René Voillaume

At sixteen, Voillaume read a biography of Charles de Foucauld by René Bazin which changed his life.

[1] In 1923 he entered the Seminary of Saint Sulpice in Issy les Moulineaux near Paris and studied philosophy for two years before joining the White Fathers at Maison Carree, Algiers.

[2] In 1933, by then a priest, he and four companions went to live in Algerian Sahara (then a French colony) in El Abiodh Sidi Cheikh oasis.

In 1952 he founded, along with Marguerite Poncet, the fraternity Jesus Caritas, a secular women's institute present today on five continents.

Voillaume was also the author of Contemplation today, in which he wrote: "All the great Christian contemplatives are unanimous in their testimony: whatever the spiritual path, union with God is perceived by them as real, a more existential reality, more solid, more full of being and certainty than any other experience of the physical world.