LATASTE, MARIE. – Mystic, coadjutrix sister of the Ladies of the Sacred Heart, born at Mimbaste (Landes) on 21 February 1822, died at Rennes on 10 May 1847. Immediately after her First Communion she felt an intense attraction to the Tabernacle, and, following a period of disturbances and aridity, from the autumn of 1839 to 1842 she had frequent mystical visions and conversations with the Savior. In this way, she says, she came to know the highest theological truths. In April 1844 she entered the convent of the Sacred Heart in Paris, made her novitiate at Conflans, and then, for health reasons, was transferred to Rennes (9 May 1846), where she died after making her vows.
In obedience to her spiritual director, the abbé Pierre Darbins, she wrote a series of letters (87), in which she recounts her life and her inner experiences, and 14 small works on ascetical-theological subjects “to give an account of what was said to her each day by Jesus.”
Her writings were judged in different ways: P. Toulemont, Les écrits de M. L., in Etudes, new series, 2 (1863), pp. 66–91, was favorable, whereas the report of Msgr. de Ladoue to the bishop of Aire Epivent (probably 1863), published in Revue de Gascogne, 60 (1924), pp. 69–78, is very unfavorable.
LAȚCU VODĂ. – Prince of Moldavia, son of the founder of the principality itself, Bogdan Vodă. He ascended the throne in 1365 and died in 1373. Urban V was referring to L. when, writing from Montefiascone on 24 July 1370 to the archbishop of Prague and the bishops of Bratislava and Krakow, he stated that «robil vir Latco, dux Moldaviae» had communicated to him his desire to become Catholic together with his people and to obtain that one of his boroughs, Seret, should receive the name and dignity of a city and a bishop; the Pope charged the aforesaid prelates to investigate and, if the matter were confirmed, to build a cathedral at Seret, while the country was to remain a duchy directly dependent on the Holy See. In another letter the Pope ordered the same three bishops also to investigate L.’s candidate for the new episcopal see, Andrea of Krakow, and to ordain him; this was done.
Andrea was a Franciscan religious of noble family, formerly confessor to Elisabetta, sister of King Casimir of Poland. It seems that he never came to Moldavia and that the cathedral was never built either. It is certain that not only the people, but even the prince’s wife and daughter, Anna and Anastasia, did not follow L.’s example. Pope Gregory XI wrote to him on 25 January 1372 not to allow himself to be led astray by his wife, who remained obstinate in her errors, but neither to separate from her; and that their children were to be recognized as legitimate.
L. was buried in the “Orthodox” church of Radauti, beside his father, who had had it built.