There he became an enemy of the state by defying the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which would have required him to take an oath affirming the Revolution's secular values and disclaiming the authority of the Roman Catholic Church.

One of his allies in this work was Marie-Thérèse Charlotte de Lamourous, whom he later assisted in founding Bordeaux's Miséricorde (House of Mercy) for "fallen women".

After the Coup of 18 Fructidor by the French Directory in 1797, he fled the country and found refuge for three years in Zaragoza, Spain[3] While living there, he would regularly visit the Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar out of his strong devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

To this end, he decided to build an organization of both lay and religious Order members, taking the Virgin Mary as the model of a perfect disciple of Jesus.

[3] When he returned to Bordeaux in November 1800, he re-established the Marian Sodality, which he hoped would promote the desecularization of France by offering "the spectacle of a people of saints".

In 1995 the healing from lung cancer of Elena Otera, a resident of Buenos Aires, was studied as a possible miracle to be attributed to the intercession of Chaminade.

[8] Rachel Baumgartner, then a high school student in St. Louis, Missouri, in the United States, was diagnosed in December 1998 with Askin's tumor, a kind of sarcoma.

She was a member of the Parish of Our Lady of the Pillar, founded and staffed by the Marianists, and was chosen to attend the ceremony for Chaminade's beatification in Rome in 2000.

Early the next year the tumor was found to have re-appeared in her bone marrow, for which she underwent a stem cell transplant, which had a severe negative impact on her health.

The Marianist pastor of the parish referred this matter to the Superior General of the Society of Mary, who in turn requested that the local bishop, the Archbishop of St. Louis, conduct a formal inquiry.