LE BACHELET, CAMILLE (FRANÇOIS-XAVIER). – Jesuit, theologian, born in Paris on 14 January 1855, died there on 23 September 1925. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1878 with the intention of going to the China mission (for this reason he immediately adopted the name Fr. Xavier), but instead, having completed his studies, was assigned in 1888 to teach dogma at the scholasticate in Jersey, which he continued to follow through its various moves.
More inclined to positive studies than to scholasticism, he was a diligent investigator and scrutinizer of patristic texts and theologians, whom he cited only after having read and carefully considered them; acute and reflective in grasping, with regard to the truths he defended, both the patristic tradition and the « sensus Ecclesiae ». He contributed numerous articles to the periodicals Etudes, Recherches de sciences religieuses, Gregorianum; to the DThC he contributed, on the Immaculate Conception, the two major studies: L'Immaculée Conception dans l'Écriture et la tradition jusqu'au Concile d'Éphèse (VII, cols. 845-93) and L'Immaculée Conception dans l'Église latine depuis le Concile d'Éphèse (ibid., cols. 979-1218); on the Society of Jesus, the two fundamental studies: Les principes de la Compagnie de Jésus sur l'enseignement des sciences sacrées (ibid., VIII, cols. 1012-43); La théologie dogmatique dans la Compagnie de Jésus (ibid., cols. 1043-69). On Bellarmine, in addition to various articles in cultural periodicals, he left: Bellarmin et la Bible Sixto-Clementine (Paris 1911); Bellarmin avant son cardinalat (1542-98), correspondance et documents (there 1911), which was to be followed by another 5 vols. containing the correspondence of the Saint; Auctarium Bellarminianum (there 1913).