FORESTA, ALBÉRIC de. — French Jesuit, born at Aix on 8 January 1818, died at Avignone on 2 May 1876. Of noble family, he entered the novitiate at Avignone on 6 October 1837 and held within the Order the positions of novice master at Tolosa and Avignone (1849–1853), rector of the scholasticate of Fourvière at Lione (1858–60), and rector of the novitiate of Clermond-Ferrand (1864–67). He was renowned for his outstanding holiness.
As a young religious, he devised a plan for a peaceful crusade for the conversion of the northern regions and published an Appel aux missions baréales, but his name remains associated with the founding of apostolic schools for the recruitment and formation of future missionaries. The first was established at Avignone in 1865, followed by seven others before de F.’s death. The work, encouraged by Pius IX (briefs of 1867 to 1870), was subsequently imitated in many countries and by various religious families. De F. set forth his guiding ideas in a pamphlet: Oeuvre des écoles apostoliques fondées et dirigées par les pp. de la Compagnie de Jésus (Poitiers 1870). A characteristic feature of his conception was the freedom left to the pupils to choose, at the end of their humanistic studies, the missionary Order or Congregation of their preference. As general conditions had already changed, a different conception subsequently prevailed, except in a few schools—that of the minor seminaries—according to which each Order prepares candidates for its own novitiate. According to a statistic from 1834, the apostolic schools directed by the Jesuits had by then produced 6119 priests.