Mutien-Marie Wiaux
| Saint Mutien-Marie Wiaux, F.S.C. | |
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| Born | 1841 Mellet, Hainaut, Belgium |
| Died | 1917 Malonne, Namur, Belgium |
| Venerated in |
Roman Catholic Church (Brothers of the Christian Schools) |
| Beatified | 30 October 1977, Vatican City, by Pope Paul VI |
| Canonized | 10 December 1989, Vatican City, by Pope John Paul II |
| Major shrine | Shrine of Brother Muthien-Marie Fond de Malonne 117 Malonne, Namur, Belgium |
| Feast | 30 January |
Saint Mutien-Marie Wiaux, F.S.C., (also known as Mutien-Marie of Malonne) was a Belgian member of the Brothers of Christian Schools, who spent his life as a teacher and is honored as a saint by the Catholic Church.
He was born Louis-Joseph Wiaux in the small village of Mellet, now part of the town of Les Bons Villers, in French-speaking Belgium, to a devoutly Catholic family. The third of six children, his father was a blacksmith, while his mother ran a café out of their house. After the joviality of evening, where customers would enjoy the beer and card games, the family would end their day by praying the rosary together.
Wiaux was a gentle, obedient boy who was marked by his piety, leading his classmates to pray at their local church at the end of the school day. After he finished elementary school, he worked as an apprentice in his father's shop, where he found that he was both physically and temperamentally unfit for this career. The call to join a religious order, meanwhile, had begun to take root in his heart, and he considered following his brother into the Society of Jesus.
The pastor of the town, the Abbé Sallié, however, spoke to the boy about the Brothers of the Christian Schools (commonly called the Christian Brothers), who were about to open a school in the nearby town of Gosselies. He went to meet them and was convinced that it was the way of life he wanted. He traveled to the city of Namur, where he entered the Brothers' novitiate on 7 April 1856, and received the habit that following July. At that time he was also given the religious name of Mutien-Marie ("Mutien" after the ancient Roman martyr Mucian).
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