Louis Mathias

Louis Mathias SDB (born July 20, 1887 in Paris , † August 3, 1965 in Legnano ) was a French religious priest and Roman Catholic archbishop .

Life

His family went to Tunis , where Louis Mathias met the Salesians and attended their school. Attracted by the spirit of Don Bosco , he entered the religious order of the Salesians of Don Bosco in Catania and in 1905 took his religious vows . After completing his philosophical and theological studies, he was ordained a priest on July 20, 1913 . He initially returned to Sicily , but was drafted into the French army during the First World War in 1916. In 1918 he became a prisoner of war. After the end of the war he resumed his duties.

In 1921 he was appointed by his superiors as head of a Salesian mission expedition to India, where he worked as a missionary in what was then Assam with the Garo and Khasi (today's Indian state Meghalaya ). On December 15, 1922 he was appointed by Pope Pius XI. appointed Prefect of Assam in India . At the same time he was from 1926 Provincial of the North Indian Province of his religious community. During his provincial time, a novitiate , a philosophical and theological studentate , a vocational school and a university college were established.

On July 9, 1934, Pope Pius XI appointed him. as bishop of the Shillong diocese formed from this prefecture . Mathias was ordained bishop on November 10, 1934 by Archbishop Ferdinand Périer SJ and co- consecrators Alfredo Le Pailleur CSC and Giovanni Battista Anselmo PIME. On March 25, 1935, he was transferred to the Archdiocese of Madras as the successor to his late brother Claude Eugène Méderlet SDB, where he founded the “Casa della Misericordia” and other institutions. In 1937 he organized the first National Eucharistic Congress in Madras . His archbishopric was finally expanded on November 13, 1952 to the Archdiocese of Madras-Mylapore .

Mathias attended the first three sessions of the Second Vatican Council . During the last years of his life he wrote his memoir Quarant'anni di missione in India . He died on a trip to Switzerland shortly before the fourth session of the council.

Works

• Quarant'anni di Missione in India. Memorie di Monsignor Luigi Mathias. Turin 1965.

literature

• Archimede Pianazzi: "Ardisci e spera". Vita del vescovo missionario Luigi Mathias (1887–1965). Rome 1976, ISBN 978-8-82130-004-2
• Joseph Thekkedath: A history of the Salesians of Don Bosco in India. From the beginning up to 1951–52. 2005, 2 volumes, ISBN 978-8-187-37030-7

Web links

• Entry on Louis Mathias on catholic-hierarchy.org ; accessed on November 2, 2018.