Andrew Hubert Fournet, Saint

ANDREA UBERTO FOURNET, saint. - B. on 6 Dec. 1752 at Saint-Pierre-de-Maillé, in Poitou; d. at La Puye on 13 May 1834. Enrolled at the University of Poitiers in 1772, through youthful frivolity he abandoned his studies and became a soldier for a short time. Soon afterward he embraced the ecclesiastical state and was ordained priest in 1776. Vicar of Haims (1777-79) and of Saint-Pierre-de-Maillé (1779-81), he was appointed parish priest in his native parish in 1781, where he devoted himself to practising an ideal of wholly apostolic life. In 1791 he refused the oath imposed by the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Consequently deprived of his parish, he secretly exercised his ministry, often at risk of his life, until, in Sept. 1792, he was forced into exile in Spain, where he lived until the end of 1797 in the small town of Arcos, in Navarre. Having secretly returned to his homeland, he resumed the proscribed exercise of worship while the persecution was still raging. From 1798 he was the spiritual director of s. Giovanna Elisabetta Bichier des Ages (v.), whom he induced to found a religious society for the care of the sick and the religious instruction of children, called the Daughters of the Cross (1807). Having resigned his parish in 1820, he took up residence at the seat of the institute, at La Puye; here he spent his last years, devoted to the spiritual formation of the religious and to other works of apostolic ministry among the people and the clergy. Beatified on 16 May 1926, he was canonized on 4 June 1933. His feast is celebrated on 13 May.