BELSUNCE DE CASTELMORON, HENRI-FRANÇOIS-XAVIER. - Bishop of Marseille, b. at the castle of La Force (Dordogne) on 8-9 Dec. 1670, of parents of Protestant origin, and d. at Marseille on 4 June 1755. Baptized by a Protestant minister, he perhaps abjured in 1685. A Jesuit from 1689 to 1701, he left the Society for reasons of health. He took his degree at Cahors and was ordained priest in 1703. Vicar general of Agen (1704), in 1709 he was made bishop of Marseille. A new s. Carlo Borromeo, during the plague that devastated Marseille in 1720-21 he renewed, to the admiration of the world, his prodigies of charity and zeal. His attachment to the Jesuits, his zeal for the spread of devotion to the Sacred Heart, his
devotion to the Holy See, and his intransigence in matters of doctrine, which led him to refuse absolution to all who refused to submit to the bull Unigenitus, made him the victim of a ruthless war on the part of the Jansenists.
Among other works, he published: S. Cypriani de unitate Ecclesiae, (1744), in support of the primacy of Rome against Gallican doctrines; L'Antiquité de l'église de Marseille (3 vols., Marseille 1747-51), not overly critical; Le combat chrétien, translated from s. Augustine’s De agone christiano; L'art de bien mourir, from s. Roberto Bellarmino’s De arte bene morienti.
Vito Zolini
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