DEHON, JEAN-LÉON. - Priest and founder, b. at La Chapelle (Soissons) on 14 March 1843, d. at Brussels on 12 Aug. 1925. In 1869 he was among the stenographers of the Vatican Council, and later, in advanced theological studies, he was a fellow student, at the Gregorian, of the future Benedict XV. Having returned to his homeland, he exercised the parochial ministry at St-Quentin, founding a series of very fruitful social works.
To perpetuate these forms of modern apostolate he founded a congregation of Oblates of the Sacred Heart (1878) which later, after various vicissitudes, was able to establish itself definitively under the name of the Congregation of the Priests of the Sacred Heart (1883). The spread of the institute was notable in Europe, in America and in the missions of the Belgian Congo and of French Cameroun. The activity of D. for the dissemination of social action according to the encyclical Rerum novarum is very interesting; one of his books, Catechismo sociale, widely circulated in the Catholic world, corresponds to this purpose. To D. is due the initiative of the construction, in Rome, of the international temple of Christ the King on the ancient Piazza d'Armi.
BBL.: A. Du Camp, Le p. D. et son oeuvre, Paris 1936; A. Prelos, L'oeuvre sociale du chanoine D., ibid. 1936.
Egilberto Martire