Joseph Alfred Foulon

Joseph Foulon as Dome of Honor of the Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral, ca.1863

Cardinal coat of arms

Joseph Alfred Foulon (born April 29, 1823 in Paris , † January 23, 1893 in Lyon ) was Archbishop of Lyon and Cardinal .

Live and act

Joseph Foulon was born in Paris in 1823, the son of a tailor, in the parish of St. Eustache. Through the mediation of Frédéric Ozanam , he came as a pupil to the small seminary of Saint-Nicolas du Chardonnet led by Abbé Félix Dupanloup . After his theological training at the St. Sulpice Seminary and the Carmelite Seminary in Paris, which he graduated with honors, and his simultaneous study of classical literature at the Paris Sorbonne University , he was ordained a priest on December 18, 1847 in Paris . In the same year he was appointed teacher of classical literature at the Notre-Dame des Champs seminary and three years later (1850) also teacher of rhetoric, where he taught for twenty years. From 1863 to 1867 he was also rector of the seminary and canon of honor at the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral .

Bishop of Nancy

At the suggestion of his predecessor Charles Martial Lavigerie , who was promoted to Archbishop of Algiers , he was appointed Bishop of Nancy by imperial decree of January 12, 1867, Foulon was preconized on March 27, 1867, received on May 1 of the same year in the parish church of his home parish St. Eustache was ordained bishop by Lavigerie and was solemnly enthroned in Nancy on May 12th.

In 1869/70, Foulon took part in the First Vatican Council , where he belonged to the minority who spoke out against the definition of papal infallibility .

Important religious events during Foulon's tenure as Bishop of Nancy were the consecration of the diocese to the Sacred Heart of Jesus on December 3, 1871 and the coronation of the statue of Our Lady of Sion, which the Bishop solemnly celebrated on September 10, 1873. In 1874, the diocese, located on the border with the German Empire, lost part of its communities as a result of territorial changes after the Franco-German War - the eastern part of Lorraine had become part of the German Empire, but not the western part around Nancy. A few months earlier, on April 25, 1874, Bishop Foulon had been sentenced in absentia to two months of imprisonment by a German court in Saverne (Zabern) because, in a pastoral letter, which was also read in the parishes annexed by the Germans, he said France had expressed "indomitable hopes" ( indomptables espérances ) for the revision of the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine .

Promoted to Archbishop of Besançon by decree of the President of the Republic of March 22, 1882, Bishop Foulon was preconized on March 30, but retained the leadership of the diocese of Nancy as Apostolic Delegate until the appointment of his successor Turinaz .

Archbishop of Besançon

A few days after the appointment of Bishop Foulon as Archbishop of Besançon, the secular French school law of March 28, 1882 came into force, which prohibited religious instruction in public schools and abolished religious school supervision . The new archbishop had his hands full with implementing the resulting restrictions for denominational schools, maintaining school operations and setting up free schools. He also devoted himself to the seminars, the preparation of a new catechism, and several other regulations relating to studies and church conferences. As a former student of the Carmelite Seminary in Paris ( École des Carmes ), he felt called to add a higher school to the seminary, but it was just as unsustainable as that founded by one of his predecessors, Cardinal Rohan .

Archbishop of Lyon, Primate of Gaul, Cardinal

On March 23, 1887, transferred by the President to the Archbishop's Chair of Lyon and preconized by the Pope on April 26, 1887, Archbishop Foulon moved to Lyon and now also carried the honorary title of Primate of Gaul associated with this Archbishopric .

In the consistory of May 24, 1889 by Pope Leo XIII. accepted into the college of cardinals as cardinal priest with the titular church of Sant'Eusebio , Foulon received the red pileolus (skullcap) in his episcopal palace on May 27th in his episcopal palace , and on June 11th in the chapel of the Élysée Palace from the president's hand of the Republic, Sadi Carnot , the red biretta and on December 30th in Rome the cardinal's hat . On January 4, 1890, he took possession of his titular church.

On May 1, 1890, Cardinal Foulon opened the new Notre-Dame de Fourvière basilica in Lyon, still clad in scaffolding , as a homage to the Blessed Mother and the people of Lyon, and celebrated the first mass there.

death

Cardinal Foulon died on January 23, 1893. He was buried in the Cathedral of Lyon , in the same crypt as his predecessor Caverot, who had died exactly six years earlier to the day. His heart was in the chapel of the seminary of the Champs Notre Dame buried .

literature

• Emile Lesur , François Bournand: SE le cardinal Foulon, archevêque de Lyon et de Vienne, primat des Gaules. Sa vie et ses œuvres. Delhomme et Briguet, Paris / Lyon 1893.
• L'Épiscopat français. Depuis le Concordat jusqu'à la Séparation (1802-1905). Librairie de Saints-Pères, Paris 1907.

Web links

• Foulon, Joseph-Alfred. In: Salvador Miranda : The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church. ( Florida International University website), accessed December 13, 2016.
• Entry on Joseph-Alfred Foulon on catholic-hierarchy.org ; accessed on December 13, 2016.

predecessor	Office	successor
Louis-Marie-Joseph-Eusèbe Caverot	Archbishop of Lyon 1887–1893	Pierre-Hector Coullié
Pierre Antoine Justin Paulinier	Archbishop of Besançon 1882–1887	Arthur-Xavier Ducellier
Charles Martial Lavigerie	Bishop of Nancy-Toul 1867–1882	Charles François Turinaz