Jacques Sevin

The Father Jacques Sevin is a Jésuite born with Lille the December 7th 1882 and died in Boran-on-Oise in 1951. He is the cofounder in 1920 with the canon Cornette of the Scouts de France. He also creates the International Office of Scouts catholics.

Youth

Jacques Sevin was born in the house from his maternal grandparents, with 136, rue Colbert in Lille. He is baptized the following day in the parish Notre-Dame de Consolation, which was that of Vauban. All its young childhood proceeds between Tourcoing, where he is pupil with the Free Institution of the Sacred Heart, and Dunkirk.

He becomes boarder in sixth with the College of Providence, in Amiens. The Father Duvocelle, his professor, had original teaching methods: indeed, the class was divided into two camps, two frigates: alarm and the Merry one, and with the walls resplendissaient the armorial bearings of an Order of knighthood in which one could become successively knight, baron, count, marquis or duke, and large main of the Order! It will draw an unquestionable enthusiasm for the navy and the knighthood (which it will use thereafter in scouting).
Very early, Jacques Sevin thought of making his life something of large: “ Ah! that once, teenager, I made this dream: To be a heroic and strong heart, which rises… ” At the 13 years age this dream becomes a certainty: “ In 1895, on June 30th, during a walk of college, I become aware of my future sacerdotal vocation, which I did not consider differently than religious. ”

After its baccalaureat, in 1900, it begins an English license at the Catholic University of Lille. August 1st, the Bastien Father, confessor of his father tells him

“That you make?
- My license.
- You do not need any to enter to the noviciate. Ask your father when it authorizes you to leave”.

Jesuit

September 3rd, 1900, it enters to the noviciate of Saint Acheul, his parents having replied yes to the letter by which it asked them to remain without returning to bid farewell. It continues its noviciate in Arlon (province of Belgian Luxembourg) as from September 1901. In 1902, he pronounces his perpetual wishes of Scholastic and enters to the juvénat the Society of Jesus.

During this time in England, scouting develops, the experimental camp of Baden Powell on the island of Brownsea took place in 1907. In 1913, following two unfavourable articles with the Scoutisme in France, Jacques Sevin obtains the permission to go to England to see “what in is”. September 20th, 1913, with the Rally of the Northern District of London to the Alexandra Palace, it meets for the first time Baden Powell. It is this day there that it forms the resolution to found the catholic scouts in France.

Scouting

The First World War bursts, the Sevin Father is not mobilizable, having been exempted military service in 1902. It remains in Belgium at the time of the war. It will be named in 1916 with the college of Tuquet with Mouscron, on the border, as professor of first. Eight days after its arrival with Mouscron, German will close the college where he taught to transform it into military hospital. The Sevin father then will have to be a new occupation and it is quite naturally that he will think of dealing with scouting. Between 1917 and 1919, it writes its Master delivers scouting, study documentary and applications and, by its tests of scouting in Mouscron, it makes shape with the intuition that this pedagogy, if décriée in the ecclesiastical middle of the time, corresponded in-depth to a Christian vision of the man. By the foundation of the Association of Scouts de France in July 1920, it makes federates the experiments of catholic scouting which exist in France since 1911 and is made the craftsman of an alliance between the scouting of Baden-Powell and the Gospel. “ the meeting between the method scoute and the intuitions of the P. Sevin, s.j made it possible to work out a pedagogy based on the evangelic values, where each young person is led to open out and develop his personality by making bear fruit the talents that it carries in him ” “'' The Sevin father is spent without hoping to make known the richness of scouting and all its educational and evangelic value. Sometimes difficult task ''”, comments on Mère Madeleine Bourcereau on the site of Scouts and Guides of France.

Works

Scouting, documentary study and applications, 2nd re-examined edition of 1930, Spes, Paris. (1st edition of 1922). republication Presses of Ile de France, 1999
Meditations scoutes on the Gospel , volume I, Spes, Paris, 1923.
Meditations scoutes on the Gospel , volume II, Spes, Paris, 1932. republication Presses of Ile de France, 1996
to become Scout de France , volume I, 3rd edition, Spes, Paris, 1931.
to think scoutement, Spes, Paris, 1934.
Chamarande , Spes, Paris, 1934.
songs of Scouts de France, Spes, Paris, 1936.
sacerdotal Positions , posterior typed document at 1933
a flame of love . (Collection of poems and prayers) ED. Word and Silence, 1999

Quotations

" The religious atmosphere will not be the result of multiplied practices of piety, nor of sermons on any subject and out of matter (...). That the prayer especially alive, is adapted, in rupture open with these incomprehensible formulas to the children, who too often encumber the parishioners; have your prayers with you, to which they will understand that they do not have two lives, a Christian life that one revêt Sunday morning and a life scoute which kneads them the remainder of time, but that these two lives do only one of them… ". scouting: documentary study and applications, 4th ED. augm., Presses of the Ile de France, 1999, p. 119.

Appendices

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