Robert, Do You Have Your Rosary With You?

Many times the child heard this question, when he left his house to go to school. His mother's question would resonate later in the memory of the adult. Member of Parliament, Secretary of State, or Prime Minister, Robert Schuman would not be able to begin a day without the little heap of luminous beads that link the earth to Heaven. And he said it each day.

The Marian tonality of his piety came from his mother. Eugenie Schuman was twenty years old when her only son was born in 1886. (...) At age 17, her son became the facilitator of Luxemburgish pilgrimages to Lourdes. Soon after, under the influence of the pope who made personal holiness, without which the believer's spiritual life remains superficial, a priority, mother and son made an act of total abandonment to the will of God. Pius X, the saint of the Eucharist, drew along in his spiritual wake the multitude of fervent souls of Catholicism. This influence succeeded the one, biblical and Marian that Leo XIII exerted deeply on the living Church.

The two poles of Robert Schuman's spirituality were also created by two great popes, conveyed to him by his mom's heart. The Eucharist and the Word of God would guide his whole life. At dawn, he invariably meditated a passage of Scripture. And whenever possible, he attended Mass. Always in the company of Mary, « our beloved Mother » as he like to say. Lourdes, La Salette, the Chapel of the Miraculous Medal in Paris, were his favorite Marian stopovers.