the Bishop, having heard it was to be destroyed on the orders of the King of France under the influence of members of the Jansenist school, forbade its benediction.

In 1715 Marie Louise and Catherine Brunet left Poitiers for La Rochelle to open the school there and in a short time it had 400 students.

On 19 September 1996 Pope John Paul II (who beatified Trichet) came to the same site to meditate and pray at their adjacent tombs.

In the 20th century Pope Pius X acknowledged the influence of Montfort's writings in the composition of his encyclical Ad diem illum.

Pope John Paul II once recalled how as a young seminarian he "read and reread many times and with great spiritual profit" a work of de Montfort and that: "Then I understood that I could not exclude the Lord's Mother from my life without neglecting the will of God-Trinity.

The thoughts, writings, and example of Louis de Montfort were also singled out by Pope John Paul II's encyclical Redemptoris Mater as a distinctive witness of Marian spirituality in the Roman Catholic tradition.

[25] Based on the analysis of Bishop Hendrik Frehen of the Company of Mary, Montfortian hymns fall into two major categories "inspired" and "didactic".

The didactic hymns took more effort and time to compose, and focus on instructional and informative qualities: they teach the audience through the use of a moral and a theme.

After Montfort's death, the Company of Mary (which continued his work of preaching parish renewals) made great use of his hymns and used them as instruments of evangelization.

The first four biographies of Montfort, by Grandet, Blain, Besnard, and Picot de Clorivières, were all written in the eighteenth century.

Such an approach reflected little of the critical sensibility that had dominated most of the seventeenth century through the works of the Bollandists, the memorialists of Port-Royal, and Jean de Launoy.

They have preserved eyewitness accounts and original documents, and they offer a solid historical foundation for reconstructing many of the truths of Montfort's life.

[28] The nineteenth century's "romanticized" conception of history influenced hagiography in two main ways: Although a biography should relive the outer events of a saint's past, it was more important to describe the interior drama of his soul.

The author separated himself from his predecessors by describing Montfort, his life, and his pastoral work using a historical-critical and psycho-sociological approach.

Perouas held that the Breton saint's path was a "tormented journey" because he had difficulty dealing with a strained relationship with his father, who was known for his violent temper.

Generally more acceptable than Perouas' Freudian psychological interpretation is his understanding of Montfort's ministry in the context of the sociological and pastoral realities of his times.