PREVÔST, EUGÈNE. – In religion Eugène de la Croix, founder of the Congregations of the Priestly Fraternity and of the Oblates of Bethany, b. 24 Aug. 1860 at Saint-Jérôme de Terrebonne (Canada), d. in Paris on 1 Aug. 1946.
A member of the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament in Brussels in 1881 and ordained a priest in 1887, after years of intense Eucharistic apostolate he obtained permission in 1900 to leave the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament and, encouraged by Leo XIII, founded the two institutes, which over forty years of tenacious work he succeeded in developing and spreading in Italy, France, and Canada, and created around himself a warm priestly atmosphere. He wrote various works on the sanctification of the clergy, permeated by sincere religious enthusiasm, and is commonly regarded as the apostle of the priesthood.