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Father Francois Le Vézouët (10 August 1833 - 8 October 1873) was one of the five Breton missionary priests to Louisiana who made a free and willing sacrifice of their lives in the 1873 Yellow Fever Epidemic in Shreveport, Louisiana. The group is collectively known as the Shreveport Martyrs. On December 8, 2020, Bishop Francis Malone of the Diocese of Shreveport declared him to be a Servant of God, opening the diocesan phase of inquiry into a Cause of Beatification and Canonization.[1] In 2022, the Vatican's Dicastery for the Causes of Saints permitted Father Le Vézouët and the other four Shreveport Martyrs to proceed for consideration as a single Cause.[2] Very Rev. Peter B. Mangum serves as the Episcopal Delegate for the Cause
Life
editFrancois Le Vézouët was born in Brelidy, Brittany, France to a wealthy agricultural family and as a young man attended Grand Seminaire de Saint-Brieuc. In October 1854, his name is listed among the first group of Breton missionary recruits that Bishop Augustus Marie Martin brought to the newly erected Diocese of Natchitoches in Louisiana.[3] Bishop Martin ordained him to the priesthood on 3 May 1856, and he was assigned to establish missions in rural Natchitoches and Sabine parishes, as well as charged with helping develop formal seminary education. He was the first permanent priest assigned to St. John the Baptist Church in Many, Louisiana, and there established a cemetery and built a rectory.[4] He served as a special counsel to Bishop Martin and oversaw formal theological convocations held at the seminary in Natchitoches. Proceedings of such convocations, written in his own hand, have been archivally preserved.[5]
When yellow fever broke out in Shreveport in the late summer of 1873, Father Le Vezouet responded to a telegraph plea for help that arrived from Father Jean Marie Biler, the last priest alive in that city caring for victims. Le Vezouet left Natchitoches for a four-day horseback journey to Shreveport and as he prepared to leave, people of the city gather around him and begged him not to leave. Eyewitnesses record that someone said to him, "you are going to your death," to which Father Le Vezouet responded, "I believe it. But I am taking the surest and shortest path to heaven." [6]
Father Le Vezouet arrived in Shreveport just in time to provide the final sacraments to Father Jean Marie Biler, who succumbed on 26 September. By this time, Father Louis Gergaud, the fourth priest who had just arrived from Monroe, was already also ill with yellow fever. Father Le Vezouet ministered to Gergaud in his final moments on 1 October, before also contracting yellow fever himself and dying on 8 October. [7]
In the final days of September 1873, aware of the grim conditions in Shreveport, Bishop Augustus Marie Martin wrote to the Archdiocese of New Orleans asking for priests to come who might be presumed to have some immunity to the illness.[8] In response to that call, Father James Duffo, S.J. and Father Charles Ferrec of St. Louis Cathedral (New Orleans), quickly came to Shreveport. Father Duffo would later recall that he arrived to administer the final sacraments to Father Le Vezouet just "one quarter hour" before his passing. Duffo related that Le Vezouet had so feared dying without the sacraments that he found "the good priest was wearing a pix around his neck with the Blessed Sacrament he had taken from the tabernacle." Father Le Vezouet greeted Duffo with the words, "I have been waiting on you for three days!"[9]
Father Le Vezouet's original burial site was beneath Holy Trinity Catholic Church (Shreveport, Louisiana), but his remains were moved in 1884 to St. Joseph Cemetery in Shreveport, where today he rests with three of the other four Shreveport Martyrs.[10]
His biographical narrative appears in the book, Shreveport Martyrs of 1873: The Surest Path to Heaven, published by The History Press in 2021, co-authored by Father Peter B. Mangum, W. Ryan Smith, and Dr. Cheryl White. Father Le Vezouet also features in the 2021 documentary feature film, The Five Priests.
Website: https://www.shreveportmartyrs.org
References
edit- ^ Diocese of Shreveport.
- ^ Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, Rome.
- ^ Report of Missions, Society for the Propagation of the Faith, December 1854.
- ^ Archives of the Diocese of Alexandria, Louisiana.
- ^ Diocese of Natchitoches Collection, Archives of the University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana.
- ^ Correspondence of Bishop Auguste Martin, Diocese of Natchitoches Collection, Archives of the University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana.
- ^ Daughters of the Cross Collection, Noel Archives and Special Collections, Louisiana State University at Shreveport.
- ^ Archives of the Archdiocese of New Orleans.
- ^ Archives of the Society of Jesus, St. Louis, Missouri.
- ^ Diary of Father Joseph Gentille, Diocese of Shreveport.