Étienne Pernet

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Étienne Pernet (undated)

Étienne Pernet (born July 23, 1824 in Vellexon , † April 3, 1899 in Paris ) was a French Roman Catholic clergyman, Assumptionist and founder of the order. He and Antoinette Fage start the Petites Soeurs de l'Assomption (Little Sisters of the Assumption of Mary, also: Little Sisters of Assumptio ).

life and work

Difficult beginnings

Pernet was born as the eldest surviving child of a Franche-Comté farming family in Vellexon (between Vesoul and Gray ) and grew up there and in Voiron . The adolescent intended by his mother for the priesthood, who lost his father at the age of 14, went to a preparatory school in Membrey in 1838 and entered the so-called Small Seminary in Luxeuil in 1840 . In 1841 he moved to the Vesoul seminary and in 1843 to the Besançon seminary . In April 1845 he resigned for unexplained reasons and hired himself out as prefect of an orphanage in Dole , then as a private teacher at Sermange Castle .

The Assumptionist

In 1848 he went to Paris and was referred from Marie-Eugénie de Jésus to Emmanuel d'Alzon in Nîmes in 1849 , where he was integrated into the small Assumptionist community founded in 1845. He worked in the schools of the order in Nîmes, Paris, Clichy , Rethel and again Nîmes. Together with Henri Brun (1821–1895), Victor Cardenne (1821–1851) and Hippolyte Saugrain (1822–1902) he took his first religious vows in 1850 and was dressed for Christmas in 1851. On April 3, 1858, he was ordained a priest together with Saugrain (which his mother, who died in 1857, did not live to see).

Founding of the Little Sisters of Assumptio

In 1863 Pernet went to the Assumptionist Community of Paris (Rue François 1er No. 8), which was headed by François Picard (1831-1903). There he became the father of the poor and the workers and founded a small women's community in the rue Vaneau in 1864, knowing clearly that in the misery of poor families only women can adequately work. In the same year he met a woman of great ability in Antoinette Fage, who was of the same age, and in June 1865 made her superior of the community of sisters at 233 rue Saint Dominique (later rue Violet 57), which had eight members and was in extreme poverty Took care of the poor. The intimate spiritual friendship between Pernet and Antoinette Fage lasted until her death in 1883.

Rome-Metz-Mainz-Paris

In 1870 Pernet was in Rome on behalf of the order when the Franco-Prussian War forced his return. He volunteered as a field chaplain, worked in the enclosed Metz and in October 1870 accompanied the captured French soldiers to Mainz . He stayed there until February 1871, during which time he met Bishop Ketteler several times . Back in Paris, he had to flee temporarily to Arras before the Paris Commune .

The expansion of his plant

After the diocese officially recognized the community of sisters in 1875, Pernet founded the Dames Servantes des Pauvres (Ladies in the Service of the Poor) in 1876 , a lay community that provided practical help to the sisters in everyday life and accompanied them when they visited the poor. One of his goals was to overcome class differences. In 1881 he founded a brotherhood of family fathers among the workers ( Fraternité Notre-Dame de l'Assomption ) and in 1884 the Filles de Sainte Monique for their wives . The spiritual direction of the Little Sisters was withdrawn from him by the bishop in 1876 because the Assumptionists in the Gallican diocese were considered too ultramontane , but Antoinette Fage stubbornly stuck to him and achieved his reinstatement in 1880.

Success and recognition

After the death of Antoinette Farge in 1883, Pernet worked in the same way with her successor Eugénie Jacobs (1853-1922). He traveled to the numerous foundations of the emerging congregation, which in 1896 had four hundred sisters, including London, Dublin and New York. On March 9, 1893 he reached in a personal conversation with Pope Leo XIII. the papal recognition of the congregation (officially 1897). In his own order he was appointed general assistant (de facto second man of the order) in 1898. When he was dying in 1899 at the age of 74, Archbishop Richard said goodbye to him on his deathbed. He was buried next to Antoinette Farge. The beatification process, initiated in Rome in 1931, led to recognition as a Venerable Servant of God in 1983 . A square in Paris has been named after him since 1964. In Bihorel , the Social Pernet Center bears his name.

Interest in his life

Pernet's option for the poor has attracted the attention of numerous biographers, both inside and outside France, until recently. Pope Francis , in whose life a little sister of Assumptio played an important role, personally wrote the foreword to the biography in Italian, published in 2018 .

literature

  • Le révérend Père Etienne Pernet. Religieux des Augustins de l'Assomption et fondateur des Petites-Soeurs de l'Assomption, garde-malades des pauvres à domicile . E. Vitte, Lyon 1902, 1910 (English: London 1902; Italian: Rome 1906).
  • Life of Père Etienne Pernet. Founder of the Congregation of Little Sisters of the Assumption . Burns Oates & Washbourne, London 1928, 215 pp.
  • Geneviève Duhamelet: Les petites soeurs de l'Assomption . Editions Bernard Grasset, Paris 1932.
  • Gae͏̈tan Bernoville: Le père Pernet fondateur des petites soeurs de l'Assomption . Grasset, Paris 1944.
  • Madeleine Legoët: Un précurseur du service social familial. Etienne Pernet. Spes, Paris 1948.
  • Malachy Gerard Carroll: The swallows of the garrett. The story of Etienne Pernet . Mercier, Cork 1952.
  • Ferdinandus Morsink: Stephan Pernet. Voorloper van de gezinszorg . Boxtel 1925.
  • Pierre Hubert Humbert: Le père Pernet. Petites soeurs de l'Assomption Secrétariat général, Paris 1954.
    • (Italian) Etienne Pernet. La sua missione. Genesi della sua opera, 1824-1899 . Grafarte, Milan 1968.
  • Katherine Burton: The Stars Beyond the Storms. Father Etienne Pernet, founder of the Congregation of the Little Sisters of the Assumption . Benziger Bros. New York 1954.
  • Le Père Etienne Pernet here et aujourd'hui . Ars nova, Rome 1965.
  • Agnès Richomme: Étienne Pernet et les Petites Soeurs de l'Assomption . Ed. Fleurus, Paris 1990.
  • Frédérique de Watrigant: Passionnés de Jésus-Christ. Étienne Pernet and Antoinette Fage, fondateurs des Petites Soeurs de l'Assomption . Desclée de Brouwer, Paris 2013.
  • Paola Bergamini: Il Vangelo guancia a guancia. Vita di padre Stefano Pernet AA (1824-1899) . Piemme, Milan 2018 (foreword by Pope Francis).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://bihorel.net/centre-etienne-pernet/
  2. ↑ https://www.vaticannews.va/de/papst/news/2018-03/franziskus-schwester-baby-neugeborenes-etienne-pernet.html
personal data
SURNAME Pernet, Etienne
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French Roman Catholic clergyman, assumptionist and founder of an order
DATE OF BIRTH July 23, 1824
PLACE OF BIRTH Vellexon
DATE OF DEATH April 3, 1899
Place of death Paris