Br. Gabriel Marie

Edmond Brunhes was born in 1834 at Aurillas, France, and entered the Novitiate at Clermont at age sixteen in 1850. There he received the habit and religious name of Brother Gabriel Marie. He taught in various schools in France until 1882 when he was named Assistant to the Superior General. In 1897 he was elected the thirteenth Superior General of the Institute by the same General Chapter that banned the teaching of Latin and resulted in the exile of some American Brothers to obscure assignments in Europe. Brother Gabriel Marie donated $10,000 to Glencoe and a similar amount to Christian Brothers College High School, St. Joseph, Missouri. In 1910 at the personal request of Bishop Heffron of Winona, Brother Gabriel Marie ordered Brother Emery, Provincial, to send Brothers to Winona to open a school which became Cotter High School. Thus was planted the seed which led to the Christian Brothers' acquisition of St. Mary's College in Winona, Minnesota. Brother Gabriel Marie resigned as Superior General in 1913 to return to his work as a mathematician. He died in Paris at the age of eighty-two, having been a De La Salle Christian Brother for sixty-six years