Michel d'Herbigny

Michel -Joseph Bourguignon d' Herbigny SJ ( born May 8, 1880 in Lille, Nord -Pas -de- Calais, † December 24, 1957 in Aix -en- Provence, Bouches -du- Rhône) was a French orientalist and secret bishop in the Soviet Union. During a decade (1922-1932) he was the principal adviser to the Holy See in Russian affairs.

Life

Education and early career

The son of a great and wealthy Catholic family attended a College of the Jesuits in Lille. On 4 October 1897 he joined the Society of Jesus. After training, according to the traditional curriculum of the Order and studying in Trier and Paris, he was ordained in Enghien on August 7, 1910 priests. At the end of his studies in theology, he defended his doctoral thesis A Russian Newman: Vladimir Solovyov (1853-1900), which was highly respected and was immediately published in 1911. Herbigny did so in the Catholic world a great Russian religious philosopher known of in the West was unknown until now. Therefore, the Académie française awarded him a prize. This book is certain with his career in the service of the Eastern Catholic Churches.

Careers in education

Professor in Enghien

Herbigny began his career as a professor of theology of the French Jesuits in Enghien, Belgium. He stayed for almost ten years (1912-1921) in Enghien. This did not prevent him to do during the summer trips to Eastern Europe, and especially to Russia. The impressions he brought with him - material poverty and the lack of clergy - led him to organize a Russian Catholic seminary in Enghien. Some students came in 1912 from Russia. But the First World War allowed the project to fail - the Russians were driven out by German troops from Belgium. His treatise De Ecclesia, published in 1920, opened a new ecumenical perspective.

Rector in Rome

In 1922 Herbigny was called to Rome to teach at the Pontifical Gregorian University. As the Pontifical Oriental Institute, founded in 1917, in 1922 by Pius XI. the Society of Jesus was entrusted Herbigny was appointed rector. He gave the Institute after its initial difficulties a decisive impetus. The founder of the most important journal Orientalia Christiana gave it its own identity, separate from the Pontifical Gregorian University. From December 1924, he advised the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, though he judged the handling of Russian affairs critical. He was also an active member of the Commission per Russia.

Secret bishop in the Soviet Union

Herbigny was a confidant of Pius XI. for Eastern affairs, and especially for the Russian. By 1926, the pressure of religious persecution in the Soviet Union was so increased that the entire leadership of the local Catholic Church was eliminated by exile or imprisonment. Pius XI. passed a resolution establishing a provisional hierarchy with neither knowledge nor with the permission of the Soviet government. The plans were recorded in the rescript Plenitudine potestatis and in the decree Quo aptius. Apostolic Administrators should in the large urban centers replace the diocesan structures that had existed in tsarist times.

Herbigny was selected to conduct this experiment, and appointed on 11 February 1926 Titular Bishop of Ilium ( Troy). Herbigny's Mission in the USSR can be compared with that of the Trojan horse. The Apostolic Nuncio Eugenio Pacelli in Berlin ( later Pope Pius XII. ) He received his episcopal consecration secret with a witness in the Apostolic Nunciature in Berlin. He made ​​his way to Moscow under the pretext of a Paschal pastoral visit of the Western European Catholics residing in the Soviet capital.

In Moscow Herbigny inaugurated on April 21, 1926 Pie Eugène Neveu AA, of the then pastor of the Catholic community in the mining town Makijiwka in Ukraine, a bishop and installed him as pastor of the Church of St. Louis of France in Moscow with the secret role Apostolic Administrator for the Catholic Church in the Moscow region ( the historical archdiocese Minsk - Mogilev ). Herbigny inaugurated on 10 May of the same year Aleksander Frison and Boleslav Sloskans bishops and appointed them for appropriate roles in Odessa and Mogilev. On 13 August of the same year he also consecrated Antoni Malecki bishop and appointed him to the same role in Leningrad. Other missions in the Soviet Union followed. The mission ended in disaster: all new bishops were arrested. Apparently the mission was revealed, Soviet agents pursued Herbigny during his trip. For a time he got the confidence of Pius XI. gained as Chairman of the Commission per Russia, the independence of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches. Since visiting the Soviet Union was no longer possible, he turned to other oriental churches and visited in 1927 the patriarchs of the Middle East.

The end of 1932 Herbigny was seriously involved in the scandal to Alexander Deubner, Russian priest and nephew of Clara Zetkin, a famous communist. Herbigny had hired him as a translator and the strange priest was also officially the co-author of the book that Herbigny had just published. After Deubner for reasons that were not very honorable, hastily went to Berlin in November 1932, he was denounced as a Soviet spy.

Disgrace and expulsion from Rome

In 1928, the Pontifical Collegium Russicum ( Russicum ) of Pius XI. founded. This project addressed Herbigny because his dream has now been realized in 1911 in Rome. But times had changed. Herbigny also committed indiscretions, and his misadventures in Russia began to be known. He joined in 1931 as Rector of the Pontifical Oriental Institute, and went back in 1933, officially for health reasons, to Belgium back, but he did not return to Rome. In 1934 he left the Commission per Russia probably as a result of failure of the restoration of a Catholic hierarchy in the USSR.

By the year 1937 Herbigny continued to travel around the world and has given numerous lectures with a strongly anti- communist tone. Silence was imposed on him in 1937, so it was strictly forbidden to speak with someone and communicate except with his monks and his family. The circumstances of his cold position can not clarify exactly historian. The French church historian Yves Chiron are a number of possible reasons: an internal regulation of the affairs of the Jesuits; Jealousy of the Polish Superior General of the Society of Jesus, Vladimir Ledochowski because of its privileged relations with Pius XI. ; an affair with a woman; Russian provocation in revenge for his hidden things; general failure of his policies and tactics. After abandoning the episcopal insignia he lived twenty years retired in Mons in the Gers department as a simple priest. He died on Christmas Eve 1957 in Aix -en- Provence, where he is buried.

Major works

  • Un Newsman russe: Vladimir Soloviev, Paris, 1911.
  • L' anglicanisme et l' orthodoxy GRECO slave, Paris, 1922.
  • La tyrannie soviétique et le russe malheur, Paris, 1923.
  • Pâques 1926 en Russie, Paris, 1926.

Bibliography

  • Lesourd, Paul, Entre Rome et Moscou Le Jésuite Clandestin, Mgr d' Herbigny, P. Lethielleux, Paris, 1976 ISBN 978-2-249-60107-1
  • Stehle, Hans Jacob, The Eastern Politics of the Vatican, 1917-1979, Ohio University Press, Athens, OH, 1981 ISBN 0-8214-0564-0
  • Fouilloux, Etienne, Les Catholiques et l' Unité Chrétienne du XXe siècle au XIXe, Le Centurion, Paris, 1982 ISBN 2-227-31037-5
  • Barthel, Manfred, The Jesuits: Legend and Truth of the Society of Jesus - Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow, Econ Verlag, Dusseldorf, 1982 ISBN 3-430-11172-2
  • Wenger, Antoine, Rome et Moscou: 1900-1950, Desclée de Brouwer, Paris, 1987 ISBN 978-2-220-02623-7
  • Tretjakewitsch, Léon, Bishop Michel d' Herbigny SJ and Russia: A Pre- Ecumenical Approach to Christian Unity, Augustine Verlag, Wurzburg, 1990 ISBN 3-7613-0162-6
  • Wenger, Antoine, Catholiques en Russie d' après les Archives du KGB: 1920-1960, Desclée de Brouwer, Paris, 1998 ISBN 2-220-04236-7
  • Zugger, Christopher Lawrence, The Forgotten: Catholics of the Soviet Empire from Lenin through Stalin, Syracuse University Press, Syracuse NY, 2001 ISBN 0-8156-0679-6
  • Alvarez, David, Spies in the Vatican: Espionage & Intrigue from Napoleon to the Holocaust, University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, KA, 2002 ISBN 0-7006-1214-9
  • Of Mary of the Angels, Francis, " Pius XI 's Politics: A Theodemocratic Pope ," He Is Risen, 16, December, 2003
  • Chiron, Yves, Pie XI: 1857-1939, Perrin, Paris, 2004 ISBN 2-262-01846-4
  • Christian way: Herbigny, Michel -Joseph Bourguignon d '. In: Biographic- bibliographic church encyclopedia ( BBKL ). Volume 32, Bautz, Nordhausen 2011, ISBN 978-3-88309-615-5, 667-679 Sp. (Articles / Articles beginning possibly in the Internet Archive )
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