Ignace Le Bourget

See also: Le Bourget

Ignace Le Bourget was born with Lévis, the October 30th 1799. Its made studies with Quebec and Nicolet, it was ordered priest on November 30th, 1822, with Montreal, where it had remained for approximately a year, in the capacity as secretary of Mgr Lartigue, at that time auxiliary of Quebec in residence in Montreal. The Le Bourget abbot continued, after his ordination, to fulfill his functions of secretary until 1836, whereas, on May 13rd, Mgr Lartigue became titular of Montreal and appointed at once it its general vicar.

The following year, on March 10th, 1837, Mr. Le Bourget was elected bishop of Telmesse and coadjutor of Montreal and it was crowned on July 25th. Died of Mgr Lartigue, on April 19th, 1840, it succeeded to him of right on the episcopal see of Montreal. Mgr Le Bourget managed its diocese during thirty-six years, until May 11th, 1876, date on which he resigned. It was withdrawn soon afterwards with Sault-with-Récollet the. It is there that it accepted its title of archbishop of Martianopolis. It there lived nine years in the retirement, and died at the 85 years and 7 months age, on June 8th, 1885.

Mgr Le Bourget expressed, in its episcopal city and its diocese, and even with the outside, very far with the outside, a remarkable activity during its long administration. Its extremely many works were the success of blessed works of the sky. All that he wanted created and thrived, and the Church still profits from it, even beyond the national limits of Canada.

Hardly it had taken the reins of the administration in 1840 qu ' it appeared company and man of action as it does not meet any often. One was the shortly after the events of 1837-1838. The area of Montreal in particular, on Richelieu and in the Two-Mountains, had been agitated and " troublée" more than elsewhere. It was necessary to calm many things, to pacify the spirits by raising them towards the supernatural one. The new bishop, while showing himself very firm for the maintenance of the doctrines, got busy there with kindness, and not certainly without success.

Up to that point, and since 1657, with Montreal, the former City-Marie, Sirs of Saint-Sulpice, temporal lords of the island and in load of " the paroisse" of Notre-Dame, had, almost only, under the jurisdiction of the bishops of Quebec, seen with the control surface of spiritual as with the management of the temporal one. They had established in the middle of the last century, of the " vaults of secours" or churches branches, and founded, before, the college of Montreal in 1767. Their zeal and their love of the good, like their spirit of religion and their piety, were undeniable and indisputable. But the sphere of activity, for the exercise of the saint ministry to the service of the hearts, with the increase in the population, especially in the city, widened about this time considerably. Perhaps distinguished and devoted the wire of Mr. Olier did not include/understand it rather early all.

The Le Bourget bishop, it, realized there with an acuity of sight and a direction of forecast which the history could not rent too much. He wanted initially to increase and strengthen his clergy and his communities of new recruits, and, for that, he multiplied the institutes and the institutions, the centers of teaching and the hearths of charitable activity. With its request, Sulpiciens, in addition to their college of Montreal, established a great seminar, which opened its doors in 1840. The Brothers of the Christian Schools were in Montreal since 1837. Mgr Le Bourget encouraged them and helped them strongly. The Sisters of the Congregation of Marguerite Bourgeoys taught since 1657. The bishop did not spare his contest, his assistance and his blessings to them. But, at the same time, it estimated that, for works of instruction and education, these workmen and workers of the first hour were not enough any more with the noble task.

Pareillement, since 1659, the Hospital of the Hospital, founded in 1642 by Jeanne Mance, and, since 1747, the Gray Sisters of Mother of Youville, all nuns of a broad devotion, took care, the best possible one, of the patients, the poor, the old men and the orphans. While encouraging them and by blessing them as they deserved it, Mgr Le Bourget judged that, on this field of charity works and of assistance, as on the other, it was also advisable to increase manpower. This is why, with a generous audacity that several believed bold and that only explains undoubtedly what one called his gift of second sight towards the future, young bishop the forty year old, without neglecting to consolidate what existed already, dealt with making come from France, the old motherland, or making spout out Canadian soil of the institutes and communities of all kinds.

For the instruction of the boys, with the already existing institutions and all very deserving: the College of Montreal which went back to 1767, the Séminaire of founded Saint-Hyacinthe in 1811 by the Curé Girouard, that of Holy-Therese established in 1825 by the Curé Ducharme and the founded Collège of the Assumption in 1832 by the priest François Labelle and Misters Meilleur and Cazeneuve, which he encouraged and of which he followed and ensured progress, he added several others of them. In 1842, it made return from France the former missionaries of the first ages, the scientists and dedicated Pères Jesuits, which would open soon (in 1848) to them Collège Sainte-Marie of the Rue Bleury.

In 1847, at the end of a voyage in Europe, it even brought back itself from France the first parochial clerks of Saint-Viateur who founded this year the Collège Joliette, to Joliette, and two years after the Le Bourget college in Rigaud, and the Religieux of Holy-Crosses, which established at once to them Collège of the St. Lawrence. For the training of the young girls, undertaking it bishop did not show himself less far-sighted and active. With the Sisters of the Congregation, established in Montreal since 1657, it associated the Sœurs of the Sacred Heart in 1842 and the Sœurs of Holy-Cross in 1847, two communities which essaimèrent of France, and, at the same time or almost, the Sœurs of the Saints Names of Jesus and Marie in 1843 and the Sœurs of Holy-Anne in 1850, those of Canadian foundation.

For the work of the retirements and missions, the untiring bishop made come, of France still, in 1842, the Oblats of Marie, which were to be illustrated in high teaching in Ottawa and their glorious missions of the West and North. In addition, for charity works and of assistance, to the Sœurs of the Hospital, which existed since the beginnings of City-Marie, and to the Gray Sisters established in 1747, he added the Sœurs of Good-Pasteur, which came from France in 1844, the Sœurs of Providence and the Sœurs of Mercy, institutes founded by him, in Montreal even, the first in 1843 and the second in 1848.

It is with Mgr Le Bourget also that Montreal owes its two monasteries of pious recluses, that of the Invaluable-Blood founded in 1874 and that of the Carmélites founded in 1875. It is advisable to note in more than the majority of these institutes or communities, established or founded in Montreal by the large bishop, in the continuation spread themselves with the outside, in the West and in the United States and than the Catholic religion and the Canadian nation benefits and advantages are indebted for them which are to tell the truth incalculable.

With the remainder, by all its diocese, of which that of Saint-Hyacinthe was detached in 1852, Mgr Le Bourget, in the course of its episcopal administration of almost forty years, was shown constantly attentive with the spiritual needs and even materials of its flocks and the entire country. It was, for example, a burning and vigilant apostle of the so important and so advantageous work of colonization. It is him which entrusted to the Oblats, shortly after their arrival with the country, the missions of the area of Bytown (Ottawa). It is near him that the large colonizer of the north of Montreal, the Curé Labelle (later Mgr Labelle), found assistance and direction in his first labors of 1868 to 1876. And it is still Mgr Le Bourget which one of the pioneers of the penetration as of ours in the Cantons of the East.

On the clean territory of its jurisdiction, in the city and the campaigns, he added the parishes to the parishes, and, in a little more than thirty years, he did not create any less than seventy-five. He thus did not multiply the centers of catholic action without using of prudence and understanding, but one can write that he did it nevertheless boldly and with a beautiful confidence in Providence. Good number of these parishes were created in the city, following the division of Notre-Dame, only and single parish of Montreal until 1866.

Mgr Le Bourget had been, in 1852, one of the most dedicated promoters of the foundation of the Université Laval in Quebec. A few years later, to safeguard the faith or at least the higher catholic training of its young people, inclined to take the way of an institution anglo-Protestant woman, it required of Rome the establishment, in Montreal, of another university seat, which ended up being obtained, about such as it had wanted it, in 1889, four years after its death, and which became in 1919 the Université of Montreal, completely autonomous. All that was not done without difficulties, too contrary legitimate interests being in question, but that was done and it is initially thanks to him.

It is also Mgr Le Bourget which wanted and started in 1870 the construction of the current cathedral on the model of Saint-Pierre of Rome. Even in the purely material order, the credit bishop did not hesitate to take initiatives, inter alia that of the foundation of the Bank of Saving, which were particularly beneficial for the people. In 1867 or 1868, it is still especially with Mgr Le Bourget which one owes what the history calls the " movement of the Zouaves " , which led to Rome, for the defense of Pie IX, a thousand of young Canadians.

These various activities did not prevent illustrates it bishop to be before a whole man of Prière and Oraison, who practiced the highest virtues and was all in all a true saint. He requested unceasingly and in the most edifying way, although it was always without ostentation. He gave himself to works mercy without never wearying itself. It was said that he wrote his mandements - ten volumes - with knees, in his particular vault, and one saw it going in person to carry helps to the poor and until sawing wood the night for the widows in charge of family and in the destitution.

The former superior of Saint-Sulpice, Mr. Colin, by pronouncing his funeral oration with Notre-Dame on June 12th, 1885, before magnificiently renting works of the large bishop, showed, in terms as precise as eloquent, than, at Mgr Le Bourget, the man of interior life and high virtues had preceded the man of action and explained it. He spoke, in particular, of his pure faith, activates, luminous, burning; of its spirit of religion, of its exactitude to the least liturgical regulations, of its gravity and its dignity to the saint furnace bridge; of its pleasant and consistent piety, which breathed and spread the good odor of Jesus-Christ, her confidence as a God, all and always inébranlable; of its spirit of detachment and its satisfying, that nothing forever which been able to surprise; of its mortification and its humility, which made of it a really main man of its flesh and its spirit. " Mgr Le Bourget, it was man of God, cleaned it in peroration moving, which attracted with him by the size of its virtues and the glare of this holiness which radiated its person, everywhere in the diocese and the province, since of so long years. One went to him to find in him the saint bishop, to see in him the saint bishop! And it is there all the explanation of the incomparable prestige which he enjoyed… "

The history of Mgr Le Bourget, it is that even of Montreal during nearly one half-century. It undoubtedly had its manner with him. who was not always the soft manner. Like all the men of action, it could cause dissatisfactions and it is certain that it had contradictors during his long career. The business of the division of the parishes in the big city and that of the university difficulties between Quebec and Montreal, to speak only about these, were rather thorny. But, now that these events are far and that the appeasing was done in the spirits about them, in the retreat of times, the large one and holy figure of Mgr Le Bourget appears increasingly imposing. Better and better one enjoys to recognize that its sights were right and pure, as much as supernatural of inspiration, and that, as well, it was those which see high and far.

June 24th, 1903, one set up, in front of the cathedral of Montreal, which it itself built, a superb bronze monument, on the basis of granite - work of the sculptor Louis-Philippe Hébert -, with the memory of Mgr Le Bourget. Thirty years later, in April 1933, one has just inaugurated, in the same cathedral, a funerary vault, of a marvellous richness, which will be used with the burial of the bishops and the archbishops as Montreal, but that one wanted to especially arrange and decorate in the honor of large and holy bishop of which he is question here. Its remainders mortals rest there from now on in the central tomb.

In the autumn of 1931, the Father Langevin, Society of Jesus, published a Mgr Ignace Le Bourget, which is an account condensed and necessarily incomplete, but already quite edifying and moving, of the life of the famous bishop. A more detailed and more complete history of this large and holy man of the church, which was a benefactor of its city, san nation and its country, will be written one day, it is appropriate to hope for it.

External bond

Biography of the biographical Dictionary of Canada in line

Sources

Sources: Files of the Company of regional history of Lévis.
Canadian Figures , Élie Auclair, 1933

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