The Founders and their Vision
For further information and greater detail go to <www.spiritanworld.net/>
Claude Poulart Des Places (1679-1709), our founder came from Rennes in Northwest France, where he was academically very bright and became a lawyer at the age of 18.
However, hearing the call of the Church, he entered the seminary in Paris. While there he was struck by the poverty of the poor in pre-revolution Paris, and he opted for the poor and joined their way of life. He helped homeless chimney sweeps to read and write and in 1703 opened a hostel for poor seminarians dedicated to the Holy Spirit. Those who passed through this hostel and were ordained were proud to call themselves graduates of the Spiritan College, or Spiritans, and so the story began. Two years after his own ordination Claude died of pleurisy at the age of 30 in 1709.
Our “second” founder Francis Mary Paul Libermann was born in 1802, the son of the Rabbi of Savernne in eastern France. He was being trained to follow his father as Rabbi when, in his studies he came across the Gospels and studied St John’s Gospel. This so affected his faith that he baptised a Catholic and decided God was calling him to the Priesthood rather that the Rabbinate. This caused him great suffering as his father and the family declared him ‘dead’. Just before he was to receive the diaconate he was struck down by epilepsy that caused his ordination to be delayed 10 years.
While still working in the seminary, as a servant, he had two friends Eugene Tisserant and Frederick Le Vavasseur who told him of their concerns for the plight of “liberated” slaves in the Caribbean and Indian Ocean. Libermann was convinced to join them, and they then asked him to prepare a rule of life for their project. This he did and then went to Rome, where, after a year long struggle with the authorities, it was approved by the Pope and the path was set for Francis and his two confreres to spent the rest of their lives in the service not just of the liberated slaves from Africa but of African people everywhere on that continent.
Libermann’s vision and life style was so similar to the older Spiritans, struggling to reform and rebuild after the horrors of the Fre nch Revolutions, and Rome proposed that the two groups amalgamate and so strengthen each other. After the fusion of the two communities in 1848, Libermann had the personnel and the Spiritans the places for all who were enthused about going to work in Africa. He found himself being left at home to shoulder the endless chores of recruitment, training, funding and all the paperwork required with civil and Church authorities. In 1852, just 3 years after drawing up the “Rule of Life” for the Spiritans, Libermann was facing final illness and premature death.
Setting The Standards
Quickly in the Spiritan life there were men setting standards for the rest:
Blessed Jacques Laval (1803-1864) was the child of a successful farmer in Normandy, France. His uncle was a priest, and he grew up in a devoutly Catholic household. His mother died when he was seven years old.
Laval was educated at Évreux, and the Collège Stanislas de Paris. Though initially uncertain whether to pursue the priesthood or the practice of medicine, he received his medical degree in 1830 and set up a practice in Saint-André and Ivry-la-Bataille in his native Normandy.
After a near-fatal riding accident he felt called to the priesthood, closed his practice and entered the seminary of Saint-Sulpice; where he was ordained in 1838, and worked as a parish priest for two years. He desired a more active ministry, however, and had met and been enthused by Fr Libermann, before his project had been approved. Within weeks of Libermann gaining the Popes approval and being ordained, Laval was on his way to London where after waiting some weeks, boarded a ship sailing for Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean, where he arrived on 14 September 1841. He immediately focused his work among the poor and uneducated former slaves. He lived with them, learned their language, fasted when supplies were short, and slept in a packing crate. His medical training was useful to his ministry, as he worked to improve conditions in agriculture, sanitation, medicine, and science. Laval was tremendously successful - he is believed to have made 67,000 converts by the time he died 23 years later, using his skills as a priest, a doctor and a teacher, treating everyone regardless of faith equally with love and respect. It is said that "Pere Laval's door was always open".
The annual pilgrimage to the parish church of Sainte-Croix originated on the day of his funeral procession in 1864. The funeral oration commented on on the words of Isaiah: Evangelizare pauperibus misit me - "He sent me to announce the Gospel to the poor". The casket was followed by more than thirty thousand weeping people and buried opposite the church in Sainte Croix.
Today his tomb is a centre for unity and inter faith dialogue between Christians, Moslems, Hindus and Buddhists. Jacques Laval was beatified on 24 April 1979, the first in the pontificate of Pope John Paul II and was declared the National Patron of Mauritius. Each year, in Mauritius, the date of Pere Laval's death, Sept. 9th, 70,000 or more people gather to pay their respects and celebrate his life.
Daniel Brothier (1876-1936) After returning from Dakar in Senegal, Daniel was a Chaplain in the trenches of the 1st World War. At the age of 53 he began the greatest work of his life, his work for homeless boys in Paris.
He began with 170 orphans in a tin roofed house and this developed into a technical school at Auteuil. His motto was “Open wide the doors”.
Today Auteuil’s’ gates are still wide open. 3,400 homeless boys of various origins are cared for in its 23 residences and 22 schools.
Bishop Joseph Shanahan (1871-1943) As a young priest he was sent to southern Nigeria where he and his colleagues were building the church among the Ibo people. In 1902 – 1932 was the Vicar Apostolic (Acting Bishop) to Nigeria. He died in Nairobi, Kenya in 1943 and in January 1956 his remains were brought back to Nigeria for the “second burial” in Onitsha Cathedral.
He was a truly charismatic figure, a man of exceptional courage and vision! He saw the importance of education and his schools formed the foundation of one of the most flourishing missionary churches in the world today.
He founded the Holy Rosary Congregation, a missionary Sisterhood. He was the inspiration behind the setting up of the Kiltegan Fathers, the Medical Missionaries of Mary and two Nigerian Sisterhoods. After his death in 1943 he was acclaimed as the leader and father of the great Irish Missionary movement that marked the first half of the 20th century.
The Spiritans in Britain
The Spiritans, came to Britain in1903 when the anti-Catholic government in France was busy closing convents and monasteries. They looked for a refuge abroad and rented Prior Park, a mansion near Bath in Somerset. Before they returned to France three years later, the Bishop of Liverpool allowed them to open Castlehead in Grange-over-Sands, Lancashire as a junior seminary.
Father John Rimmer from Widnes had joined the Congregation of the Holy Spirit in France in 1894 and became the Superior of Castlehead. Gradually the school, flourished and boys were put through their secondary studies before going to France for the Novitiate and training for the missionary priesthood. Finance was always a problem but friends rallied round and accepted mission boxes which provided enough funds to survive.
By 1939, a property in Wiltshire was bought to act as a senior seminary, but the Second World War broke out and the government requisitioned the house as military hospital. With the fall of France, 30 of our senior seminarians found themselves stranded in enemy occupied territory. They made their way to the coast of France and as the bombs were falling they boarded a Polish troopship and so escaped long years in a concentration camp. But where to put them?
The refugees from France shared Castlehead for two years with the junior students, before moving to Sizergh Castle near Kendal where they continued their studies for the priesthood. On an average, four new priests were ordained every year and despite the U-boats in the Atlantic, sailed to their missions in Sierra Leone, Nigeria and East Africa. When the war ended, the senior students moved in Upton Hall near Newark.
Two years later, in 1947, Fr Parkinson acquired a house in Bickley, Kent, as headquarters for the infant English Province and a centre for late vocations. Ex-servicemen were applying to join and some needed help to complete their studies prior to going to the Novitiate. A chapel was added to the site and opened in 1959. Today this community is mainly for the care of the elderly missionaries who have returned from their mission an can rest from their labours in familiar surrounding and share the community life whioch has been at the heart of our mission and life since our student days.
Recognising the importance of Scotland as both a place for missionary vocations as well as support for missionary work in 1956 the Holy Ghost Fathers set up a community at Uddingtson on the outskirts of Glasgow. In the early 1970's the opportunity was given us to purchase the redundant church and house in Carfin, opposite the site of the National Shrine for Scotland. Moving nhere has given the Spiritans
In the late 1960's, after the Second Vatican Council, the various missionary societies in England pooled their resources and started the Missionary Institute, London (MIL). As one of the founding members, the Spiritans moved their students and opened a community house nearby.
From the late 1980's there was a decision to concentrate on work with young people, developing strong committed young catholic leaders. It was hoped that this would lead to vocations to the Spiritan religious life and priesthood. While vocations have been few the programme has been very successful and the JUST YOUTH programme has been set up at the Holy Ghost Fathers community residence in Salford to specialise in the Christian development of young people. From the community too has flowered the group of Associates.
Another form of outreach has been the development of REVIVE. This was begun by Lay Spiritans Anne-Marie and Peter Fell in association with the Province to aid and accompany refugees and asylum seekers in the North Werst of England. Initially support was given by local parishes around Salford and this lead to a partnership with Salford Diocese. Currently Revive is undergoing a progress review to see how best to continue in the current economic climate of 2009.
