François-Marie-Benjamin Richard de la Vergne

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Cardinal Richard de la Vergne (after 1900)

François-Marie-Benjamin Cardinal Richard de la Vergne (born March 1, 1819 in Nantes , † January 28, 1908 in Paris ) was a French Roman Catholic bishop . From 1886 until his death he was Archbishop of Paris .

Life

Richard de la Vergne came from a small noble family in the Vendée . His father was a wealthy doctor. The family had eleven children. The boy received his school lessons from private tutors. In 1841 he entered the renowned Saint-Sulpice seminary in Paris and completed the philosophical , theological and ascetic studies. On 21 December 1844 he received by Archbishop Denis Auguste Affre in the church of Saint-Sulpice , the ordination . He then worked in the diocese of Nantes in pastoral care.

In 1846 Richard was sent to Rome for a three-year postgraduate course . On his return he became secretary to the Bishop of Nantes Antoine Jacquemet and in 1850 vicar general of the diocese. He held this office until Jacquemet's death in 1869.

In December 1871, Richard was appointed Bishop of Belley by Pope Pius IX. He received his episcopal ordination on February 11, 1872 in the church of the Dames du Sacré-Cœur in Paris by Archbishop Joseph Hippolyte Guibert . As Bishop of Belley, he initiated the process of beatification of the pastor of Ars Jean-Marie Vianney .

In 1875 Richard was appointed coadjutor archbishop of Paris and titular archbishop of Larissa in Thessalia . After Archbishop Guibert's death in July 1886, he became his successor.

In the consistory of May 24, 1889 Pope Leo XIII. Archbishop Richard cardinal with the titular church Santa Maria in Via . As such, he took part in the 1903 conclave that Pius X chose.

Politically, Richard's tenure was marked by the conflict between supporters and opponents of the Third Republic . Personally more royalist , he nevertheless followed the line of depolarization ( ralliement ) that Leo XIII. the French Church with his encyclical Au milieu des sollicitudes of 1892. All attempts to bridge the gap between religiously motivated reaction and secularism failed, however, and Richard had to see that despite his repeated protests, all religious orders in France were banned in 1903 and the law separating church and state was passed in 1905 . In 1906 he had to move out of the archiepiscopal palace in Paris.

In theology, the modernism controversy about the historical-critical method in the interpretation of the Bible and its consequences for church teaching intensified during Richard's tenure . Alfred Loisy , the leading French “modernist”, who had to appear several times at Cardinal Richard's, experienced him as a personality of “granite faith”, unaffected by any doubts, rejecting any personal thought that went beyond the formulas of traditional doctrine , but also as kind and striving for justice. In 1896 de la Vergne attended the funeral of the anti-Semite Marquis de Morès , a friend of Édouard Drumonts .

François-Marie-Benjamin Richard de la Vergne died at the age of almost 89 in January 1908. He was laid out in the Notre-Dame Cathedral and buried in it. In 1925, his remains were transferred to the crypt of the Sacré-Cœur de Montmartre basilica , for the completion of which he had vigorously worked.

literature

Web links

Commons : François-Marie-Benjamin Richard de la Vergne  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ paris.catholique.fr
  2. ↑ Hôtel du Châtelet, timetable  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / travail-emploi.gouv.fr  
  3. ↑ Alfred Loisy: Choses passées , Paris 1913, pp. 149–150
predecessor Office successor
Pierre-Henri Gérault de Langalerie Bishop of Belley
1872–1875 		Jean-Joseph Marchal
Joseph Hippolyte Guibert Archbishop of Paris
1886–1908 		Léon-Adolphe Amette
personal data
SURNAME Richard de la Vergne, François-Marie-Benjamin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Richard, François-Marie-Benjamin; Richard, Cardinal François-Marie-Benjamin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French cardinal, Archbishop of Paris
DATE OF BIRTH March 1, 1819
PLACE OF BIRTH Nantes
DATE OF DEATH January 28, 1908
Place of death Paris