Pierre-Marie Gerlier

Pierre -Marie Cardinal Gerlier ( born January 14, 1880 in Versailles, France; † January 17, 1965 in Lyon) was Archbishop of Lyon.

Life

Pierre -Marie Gerlier studied Catholic theology and philosophy in Bordeaux and Fribourg. He participated as an officer in the First World War and received on 29 July 1921 in Paris as late appointee the sacrament of Holy Orders. He then worked as a parish pastor and director of Catholic work in the Archdiocese of Paris.

1929 Pope Pius XI appointed him. Bishop of Tarbes and Lourdes. The bishop ordained by Cardinal Pierre -Marie Gerlier Louis -Ernest Dubois. In 1937 he was entrusted with the leadership of the Archdiocese of Lyon and included as a cardinal priest with the titular church of Santissima Trinità al Monte Pincio in the College of Cardinals. Pierre -Marie Gerlier took in the years 1939, 1958 and 1963 part of the conclave. He represented the Pope at several international celebrations as Papal Legate. In the years 1962 to 1965, he took part in the first sessions of the Second Vatican Council. Pierre -Marie Cardinal Gerlier died on 17 January 1965 in Lyon and was buried in the local cathedral.

For his efforts to protect Jews from persecution by the Third Reich, he was handicapped in 1981 by Yad Vashem posthumously awarded the title among the nations .. the end of August 1942, he had, as the highest representative of the Catholic Church unoccupied in the zone, connected to the open resistance against the deportation of Jews. He refused the local Vichy authorities to hand over 84 Jewish children who had been found in Catholic children's homes receiving after their parents had been deported in the weeks before. The children were to be deported to express direction of Pierre Laval to the extermination camps. On September 2, 1942 Gerlier sent a pastoral letter to the priests of his archdiocese, of the one Jules Salièges one months corresponded almost literally before. What the initiative made ​​Gerliers for Pétain and Laval critical, the fact that he had been one of their preferred political interlocutor and supporters until then and for the rest a kind of primus inter pares of the French Catholics had been, he was still the honorary title " Primate of the Gauls " ( primate of gaules ) like all the archbishops of Lyon.