OLIVAINT, PIERRE. - Jesuit, Commune (v.), born in Paris on 22 Feb. 1816, died there on 26 May 1871. Son of a Napoleonic officer, he completed his literary studies (1828) with brilliant success; he was appointed professor at the Lycée of Grenoble (1839) and the following year at the Collège Bourbon in Paris, then accepted the position of tutor to the youngest son of the Duke de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt (1841).
Converted to the faith in 1837, he took part in the first conferences of St Vincent Ozanam (v.); then on 3 May 1845 he entered the Society of Jesus and was ordained priest on 21 Sept. 1850. From 1852 to 1855 he was attached to the Collège de Vaugirard in Paris as professor, director and preacher to the pupils, and then as prefect of studies; finally he was named rector, bringing it to a high level and great prosperity. In 1865 he became superior at the residence in Rue de Sèvres, becoming an indefatigable director of spiritual exercises, confessor and preacher.
On 5 Apr. 1871 he was arrested by the Communards together with other ecclesiastics and religious. In the prison of La Roquette he found the Archbishop of Paris, Msgr Darboy, whom he comforted in his final moments, and finally fell in the massacre carried out by the Communards at 85 Rue Haxo.
Among his published writings, his Counsels to the Young remained famous, a work translated into the principal languages. His remains rest in Paris in the church of the Jesuits in Rue de Sèvres.
CONFERENCE O. – Association founded in Paris in honour of Fr O.; it brings together young university students from the faculties of law, letters and political science, with spiritual and professional aims. Since 1948, while remaining faithful to its traditional fundamental line, it has specialised as a private centre of political education, beyond any party.
Its recruitment is strict and demands a kind of vocation, that is, suitability for disinterested and competent political action. The Conference O. seeks to ensure this competence through a solid general culture, especially in philosophy, politics and modern history, with numerous oral exercises, collaboration with newspapers and reviews, conferences, libraries, and relations with French and foreign personalities. Every summer the Conference O. goes to a castle on the island of Port-Cros in the Mediterranean, where it receives representatives of similar foreign groups. Young people of every nation and religious confession and from every faculty may belong to II. Emphasis is placed on uprightness, morality and the study of the Catholic religion. Every month a spiritual retreat offers everyone the opportunity to reconsider the problems of faith.
Pius XII, receiving a deputation of the Conference O. (Easter 1948), encouraged it to rise above party struggles and contingent quarrels «to remain firmly united on the essential points of justice, charity and Christian wisdom» (L’Osservatore Romano, 28 March 1948). Arnaldo M. Lanz