Jean-Baptiste Rauzan

The Father Jean-Baptiste Rauzan (1757-1847) was a French monk, founder of the Pères of the Mercy .

Born with Bordeaux, he was the son of a Notaire. After studies with the college of the Jesuits and the Faculty of Law of its birthplace, it followed the courses of the seminar and the faculty of theology and was named at the 25 years age, vicar of the Saint-Jacob parish.

Refusing the constitutional oath, the Rauzan abbot emigrated, passed in Belgium then to Berlin, where he exerted his ministry near the German catholics and French in 1797.

Returned to France after the 18 Brumaire, it was formed with the Prédication and stuck to the Cardinal Fesch which formed, in 1808, the project to constitute in the old convent of the Carthusian monks of Lyon a congregation of priests devoted to the study and the preaching of the interior missions.

Companion of the Fesch cardinal at the time of the Council of Paris of 1811, it inflects his decisions in favor of freedoms of the Church. The dispersion of the first Missionaries of France pronounced by Napoleon i at the same time as that of the Trappist S following the failure of the Council, the disgrace of Fesch and the reverses undergone by the Napoleonean armies brought the Rauzan father closer to the royalist opposition. As of the return of Louis XVIII, on December 26th, 1814, the Rauzan father is lived to appoint chaplain of the king and equipped with a pension. Less than one month later, he requested the approval of the company of the Missionnaires of France of the archbishop of Paris and obtained his official recognition by the Minister of Interior Department.

In 1816, its missionaries transfer themselves to entrust the service of the old pilgrimage of the Mount-Valérien, with load to maintain the buildings given up since 1814 them. In 1825, the fathers settled Rue of the Ditch-Saint-Jacques, then in the old hotel of Montmorency-Laval, Rue of Game preserve, where the Révolution of July dispersed them. Of Rome, where it had taken refuge of 1831 to 1833, the Rauzan father reformed his congregation under the name of Pères of the Mercy and equipped it with new statutes.

Only directed towards the interior missions and having houses with Bordeaux, Orleans and Paris, the fathers of the Mercy, compensated for their expulsion of the Martyrdom by Louis-Philippe, never recovered from the legal suppression of December 25th, 1830 and the laws on the congregations of the IIIe République.

The Rauzan father died old and sick after its disciples had obtained his quasi-resignation by choosing a coadjutor to him.

Not very many and having difficulties recruitment, the fathers however founded a French vault with New York (1839-1946) and created a province of America. The company became congregation in 1961. It is entirely American today. In 1980, it had nothing any more but six priests. Returned with its vocation first, the Congregation of the Fathers of the Mercy (“ Fathers off Mercy ”) sermon of the missions in parish and organizes retirements. Its house généralice is in the Kentucky. The congregation includes/understands from now on forty members, brothers and missionaries.

External bonds

Official site of the Fathers of the Mercy (in:)

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