You probably guessed that I picked this guy because his name is Scubilion. True. And it is even better that he chose that name when he took holy orders -- he was born with the name Jean Bernard Rousseau, but thought that Brother Scubilionis (no kidding) sounded better. Hey Brother Scooby, want a snack?
Of course, reading about his life wiped the smile off my face. In 1833, he was assigned to teach slaves on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean (east of Madagascar). I didn't know anything about Reunion Island (called Ile Bourbon until the French Revolution) so I looked it up. It was uninhabited when the Portuguese explored it, but then the French settled it as a slave colony. A couple hundred thousand Africans being worked to death by a few thousand French overseers in the sunny tropics.
Brother Scooby spent thirty-four years there, teaching and working with the slaves until his death at age 70.
Well, I couldn't help making fun of that name either:
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