René Vilatte
Joseph René Vilatte ( born January 24, 1854 in Paris, † July 1, 1929 in Versailles) was a bishop of French origin. Its importance lies in the dissemination of the Apostolic succession of several church communities outside the Union of Utrecht Old Catholic type.
Joseph -René Vilatte, son of Joseph -René Vilatte and Marie Antoinette Chaurin was baptized in the Church of separated from the Roman Catholic Pope Petite and incorporated into the Roman Catholic Church in 1867. In later years he worked in Belgium and Canada in various Christian denominations, most recently for a group autonomist Catholics. On the recommendation of Hyacinthe Loyson consecrated him on 6 and 7 June 1885 Eduard Herzog, christian catholic bishop of Bern, just there as a deacon and priest.
1887, Vilatte in the U.S. religious orders like " Society of the Precious Blood" (Society of the Precious Blood [ Christ ], derived from both kinds ) and was chosen by this November 16, 1889 Bishop. The episcopal ordination according to the Roman rite he received on 29 May 1892 in Colombo ( Ceylon) by Antonio Francisco Xavier Alvares ( = Mar Julius I of Goa), the bishop of Portuguese descent a community of former Catholics of patriarchy Goa, which, while retaining their Latin liturgy had joined the Syrian Orthodox Church. The permission for ordination Vilattes the " Metropolitan of America " had the Syro - Antiochene Patriarch Ignatius Peter III. granted. Two Syrian Orthodox Bishops of Malabar (India), Paulose Mar Athanasios and Geevarghese Mar Gregorios ( St. Gregorios of Parumala = ), were involved in Vilattes episcopal ordination, which I received the official name Mar Timotheos of America. The Old Catholic Church declared in 1898 and ordained a bishop for invalid because presumably acquired by simony, do not share an opinion, the other Catholic and Orthodox authorities.
After his consecration to Vilatte made independently of its as coordinators and worked in North America and Europe, explicitly encouraged by Hyacinthe Loyson, in competition with the international Union of Utrecht Old Catholicism. In 1898 he participated in the U.S. before his first episcopal ordination. After the separation of church and state in France ( 1905) he was working there. From 1907 he served in Paris, supported by secular circles as " First Hierarch " of the neo- Gallican Église Catholique, Apostolique et Française. In 1909 he founded the U.S. multinational "American Catholic Church " for which he consecrated several bishops. In 1916, he recorded as Archbishop - Primate of the " Old Roman Catholic Church " in Chicago. In 1922 he resigned his office as their " top bishop" and finally returned to France.
Christmas 1924 awarded him the Église Gallicane of Louis -François Giraud the title "Patriarch of the Gallican episcopate ", which he himself did not lead and was eventually taken from him because of " apostasy " to Roman Catholicism.
From 1894 Vilatte negotiated with the Roman Catholic Church over its Rekonziliation, but took the same before several ordinations (or appointments ):
On June 1, 1925 Vilatte put before the Apostolic Nuncio, Bonaventura Cerretti ( 1872-1933 ), in Paris his confession of guilt from, and submitted to the Pope in Rome. Then a papal pension, the Cistercian Abbey of Sainte -Marie - du Pont Colbert it were granted and assigned as a residence in Versailles, where he lived freely, corresponded and received visitors, among the Gnostic Catholic Bishop Jean Bricaud ( 1881-1934 ). There he spent his last years. Vilatte died on July 1, 1929 of heart failure, was laid out in pontifical vestments and buried after a private Requiem on July 3, 1929 in a small circle on the Cimetière des Gonards of Versailles.
Friedrich Heiler, the "High Church St. John's Brotherhood " and the High Church Austria carry out their apostolic succession back to Vilatte.