Alexandre-Antonin Taché

Alexandre-Antonin Taché

Alexandre-Antonin Taché OMI (born July 23, 1823 in Rivière-du-Loup , Lower Canada , † June 22, 1894 in Saint-Boniface , Manitoba ) was a Canadian missionary and the first Roman Catholic Archbishop of Saint-Boniface in the province Manitoba.

biography

Taché was the third oldest of five children, one of his ancestors was the French explorer Louis Joliet . When the father died in January 1826, the family moved to Boucherville , around 20 kilometers northeast of Montreal . After studying in the seminaries of the Sulpizians in Saint-Hyacinthe and Montréal, Taché joined the congregation of the Oblates in Longueuil in 1844 . He soon expressed a desire to preach to the indigenous people in the west and was posted to Saint-Boniface in the Red River Colony .

Taché arrived there in autumn 1845 and was ordained a priest on October 12th by Bishop Joseph-Norbert Provencher . He learned the basics of the Ojibwe language and was commissioned to set up a mission station in Île-à-la-Crosse (now in northern Saskatchewan ) . He later learned Cree and Athapaskan . In 1847 he came to Fort Chipewyan . In the same year, the Apostolic Vicariate Northwest became the diocese of Saint-Boniface . Pope Pius IX appointed him on June 14, 1850 titular bishop of Arathia and coadjutor of the bishop of Saint-Boniface, Joseph Norbert Provencher; he only found out about the appointment six months later.

On November 23, 1851, the episcopal ordination followed in Marseille by Eugene von Mazenod , the founder of the order and Bishop of Marseille . In June 1852 Taché was back in Saint-Boniface. With Provencher's death on June 7, 1853, he took over the diocese of Saint-Boniface. In 1869 he took part in the first Vatican Council in Rome . In January 1870 he returned at the request of the Canadian government to bring about peace after the Red River Rebellion , in which Louis Riel (one of his former students) played a leading role. In September 1871 the diocese of Saint-Boniface was elevated to an archdiocese.

Taché died in 1894 at the age of 70; the town of Taché in the province of Manitoba and Avenue Taché in Winnipeg are named after him .

Web links

• Alexandre-Antonin Taché . In: Dictionary of Canadian Biography . 24 volumes, 1966–2018. University of Toronto Press, Toronto ( English , French ).
• Entry on Alexandre-Antonin Taché on catholic-hierarchy.org

predecessor	Office	successor
Joseph Norbert Provencher	Archbishop of Saint-Boniface 1853–1894	Louis-Philippe-Adélard Langevin