BROËT, PASCASE. - One of the nine first companions of St. Ignatius of Loyola, born at Bertrandcourt near Amiens in France in 1500, died of the plague in Paris on 14 September 1562. Already a priest and graduate of Paris in philosophy and theology, he was won over in 1535 by Blessed Peter Faber to the small group already gathered by Loyola. Called to Italy, he became a reformer of women’s monasteries (in Siena and Reggio) and of several cities or dioceses (Faenza, Meldola, Bologna).
In 1541, Paul III sent him as his nuncio to the Catholics of Ireland together with Fr. Alfonso Salmeron (cf. E. Hogan, Ibernia Ignatiana, Dublin 1880, pp. 4-9; the papal instructions and the reports of Broët in Epistolae P. Broëti). Interrupted by political complications, he went on to found the college at Ferrara before becoming the first provincial of the Italian province (or “Tuscan Province,” 1551-52). First provincial of France (from June 1552 until his death), he directed the founding 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. Broët’s letters are published in Monumenta Historica Societatis Iesu, Epistolae pp. Pascasii Broeti, Claudii Iaji, Ioannes Codurii et Simonis Rodericii (Madrid 1903), pp. 1-254.