LA BRIÈRE, YVES-MARIE LEROY de. — Jesuit, writer on international law, born at Vif (Isère) on 30 January 1877, died at Buenos Aires on 25 February 1941. Initially professor of fundamental theology (1907–1909) among the French Jesuits who had taken refuge in Hastings (England), he was soon (1909) called to Paris, to the editorial staff of Etudes, where he remained until the end; in 1915 he also took up the chair, then established at the Institut Catholique de Paris, of international social morality in its relations with contemporary problems.
In Etudes he was responsible for the Chronique religieuse des temps présents, where, with a masterly hand, graceful style, and keen, vigilant insight, he followed, from the Catholic point of view, the movements of ideas and events affecting Catholicism in France and throughout the world; some of these chronicles, from January 1910 to December 1924, were collected in volumes under the title: Les luttes présentes de l'Eglise (6 vols., Paris 1917–27). Other principal works: Comment concilier autorité et liberté (ibid. 1929); La communauté des puissances (ibid. 1932); Eglise et paix (ibid. 1932); L'Eglise et son gouvernement (ibid. 1935); L'organisation internationale du monde contemporain et la Papauté souveraine (3 vols., ibid. 1924–27). Other writings concern the questions that arose and were studied during the First and Second World Wars, for example: Les puissances belligérantes et la médiation pontificale (ibid. 1918); Evolution de la doctrine et de la pratique en matière de représailles (ibid. 1922); Le droit de juste guerre (ibid. 1938); Le droit concordataire et la nouvelle Europe (ibid. 1939); Les droits et devoirs des belligérants (ibid. 1940), and the Roman question, brought to a close by the Conciliation, for example: Le droit concordataire et le nouvel Etat pontifical (ibid. 1929); La constitution juridique de la Cité du Vatican (ibid. 1930).