RICHARD, FRANÇOIS-MARIE-BENJAMIN. - Cardinal, b. 1 March 1819 at Nantes, d. 28 Jan. 1908 at Paris.
He studied at the Seminary of S. Sulpizio and was vicar general of Nantes from 1850 to 1869. Consecrated bishop of Belley in Feb. 1872, three years later he was appointed coadjutor to the archbishop of Paris, Guibert, with right of succession and with the title of archbishop of Larissa. Having become archbishop of Paris on 8 July 1886, he was created cardinal in May 1889. In March 1891, after the well-known speech at Algiers by Card. Lavigerie, which envisaged the possibility of collaboration between Catholics and the Republic, he published the pamphlet entitled Réponse de son ém. le card. archevêque de Paris aux catholiques qui l'ont consulté sur leur devoir social, in which he appealed for the unity of French Catholics and thus became the inspirer of the Union de la France chrétienne, dissolved the following year at the request of the government because it was considered to have legitimist tendencies.