Gabriel Rosset is Columbia magazine Catholic Man of the Month

 Gabriel Rosset (b. November 28,1904-d. d. December 30 1974)

Columbia Magazine Catholic Man of the Month is a saint for help to the homeless:

Gabriel Rosset was born in 1904 in Champier, near La Côte-Saint-André, in Isère. He was born into a modest family of peasant origin. His father was a police officer.

When a teacher in Lyon, France, he learned about the alarmingly high number of homeless men dying under the city's bridges after World War II.  He felt called to act.  The apostolate, he co-founded Notree-Dame des Sans Abri (Our Lady of the Homeless) - continues to serve thousands of people in need today.

Gabriel Rosset was born in Champier, a commune in southeastern France. An exceptional student, he became a literature teacher at age 24.  Most of the 40-year teaching career was spent at the Lycee Alexandre Lacassagne in Lyon, where he later received the Legion of Honor award for education in 1965.

As a young man, Rosset often joined other Catholic teachers and univeresity students for fellowship and prayer.  This led him and two friends to consecrate themselves to the Lord on July 24, 1937, with the goal of "serving the university and bringing our students back to Christ".  They would later take private vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.

In the late 1940s, Lyon suffered an acute housing crisis, and many displaced men died from exposure.

Moved by their misery, Rosset began to distribute blankets to men on the street and even welcomed some into his home. On Christmas Eve, in 1940, he and a team of volunteers established the first Our Lady of the Homeless shelter in an abandoned bistro.  Three years later, Rosset moved in with the destitute men he served.  "I felt linked to them by a necessity, a bond," he said.  "I believe that the mystics like Saint Paul called that charity."

With the help of students and other volunteers, Rosset established more houses to serve the homeless, including families in need.  

By the time of his death on December 30, 1974, he and built 1,500 housing units for more than 10,000 people.  His cause for canonization was opened in 2006.