LIBERMANN,
PAUL, venerable. —
Born at Saverne (France) on 12 April 1802 and died at Parigi on 2 February 1852. The fifth son of the city’s rabbi, he was brought up in Judaism and intended to become a rabbi. At the age of twenty, having gone to Parigi for his studies, he concerned himself with Catholic doctrine and on 24 December 1826 received Baptism. In 1827 he entered the Seminary of S. Sulpizio. On the eve of the subdiaconate (1829), nervous crises prevented him from receiving Orders.
Sent to the Seminary of Issy, he found there two Creoles from La Réunion and St-Domingue, who spoke to him of the spiritual abandonment of the black slaves of those islands. L. resolved to save those souls and came to Rome to have Propaganda approve his plan for a missionary society. Cured of epileptic seizures at Loreto (1840), L. was able to be ordained priest in 1841 and founded the Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, which was later approved by Rome. In 1848 his Congregation merged with the Society of the Holy Spirit, and L. was elected superior general. He devoted all his strength to the development of the nascent congregation and sent many missionaries among the black people. He was a renewer of the missions of Africa, a master of missionary spirituality, and a champion of the idea of an indigenous clergy. On 19 June 1910 the decree on the heroicity of his virtues was published (AAS, 2 [1910], pp. 487–88).