Langenieux, Benoît-Marie

LANGENIEUX, BENOÎT-MARIE. - Cardinal Archbishop of Reims, b. at Villefranche (Rhône) on 15 Oct. 1824, d. at Reims on 1 Jan. 1905. Ordained in 1850, he was subsequently parish priest in Paris of several important parishes, until, in 1871, he was appointed vicar general of the archdiocese. Bishop of Tarbes in 1873, the following year he was promoted to the see of Reims, which he governed for more than thirty years. In 1886 he was granted the cardinal's hat by Leo XIII, with the title of St. John at the Latin Gate.

Legate a latere to the Eucharistic Congresses of Jerusalem, Reims and Lourdes, promoter of the beatification of Joan of Arc, which he celebrated at Orléans in 1885 with a speech that remained famous, he took particular pleasure in the title of "cardinal of the workers," given him for the conspicuous part he took in the social field, in application of Leo's encyclical Rerum novarum. Once the French government's anti-religious policy began, the cardinal of Reims was among the most zealous defenders of the rights of the Church and dictated to the press two particularly important writings: the Déclaration des cardinaux et exposé de la situation faite à l'Église de France (1892) and the Lettre au Président de la République (1904). He also owes us a history of the Church, widely used in French seminaries.

Renzo U. Montini