67 rue du Breuil (Route Napoléon), La Mure, France [ Map ]
Eymard’s former family home is a small, three storey building situated in the main street of La Mure at 67 rue du Breuil, adjoining the rented house at 69 rue du Breuil where he was born. The house at 67 rue du Breuil was purchased by Eymard’s parents within a few years of his birth. It included a ground-floor shop and a building at the rear, which was erected by Eymard’s father Julien to house a press for extracting oil from nuts.
Eymard’s house is now owned by the Blessed Sacrament Congregation. It is a ‘place of hospitality and welcome’ for pilgrims.
Significance
From about 1815, Peter Julian Eymard grew up in the house located at 67 rue du Breuil, La Mure. As a boy, he worked in this house, assisting with his father’s oil pressing business. He lived with his sisters in this house after his parents had died, and towards the end of his life, he returned to this house to spend his final days of illness in the town of his birth and boyhood. He died in a room on the second floor of this house at 2.30 pm on 1 August 1868.
In the mid twentieth century, the future Pope John XXIII (now a canonised saint) visited Eymard’s house during the period when he was serving as Apostolic Nuncio to France (1944-53). Years later, in his homily at the ceremony of the canonisation of St Peter Julian Eymard on 9 December 1962, Pope John recalled with emotion the experience of seeing with his own eyes ‘the poor bed’ in ‘the humble dwelling where this faithful imitator of Christ gave up his beautiful soul to God’.
Eymardian Places 