Andrew Hubert Fournet, Saint

ANDREW HUBERT FOURNET, Saint. - B. on 6 Dec. 1752 at Saint-Pierre-de-Maillé, in Poitou, d. at La Puye on 13 May 1834. Enrolled in 1772 at the University of Poitiers, through youthful frivolity he abandoned his studies and briefly became a soldier. Shortly afterward he embraced the ecclesiastical state and in 1776 was ordained a priest. Vicar of Haims (1777-79) and of Saint-Pierre-de-Maillé (1779-81), he was appointed in 1781 curate in his native parish, where he devoted himself to practicing an ideal of entirely apostolic life. In 1791 he refused the oath imposed by the civil constitution of the clergy. Deprived for this reason of his parish, he exercised his ministry secretly, with frequent risk to his life, until, in Sept. 1792, he had to go into exile in Spain, where he lived until the end of 1797 in the small town of Arcos, in Navarre. Having returned secretly to his homeland, he resumed, while persecution was still raging, the proscribed exercise of worship. From 1798 he was the spiritual director of St. Jeanne Elizabeth 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 given up his parish in 1820, he took up residence near the seat of the institute, at La Puye; and here he spent his last years, dedicated 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.

Nello Van