Charles Lavigne
Charles S. J. Lavigne ( Born January 6, 1840 in Marvejols, France, † July 11, 1913 in France ) was a Jesuit priest, Founder and Apostolic Vicar and titular bishop in India, and later diocesan Bishop of Trincomalee in Sri Lanka.
Life and work
Charles Lavigne was ordained in 1864 and was initially a secular priest. On December 27, 1866, he entered the Jesuit Order. Lavigne spoke foreign languages Italian, English and a little German and Tamil. He worked for four years as a private secretary to the Jesuit general, Jean Pierre Beckx (1795-1887) in Italy.
1887 were in India all the Catholic Thomas Christians, today's Syro - Malabar, generally detached from the Latin jurisdiction and for them (among Latin titular bishops ), the two Apostolic Vicariate created exclusively Trichur and Kottayam, the one in 1896, in turn, and in the three Vicariate of Trichur, Ernakulam Changanacherry redesigned. In that year, for the first time entered the Syro -Malabar titular bishops as apostolic vicars to the top of Sprengel.
Lavigne was appointed on 13 September 1887 Titular Bishop of Milevum and Vicar Apostolic of the newly created Vicariate of Kottayam in Kerala, India. He received episcopal consecration on 13 November of the year in Belgium by Julien Costes ( 1819-1890 ), the bishop of his home diocese Mende.
On December 14, 1888, Bishop Lavigne in his new Vicariate of the Syro -Malabar sister north of Franziskanerklarissen (FCC ), an order which still flourishes today and from the first Indian saint, Sister Alphonsa of the Immaculate Conception ( 1910-1946 ), emerged.
Bishop Charles Lavigne resided first in the Carmelite Monastery Mannanam. In 1890, he moved the residence in the town of Changanacherry, which lay in his diocese.
On September 15, 1895, Apostolic Vicar went to Rome and did not return to India, as you now bishops wanted to give their own rite the Thomas Christians. In this context, it changed on 28 July 1896, the diocese of Kottayam and Trichur in the Vicariate of Trichur, Ernakulam and Changanacherry order ( with the omission of the Vicariate of Kottayam ) and occupied it with local vicars Apostolic.
Successor of Charles Lavigne as Apostolic Vicar of Changanacherry was the Thomas Christian Mathew Makil (1851-1914), his former Vicar General for the community of Knananiten whose beatification process is already opened. He eventually became in 1911 the first pastors of the then exclusively reconstructed for Kannaniten Vicariate of Kottayam. Bishop Lavigne appreciated it very much and had personally used for the appointment of his successor.
On August 27, 1898, Pope Leo XIII. Charles Lavigne to the bishop of Trincomalee in Sri Lanka, an office which he still exercised over ten years. In 1912, he traveled back to Europe, where he died in France.