BROËT, PASCASE. - One of the first nine companions of St. Ignazio di Loiola, born at Bertrancourt near Amiens in France in 1500, died of the plague in Paris on 14 September 1562. Already a priest and a graduate of Paris in philosophy and theology, he was won over in 1535 by Blessed Pietro Fabro to the small group already gathered by Loiola. Called to Italy, he served there as a reformer of women's monasteries (at Siena and Reggio) and of several cities or dioceses (Faenza, Meldola, Bologna).
In 1541 Paolo III sent him as his nuncio to the Catholics of Ireland together with Fr. Alfonso Salmerone (cf. E. Hogan, Ibernia Ignatiana, Dublin 1880, pp. 4-9; the pontifical instructions and B.'s reports in the Epist. P. Broët). When the mission was interrupted by political complications, B. went to found the college of Ferrara, before becoming the first provincial of the Italian province (or «Provincia Tusciae», 1551-52). First provincial of France (from June 1552 until his death), he directed the foundation of the first colleges at Paris, Billom, Pamiers, and Tournon, and the struggle for the admission of the Order into France against the opposition of the parliaments. B.'s letters are published in the Monumenta Historica Societatis Iesu, Epistolae pp. Pascasii Broët, Claudii Iaji, Ioannes Codurii et Simonis Rodericii (Madrid 1903), pp. 1-254.