(reading time of about 12 minutes)
Rock workshop October 22, 2014
Andre Coindre and the
Brothers of the Sacred Heart
Slide 1 Title
The purpose of this workshop today is to help you understand more deeply the Brothers of the Sacred Heart and its founder Andre COINDRE (pronounced KWANDRAH). It is not so much to learn the details of the founding of the brothers as much as it is to understand WHY the brothers came into existence and HOW all of us here today at St. Stanislaus can support the brothers and the mission their founder gave them.
Slide 2 French Revolution
To understand why the brothers came into being we need to start with the French Revolution because it destroyed everything that Andre and his parents grew up believing in. In the decades before 1800, the French nation rebelled against its leaders including the royalty and the church. Those who wanted to establish a secular (non-religious) Republic felt they had to destroy everything, including the ruling class, and start all over.
Slide 3 Lady Revolution
For ten years there was nothing but violence, treason, and terror. The French Revolution destroyed everything in French society.
Slide 4 Battle in the streets
What most concerns us here is the terror that tried to wipe out Christianity. Priests and religious men and women were either deported or executed. Public and private worship were outlawed and so was religious education. Priests were forced to marry or lose their life.
Slide 5 Guillotine
The guillotine was the main instrument of terror. This drawing shows the beheading of 16 religious nuns from the same convent. Religious and priests had to go underground or renounce their faith. No schools were left, churches were ruined, children did not go to school.
Slide 6 Scene of signing
After years of violence and terror, Napoleon became strong enough to put an end to the revolution and begin the reconstruction of France. He finally signed what is called a concordat, a peace treaty with the church. It finally became legal to practice religion again.
Slide 7 Lyon
During the revolution, the river in Lyon (pronounced LEE-on) flowed red with the blood of terror. Great numbers of men were shot in the city square in a scene of mass execution. We are most interested in the city

of Lyon after the revolution. To help the city recover, CLICK a man named Jacquard (Ja-card) invented a highly technical loom for the weaving of silk. Lyon became a center of the silk industry. CLICK To make a living, families brought looms into their homes and lived around them as they worked all the daylight hours weaving.
Slide 8 Tapestry
The silk of Lyon was prized and often exported. CLICK Skilled workers were needed to put the thread on the bobbins click and to maintain the machinery CLICK and skilled workers were needed to operate the
Jacquard looms.
Slide 9 Church
In the parish church of the silk weaving area, CLICK twice Andre Coindre was assigned to be pastor. He was a young priest about 30 years old, and he took his work of rebuilding the church in Lyon quite seriously.
He was a leader among the priests of the area.
Slide 10 River scene
Click Something important happened to Father Andre on June 2 nd ,1817. He went to the top of the hill that overlooks Lyon to visit a hospital. CLICK What he saw there gave him eyes of compassion. CLICK
Slide 11 City with Eyes of compassion
After the revolution, hospitals had become refugee camps. CLICK Father Andre’s heart went out to the children he saw there being herded together without teachers and without instruction. CLICK He also visited the prisons in Lyon and there his heart went out to boys as young as 10 years old being treated as prisoners and living with hardened criminals. He witnessed the abuse which the boys were subjected to.
Slide 12 Wharf scene
His eyes of compassion surveyed the wharves along the rivers of Lyon; he witnessed boys and teenagers being mistreated. He saw them committing petty crimes. Click He saw boys idle in the streets Click and homeless. Click After looking into their eyes, he wanted to do something to rescue them from the ruins of the revolution.
Slide 13 Sketch of building
He decided to put all the money he had and asked his father to do the same so he could buy a silk factory.
Click The factory would be a sanctuary where he could rescue boys. Buying it was a huge sacrifice and risk because in today’s economy the money he invested was over $300,000. Click click The price included nine working looms. Click With the help of certain businessmen and officials of the hospitals and prisons, he welcomed 24 boys to live in the factory. There they worked, learned the skills of weaving, were supervised to keep them out of trouble, and were schooled in their faith.
Slide 14 “Sanctuary”
click Father Andre wanted his sanctuary to be a place where young boys and teenagers could be isolated from the influence of perverse men, taught an honest trade, and given a sound grounding in their religion.

That was the mission he gave himself and the brothers and their lay partners. Click Father Andre told the brothers that no matter how difficult to work with some of these boys might be Click , hope for their transformation should never be lost.
Slide 15 Eyes of Compassion
Click His bishop wrote to the mayor of a nearby town saying of him click “he consecrates himself entirely to good works notably in the prisons and hospitals of Lyon and in the large establishment for boys which he just founded with his own money. For a long time now he has been an advocate of youth.”
Slide 16 Saint Louis
After a number of years, the silk factory became a boarding school for boys. It still stands today with the name St. Louis. The Brothers of the Sacred Heart consider it their first work and their inspiration of how to accomplish their mission. The brothers who directed it during World War II took in Jewish boys as a way to rescue them from deportation to concentration camps during the Nazi occupation of France.
Slide 17 Stairway
To know the early brothers’ work, it might be good to get to know some of the young people who climbed these stairs to live under the watchful and caring eye of Andre Coindre. Click One of them was 13-year old
Vincent Brianson. Vincent ran away from home to escape from his father who was beating him click and threatened to “make him bleed,” as Vincent told the police. Click His relatives hid him in a church. When his father came knocking on the church doors, they gave Vincent girls’ clothes so he could escape. When Vincent arrived at the sanctuary he wrote a letter back to his father telling him, “I have found a safe place.”
Slide 18 Loom
A second teenager Click who lived in the sanctuary was named Lespinasse. He was a very good operator of the weaving machines to the point that he taught the other boys and sometimes even the brothers. He had a strong personality and one night snuck out of the dormitory and needed a severe reprimand. There was an exchange of letters between the brother in charge and Father Andre about how to discipline Lespinasse so he could learn from the serious mistake he made.
Slide 19 Stephanie
A third teen whom Father Andre welcomed was Stephanie Simon. She was 14 and had lost both her mother and father. Stephanie moved from one school to another when she met Father Andre. In a letter to him she lied about where she was and ended up living in a dress shop click where she was not safe and could not be properly supervised. Father Andre moved her to a safe place to learn a trade as a florist under the supervision of some women he knew.
Slide 20 CORROI
John Corroi was 10 years old when he came to the sanctuary. His father died in a sawmill accident and his mother was a washerwoman. He joined a group of six others about his age who stayed four years learning the silk trade. They worked several hours a day on the weaving machines click and then the brothers would sell their products. The money was put into a savings account so that when they graduated they would have money to live independently.

Slide 21 Question
Suggestion: ask students to respond to this question. Take 4 or 5 suggestions then continue the presentation.
About 8 minutes elapsed
Slide 22: That was May 1818
The first brothers’ mission was to gather vulnerable teenagers into his sanctuary which became their school and their home where they could become good men, good Christians, good fathers of a family, and good citizens of their country.
Slide 23 map
The Brothers of the Sacred Heart spread through the world. Click With lay partners, just as at the time of the founder, Click the brothers now run about 120 schools in thirty different countries. Slide 24 map 2
Up until now we’ve been speaking about the Brothers’ very first school. Click twice. Now we will take a look at the most recent one. Click twice in Mozambique in 2010. We’ll see some interesting similarities between the first school and the last one.
Slide 25 Question
At a worldwide meeting in 2006 the brothers asked themselves: what groups of teens today are most in need of the attention of brothers and their partners? The brothers wanted to be inspired by Andre Coindre’s compassionate way of looking. They wanted to go to a place where the needs resembled the needs of his times.
Click: The answer was the youth of Mozambique.
Slide 26 map of Mozambique
Mozambique is one of the countries in the world that suffers the most from severe illness and poor health.
Hepatitis, Malaria and AIDS contribute to its high death rate. Around 70% of its population is below the poverty line.
Slide 27 Soldier painting
Like France at the time of Father Coindre, Mozambique has just been through a long period of revolution, first from Portugal, and then from the communist government which took control after its war of independence.
Slide 28 six soldiers
The effects of the revolutions in Mozambique were the same as the effects of the French revolution. Schools, churches, and other institutions for the aid of the population were all destroyed.
Slide 29 Countryside
The fertile countryside was not being cultivated. The communist government had confiscated properties and fields. Click. And in what concerns the Brothers of the Sacred Heart, the former Catholic school in

AMATONGAS had been ruined by being used as rebel headquarters. It was gutted. Nothing was left but the walls. After a cease-fire and peace, the brothers arrived with the mission of making this school into a sanctuary for some of the thousands of orphans left behind without parents because of war and disease.
CLICK The vision of Andre Coindre was needed here more than anywhere else. An international group of brothers has now been there nearly five years, and with the help of brothers everywhere and of aid organizations, they turned Mission Amatongas into the pride of the diocese.
Slide 30 Countryside
CLICK The Amatongas mission is a high school for students including about 50 orphans, whose tuition is paid by different brothers’ communities and lay men and women in the other 29 countries. The brothers here at St. Stanislaus sponsor two orphans.
Slide 31 Boys eating
Last year during Lent, our school, on two different Fridays, agreed to eat the simple meal which the boys in
Amatongas eat, cornmeal and beans, so that we could send our lunch money to the students there who need protein in their diet.
Slide 32 countryside
Slide 33
We fasted in order to be able to send them $2500.
Slide 34 Truck
With that money they bought hens which would lay eggs to improve their diet.
Slide 35 Boys and Crates
Slide 36 Emptying crate
Slide 37 Chickens
Slide 38 Question
12 minutes elapsed
Those of you who were here last year remember the two days of Fast on Fridays of Lent. Let us take some time now to tell the new students about it.
 Get someone to explain to the group, if necessary
 Break into smaller groups so they can discuss the question: what can we do this year to support the
Brothers and boys in Amatongas?
 Do you want to repeat what we did?
 Do you want to fast on more days, as some have suggested?
 Do you have other ideas for expressing Andre Coindre’s compassion for truly needy youth?