The French Revolution’s anti-clericalism left the Sanctuary stripped and empty. But a new Spring was to burst forth through the life and work of a Basque priest, Michael Garicoits. Michael was born on 15 April 1797 to a poor family living in the small hamlet of Ibarre. His parents had been forced to marry clandestinely, before a recusant priest, because the Revolutionary Terror was persecuting loyal Catholics and their priests even in the remote Basque Country.

The Garicoits family had to work hard just to survive. So it was unthinkable for Michael and his parents, that the boy’s dream of becoming a priest would ever be realised. But they had not reckoned with the faith and courage of his grandmother, who walked 20 kilometres to talk with the Parish Priest of Saint Palais about a solution to the difficulties.

Michael was to work for his keep and the cost of his studies. First he was a house servant, and then entered the service of the Bishop of Bayonne. A hard worker, he kept abreast of his classmates whilst putting in many hours of drudgery before and after school. Despite all this, he was popular and respected by his friends.

Thanks to a scholarship for the Senior Seminary of Aire sur l’Adour, Michael was able to study full time, eventually ending up as a teacher at the Junior Seminary of Larressore, where he was noted both for his intelligence and for his humane understanding of his charges.

St Michael's house.

After priestly ordination on 20 December 1823, Michael was sent as Curate to Cambo. There, long before the decree of Pope Pius X in 1910, he became known as the apostle of frequent Holy Communion and as a great promoter of a spiritual life devoted to the Heart of Jesus.

By the time of his arrival at the Senior Seminary of Betharram in 1827, he was already an accomplished theologian. The Bishop of Bayonne had entrusted him with the reformation of the rather lax regime at the Seminary. He was also chaplain to the nearby convent of Igon, where he encountered the shock of religious poverty. The close contact with the Daughters of the Cross and their Foundress, Saint Jeanne Elizabeth Bichier des Ages marked a turning point in his life.

When the seminarians were transferred to Bayonne, Michael became the "Rector of four walls," and knew much loneliness. Gradually the idea of forming a religious Congregation took shape in his mind. From the maturity of his meditations, the founding notion of the Betharramite spirituality was born: a contemplation of the Word Incarnate saying, at the moment of Incarnation: "Father, here I am to do your will." (Hebrews 10:16). The "Here I am" became his permanent motto. He later added: "…instantly, unreservedly, irrevocably, for love."

Soon he had attracted priests and brothers to him, founding the Congregation of Betharram in 1835. After ensuring professional and pastoral formation for his brethren, he was to send them on mission work in the parishes of the area. Schools were opened in the Atlantic Pyrenees and then in Argentina and Uruguay.

Michael Garicoits pronounced his last "Here I am" on the morning of Ascension Day, 14 May 1863. He was canonised by Pius XII in 1947. Michael’s whole life was devoted, like that of Jesus, to the fulfilment of the Father’s will for love: "To see God’s will, one must love. Love is clairvoyant: it sees all, understands all; it precedes, it foretells."

His work of Foundation was completed by one of his disciples who was very close to him during the last seven years of his life, Father Auguste Etchecopar, whose cause for Beatification has been introduced in Rome to the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints.