This definitive introduction to the life and vision of Blessed Basil Moreau is the first book to gather together the essential spiritual, pastoral, and educational writings of the nineteenth-century French priest who founded the Congregation of Holy Cross, which is the religious order that founded the University of Notre Dame in 1842.
Basil Moreau: Essential Writings is an anthology of all the important published and previously unpublished writings of Basil Moreau, who was beatified in 2007 by the Catholic Church. This anthology provides generous selections from Moreau’s sermons, pastoral letters, educational treatises, and spiritual reflections, which reveal a figure who was no stranger to difficulty and conflict but also a man deeply committed to a hope that can only emerge from Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection.
Blessed Basil Moreau (February 11, 1799–January 20, 1873) was the French priest who founded the Congregation of Holy Cross in 1837. The congregation’s name was taken from the small French town, Sainte-Croix, in which the congregation was founded. While the congregation was still in its early stages, Moreau sent members to developing areas of the world—Algeria, Canada, Bangladesh, and the United States—to make God known, loved, and served. Today, members of Holy Cross live and work in sixteen countries on five continents. In the United States, Holy Cross missionaries founded—and continue to serve—many schools, including the University of Notre Dame and the University of Portland. Moreau was beatified on September 15, 2007, in Le Mans, France.
Rev. Kevin Grove, C.S.C., was ordained a priest in the Congregation of Holy Cross in 2010. In 2015, he was awarded a PhD in theology from the University of Cambridge. Fr. Grove is the coeditor of the first edition of
The Cross, Our Only Hope and
Basil Moreau: Essential Writings.
Rev. Andrew Gawrych, C.S.C., was ordained a priest in the Congregation of Holy Cross in 2008. He serves as the director of the Congregation's International House of Formation in Santiago, Chile, after years working in parishes in the United States. Fr. Gawrych is the editor and coeditor of several Holy Cross books, including the first edition of
The Cross, Our Only Hope; The Gift of Hope; The Gift of the Cross; You Have Redeemed the World; and
Basil Moreau: Essential Writings.
John C. Cavadini is the McGrath-Cavadini Director of the Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame. A member of Notre Dame’s department of theology, Cavadini served as chair of the department from 1997 to 2010, during which he led the department to a top-ten ranking in the National Research Council rankings of doctoral programs. He is an expert in patristic and early medieval theology, with a special focus on the theology of St. Augustine. In November 2009 he was appointed by Pope Benedict XVI to a five-year term on the International Theological Commission.
