SCHOUVALOFF, AGOSTINO MARIA – Barnabite, in the world Gregorio Petrovich, born in Petersburg on 25 October 1804 to Count Pietro and Princess Sofia Cherbatoff, died in Paris on 2 April 1859.
From the Orthodoxy in which he had been born, and from the indifferentism and nihilism to which the examples he encountered at the Protestant College of Hafwil in Switzerland had led him, as well as from the vanity of the imperial court of Alexander I, where he had been a Hussar captain, his natural uprightness and the bitter grief caused by the loss of his sister, who had converted to Catholicism, then of his second son, and finally of his own wife, Sofia Solfkoff, led him to conversion and to abjuration at the hands of Fr. de Ravignan (Paris, 6 January 1843); the lady Gagarin (v.) supported him with affection and energy throughout the long journey. His autobiography, Ma conversion et ma vocation (Paris 1859), which many have compared with the Confessions of St Augustine, has gone through several editions and has also been translated into German, English, and Italian (4th Italian ed., in the Scrittori barnabiti collection, Florence 1936). Received among the Barnabites at Monza, he professed his vows there on 2 March 1857 and was then ordained a priest in Milan on 18 September. Called to Paris at the invitation of Msgr. Dupanloup, he died there after a brief but intense apostolate of good among the poor, the sick, and prisoners, and through conferences and preaching in various cities of France, aided by his perfect knowledge of the principal European languages. The “Association of Prayers for the Conversion of Russia” was established on his initiative and was subsequently widely disseminated by his confrere, Fr. Cesario Tondini.