Eugene was no stranger to youth work. Four years earlier, while he was a seminarian in Paris, he had charge of a catechism class for difficult boys. What he had learnt through that experience was certainly to be a help in the Youth Congregation he had started. I quote from a letter to his mother describing his seminary experience:
I will not be able to write to you as much as I would like, as tomorrow I take on a new job that will involve a lot of work. At St. Sulpice we have six or seven catechism classes, which are going wonderfully well and are really admirable in the way they are set up… Just one of these catechism classes was not going to the satisfaction of the catechetics director, not so much perhaps because of any fault on the part of the people in charge as because of the bad attitude of the members of the class; these are the poorest in the parish, children of tavern keepers, in a word a seedy lot. It has been decided that perhaps I might breathe some life into this ailing body, and so I have been chosen to be its head.
Rumour has it that the intention is for me to go on then to another, but I am not concerned with that, and I am very happy to find myself in the middle of these poor lice-ridden boys, whom I shall try to win over to ourselves. Tomorrow we are going to meet for the first time and God willing we will be good friends.
Letter to his mother, 4 February 1809, O.W. XIV n.44
There was a difference between the group in Paris of 1809 and the group that Eugene started in Aix in 1813. In Paris he aimed at teaching a group of poor boys the basics of religion. In Aix, however, his aim was to form the youth into a core group that would reach out to their peers in the city, and to achieve the same results with them.