Foresta, Alberic de

FORESTA, Alberic de. - French Jesuit, b. at Aix on 8 Jan. 1818, d. at Avignon on 2 May 1876. Of noble lineage, he entered the novitiate of Avignon on 6 Oct. 1837 and held in the Order the offices of master of novices at Toulouse and Avignon (1849-1853), rector of the scholasticate of Fourvière at Lyon (1858-60) and of the novitiate of Clermont-Ferrand (1864-67). He had a reputation for eminent holiness.

As a young religious, he conceived a plan for a peaceful crusade for the conversion of the northern regions and published an Appel aux missions boréales, but his name remains linked to the founding of apostolic schools for the recruitment and formation of future missionaries. The first was erected at Avignon in 1865, and seven others before de F.'s death. The work, encouraged by Pius IX (briefs from 1867 to 1870), was later imitated in many countries and by various religious families. De F. set out his guiding ideas in a pamphlet: Oeuvre des écoles apostoliques fondées et dirigées par les pp. de la Compagnie de Jésus (Poitiers 1870). Characteristic of his conception was the freedom left to the pupils to choose, at the end of their humanistic studies, the missionary Order and Congregation of their preference. Once general conditions had already changed, the different conception (called that of minor seminaries) later prevailed, except in a few schools, according to which each Order prepares candidates for its own novitiate. According to a statistic of 1834, the apostolic schools directed by the Jesuits had by then produced 6119 priests.

Edmondo Lamalle