SIBOUR, DOMINIQUE-AUGUSTE-MARIE. — Archbishop of Paris, b. 4 Apr. 1792 at St-Paul-Trois-Châteaux (Drôme), d. 3 Jan. 1857 at Paris.
Ordained priest in 1818, he taught at the Seminary of St Nicolas du Chardonnet in Paris and was attached to the parish of St Sulpice. Canon of the Cathedral at Nîmes in 1822, he gained a reputation as a fine preacher. Bishop of Digne in 1839, he took an active part in the struggle undertaken by French Catholics for the freedom of education through his writings. He acquired particular renown with his *Institutions diocésaines*, published in 1845, in which he claimed the independence of the Church, the freedom of councils, and the restoration of ancient disciplinary and protective institutions for the clergy in the governance of dioceses. Upon the death of Mgr. Affre he was appointed Archbishop of Paris (1848). The controversies raised by the Falloux Law found the archbishop among those who approved its spirit and provisions, convinced that it was far more opportune to accept a compromise on the matter of education rather than indulge in sterile criticism and risk public instruction, left entirely in lay hands, assuming an anti-Catholic tone. The stance of the archbishop and many other bishops, however, proved unwelcome to part of the French episcopate, of which *L’Univers* of L. Veuillot was an eloquent and able spokesman. Relations between the latter and the archbishop soon became very strained. In 1852 the break occurred. Abbé Gaduel, vicar general of Mgr. Dupanloup, Bishop of Orléans, having branded as heretical Donoso Cortés’s *Ensayo sobre el catolicismo, el liberalismo y el socialismo*, was violently attacked by Veuillot and accused of espousing Gallican tendencies. To put an end to the controversies and the interference of laymen in the internal life of the Church, S. issued an ordinance forbidding all religious from reading *L’Univers*. The ban was later lifted through the intervention of Pius IX, who desired genuine reconciliation with Veuillot without resorting to extreme measures. A supporter of Bonaparte, S. approved the coup d’état of 2 Dec. 1851 and, summoned to the Senate in March 1852, voted in favour of the restoration of the Empire. His tendency toward rapprochement with governmental authorities was interpreted by ultramontane circles as an adherence to Gallican ideas, and the complexity of the controversial points dividing the two sides, in which the French episcopate and Catholic world were then split, made his task very difficult. In 1854 he went to Rome for the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception and died three years later, stabbed by a defrocked priest, one Verger, while vested in sacred vestments he was beginning the novena of St Genevieve at St-Étienne de Mont.