St. Solomon Leclercq

St. Solomon Leclercq (15 November 1745 – 2 September 1792) was born Guillaume-Nicolas-Joseph Leclercq at Boulogne-sur-Mer, France, and joined the Brothers of the Christian Schools, the teaching congregation founded by St. John Baptist de La Salle, taking the religious name Brother Solomon. He served for many years as a teacher, bursar, and secretary to the superior general of the institute.

During the French Revolution, when the government demanded that clergy and religious swear the oath of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, Solomon refused to take the schismatic oath and continued his religious life in hiding. Arrested in 1792, he was imprisoned in the Carmelite convent in Paris and, in the September Massacres that swept the city, was killed together with more than a hundred priests and religious. Beatified in 1926, he was canonized by Pope Francis in 2016 — the first member of the De La Salle Brothers to be declared both saint and martyr.