UNIVERS. - A newspaper founded in Paris by Abbot Migne, first published on 3 Nov. 1833 under the title L'Univers religieux; it gained increasing fame and circulation under the direction of Louis Veuillot (q.v.), chief editor from 1845.
Judging political regimes solely in terms of the supreme Christian interests, L’Univers placed the Catholic cause above all contingencies. The newspaper’s faith and the literary prestige of its editors provoked much hostility both within and outside Catholicism. Sharp and trenchant in tone, it opposed, under Louis-Philippe, the state university monopoly and the remnants of Gallicanism, and fought for the adoption of the Roman liturgy. It adhered to the Second Republic (1848), though in a conservative sense, maintaining the same stance in 1853 and in the early years of the Empire. Suppressed in 1860 for its censures of Napoleon III’s Roman policy, it reappeared in 1867, championed the Syllabus and defended papal infallibility both before and after Vatican Council I. After 1870 it gave voice to the legitimist aspirations of French Catholics and again supported the Pope, deprived of his temporal power. Eugène Veuillot succeeded his brother Louis, who died in 1883, as editor. In Nov. 1890 the “toast of Algiers” caused a dramatic split within L’Univers: Eugène declared his intention of steering the paper toward adherence to the Third Republic (ralliement). His sister Elisa therefore withdrew and founded Vérité Française, which in 1907 was merged into the brother paper. The energetic direction of Pierre and François Veuillot, Eugène’s sons, could not avert the slow decline that foreshadowed the paper’s demise.