Henri Le Floch

Henri Le Floch CSSp (born June 8, 1862 in Kerlaz , † February 21, 1950 in the mansion of Barbegal near Arles ) was a French Roman Catholic religious priest and theologian .

Life

Henri Le Floch was the son of a lawyer from Kerlaz, Jean Le Floch, originally from Trévigodou. He had four priests in his family who resisted the revolutionary oath during the French Revolution and were imprisoned; three were deported in 1793 and one killed in 1794. As a light in his priestly life , he was guided by her example. When he was nine years old, his mother, born in Le Joncour, died at the age of thirty-three after caring for smallpox patients. At the age of eleven he was sent to a boarding school run by the brothers of the Christian schools in Likès. At that time he felt called to the priesthood. He then attended the small seminary in Pont-Croix , in 1878 the scholasticism of the Spiritans in Langonnet and then the seminary in Chevilly-Larue . He was ordained a priest on October 31, 1886 and made his profession on August 28, 1887 . Because of his poor health, he was not sent overseas, but to Merville as a teacher. In 1889 he moved to the Épinal College as professor of philosophy and prefect of studies. In 1895 he was appointed head of the newly established Heilig-Geist-Kolleg of Beauvais, which under his leadership became a recognized teaching institution. On September 8, 1900, he became rector of the Chevilly seminary and director of the great scholasticate. His commitment during the church persecution by the Third Republic of France helped the Spiritans to stay. He then received his doctorate in philosophy at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and in 1905 in theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University .

At the age of forty he was appointed rector of the French Pontifical Seminary in Rome, where he trained about sixty future bishops. When France no longer had an ambassador to the Holy See, he was assigned a secret mission between Rome and the government of the French Republic.

As an advocate of anti-modern, anti-liberal and anti-democratic positions, he was close to the ideas of Charles Maurras and Action française . After the condemnation of the nationalist newspaper and its director by the Vatican in 1926, he was defeated by Pope Pius XI. urged at the request of the French government in July 1927 to resign from his position as rector of the French seminary. Bishop Marcel Lefebvre was one of his students and was shaped by his teaching.

After returning to France, he settled in the Orly novitiate . In 1939 he was appointed by Pope Pius XII. received in private audience. In 1940 he moved to Marseille in the unoccupied zone of France . He evangelized and preached in the Provence in the Aix-en-Provence area. He died with the von Roure family near Arles. His funeral was celebrated in the family chapel of the Barbegal manor by Gabriel de Llobet , Archbishop of Avignon, in the presence of many former students.

Fonts (selection)

• Louis-Marie Barazer de Lannurien, fondateur et premier supérieur du Séminaire français de Rome et la Mission du Vénérable Libermann . Rome 1910, OCLC 990147965 .
• Le Séminaire français et les institutions ecclésiastiques de Rome . Paris 1915.
• Les élites sociales et le sacerdoce . Paris 1925, OCLC 66416354 .
• Le Cardinal Billot , lumière de la théologie . Paris 1947, OCLC 459544656 .

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