Basile Moreau
Basile Moreau (born February 11, 1799 in Laigné-en-Belin , Arrondissement Le Mans , † January 20, 1873 in Le Mans ) was a French Roman Catholic priest , people's missionary and founder of an order. In 2007 he was beatified .
Life
Basile-Antoine Marie Moreau was the ninth of 14 children of a wine merchant. Born at the time of the revolutionary secularizations , he was baptized by a fugitive priest himself and was brought up religiously. In 1816 he entered the Sulpician - Seminar at Le Mans and was 1821 with dispensation from the canonical age for diocesan priests ordained. In the following years he was given teaching and pastoral duties at the diocesan seminaries. His main concern was the popular mission and the development of the community after the collapse of the old church structures.
In 1833 Moreau brought the auxiliary priests together in Le Mans to form a community that was supposed to support the overburdened pastors with catechesis . In 1835, Bishop Jean-Baptiste Bouvier also made him head of the St. Joseph Brotherhood, which had been founded 15 years earlier. Moreau united the two communities in 1837 to form the Congregation of the Holy Cross ( Congrégation de Sainte-Croix ), named after the place where it was founded, Sainte-Croix near Le Mans. In 1840 he and a group of founding members took their religious vows . In 1841 he also started a female branch of the community.
Moreau's whole commitment was to deepen the spirituality and community life of the congregation, to which he gave the motto Ave Crux, spes unica and the Mater Dolorosa as patron saint. He tried to obtain papal approbation , but encountered resistance from Bishop Bouvier, who also disagreed with him on other issues. Only three years after Bouvier's death was the license to practice medicine granted in 1857.
As early as 1842 the Congregation ventured into the overseas mission. Moreau sent seven members to the United States , including Edward Sorin . When he began to act independently and unauthorized in his new area of activity, supported by the local bishop, and demanded financial support from home - u. a. for the founding of the University of Notre Dame in Indiana - a conflict ensued that weighed heavily on and humiliated Moreau. He anticipated the collapse of the congregation when he resigned from the leadership in 1866. Sorin was his successor in 1868.
Moreau retired to a house of the Holy Cross Sisters, but continued to work as a preacher and retreat leader until his death .
Adoration
After his death, Moreau was almost completely forgotten or deliberately kept quiet. The renewal of his memory was a matter of dispute between the various parts of his congregation, with a nephew of Moreau playing a polarizing role. He remained unknown to the convents in the USA until the 1930s. In France, the Congregation published his spiritual writings and letters from 1920. In 1931 the community bought back the original convent church in Le Mans-Sainte-Croix. After their thorough restoration, the remains of Moreau were transferred from the cemetery to the crypt of the church on November 9, 1938 and venerated in a grand celebration of all branches of the Holy Cross Congregation.
In 1948, Moreau's intercession was credited with a first healing miracle. In 1955, after long preparations, the beatification process began. Pope John Paul II gave Moreau the title of Venerable Servant of God in 2003 , a preliminary stage to beatification, which was commissioned by Benedict XVI. took place on September 15, 2007 in the Antarès in Le Mans under the direction of José Cardinal Saraiva Martins .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ “Greetings, holy cross, only hope”, from the hymn Vexilla regis
- ↑ a b cscfrance.org
- ↑ Blessed Basile Moreau , accessed October 9, 2017
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Moreau, Basile |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Moreau, Basile-Antoine Marie; Moreau, Basil Anthony Mary |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French priest and founder of the order; Blessed |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 11, 1799 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Laigné-en-Belin |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 20, 1873 |
| Place of death | Le Mans |