CHARVAZ, ANDRÉ. — Bishop, born on 25 December 1793 at Hautecour in Savoy, died at Mont-Saint-Michel, near Moûtiers, on 18 October 1870. Carlo Alberto appointed him tutor to his sons Vittorio Emanuele and Ferdinando; in 1833 he was elected bishop of Pinerolo.
A member of the king’s privy council and later of the new Council of State, at the beginning of the Piedmontese reform movement (1847) he always showed himself equal to the office he held. He opposed the legislative provisions concerning the press, which, among other things, undermined the power of the bishops even in strictly religious matters; and, after making a vigorous protest to the sovereign, he resigned and departed for Rome, where the Pontiff elevated him to the titular archiepiscopal see of Sebaste.
In this particular situation C. was repeatedly called upon to serve as an official and secret direct intermediary between Pius IX and Vittorio Emanuele II, as the Subalpine government, with ever more pronounced unilateralism, proceeded to legislate in an increasingly anticlerical, secularist, and radical direction. Thus, in the autumn of 1849, immediately after the insidious Siccardi mission; in the winter and spring of 1850, for the abolition of ecclesiastical jurisdiction; in the autumn of 1852, concerning the law on civil marriage; and finally, between the autumn of 1854 and the spring of 1855, concerning the subversive law against religious orders. In these painful negotiations, only rarely and partially crowned with some ephemeral formal success, C. lavished a wealth of prudence and zeal for the good of the Church and the State, never failing to speak frankly and candidly to the king, and even more so to his ministers, including Cavour himself. This earned him from Pius IX the appointment as consultor of the Sacred Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs and, against his will, through the joint desire of the Pontiff and the king, the archbishopric of Genoa (1853).
There he devoted particular attention to the formation of the clergy, protected religious congregations, and assisted every kind of misery with inexhaustible charity, always showing tolerance toward the intemperance, intolerance, and prejudices of ardent and uncompromising innovators and reactionaries.
The author of formative and pastoral works, such as the Recherches historiques sur la véritable origine des Vaudois (Turin 1838); the Guide du catéchumène Vaudois (5 vols., Paris-Turin 1842–50); the Discours prononcé aux funérailles solennelles de la reine de Sardaigne Marie Adélaïde (Turin 1855); the Considérations sur le protestantisme; and the Plan d'études des Princes de Savoie-Carignan (posthumous, Paris 1876), he deservedly belonged to the Academy of Sciences of Turin, the Academy of Savoy, and the Roman Academy of the Quirites, as well as to the Royal Subalpine Deputation of National History, and to the Ligurian Society of National History and the Economic Society of Chiavari.