Hello, I'm Dr. Anadale and this is the first in a series of videos about the life of Father
John Dubois, founder of Mount St. Mary's University.
John Dubois was born in Paris in 1764.
He was ordained a priest in 1787 at the age of 23.
Technically he was too young but he received a special dispensation from the canon law requirement.
He was assigned to the huge parish of Saint-Sulpice, with 90,000 congregants and over 60 priests
in the charge of a curé.
A wide range of society were among the congregation, including the urban poor and members of the
nobility, including the wife of the Marquis of Lafayette.
The curé assigned young father Dubois as chaplain at the Petites Maisones, a hospital for
the elderly and the insane.
There he tended daily to the spiritual needs of 400 patients and the 40 sisters of the
Daughters of Charity who ran the place.
They lived under the rule of St. Vincent de Paul, which Father Dubois would later use
in America.
And then came the Revolution.
In the summer of 1790 the revolutionary government passed the Civil Constitution of the Clergy,
which nationalized the Catholic Church and reorganized it along lines of the Anglican
Church, with a civil authority at its head and popular election of Bishops.
In January 1791 all priests were required to swear a loyalty oath to this new order.
The oath split the French church: about half of the priests took the oath and half refused.
Many looked to the priests of Saint-Sulpice for leadership because of its great size and
its location in central Paris.
On January 9th, the deadline for taking the oath, the church was packed for mass, with
parishioners including Madame Lafayette, and hostile forces anxious to see whether the
priests would swear the oath.
The National Guard was called to the scene to keep order.
The curé entered the sanctuary surrounded by his priests and began to preach a sermon
on the needs of the urban poor.
Someone in the congregation cried out, “The oath! The oath!”
The curé stopped and said simply, “I cannot take the oath; my conscience does not allow me.”
All the priests around him, including Father Dubois, repeated, “I cannot take the oath;
my conscience does not allow me.”
There's an uproar in the church, and a cry is heard: “The oath, or the lamppost!”
A general melee breaks out, one man brandishes a pistol but it's wrestled away from him.
The National Guard moves in.
Continuing mass is impossible.
The priests form a circle around the curé , escorting him back to the sacristy.
In the general fighting the curé is struck in the head, and in the sacristy
he collapses, unconscious.
He does recover, and immediately afterwards receives a visit from the mayor of Paris,
who demands that the curé lead his priests in obedience.
He says, “When the law speaks, the conscience must be silent.”
Still the curé refuses.
So later the curé is replaced by revolutionary bishop.
By April of that year most non-oath-taking priests have been relieved of their parishes.
Now, because he did not serve the public, but a private hospital, Father Dubois was
permitted for a time to continue his ministry at the Petites Maisones.
The curé and other priests attempted to keep serving the faithful of Saint-Sulpice in a
private chapel, but in early June mob violence forced them to flee.
Most went to Brussels, Rome, or Switzerland.
Dubois by this time was a marked man. He approached the Lafayettes.
At his wife's urging, the Marquis de Lafayette wrote Father Dubois a letter of introduction
to a friend in the United States.
Later in June Dubois chanced to bump into his childhood friend, Maximilien Robespierre, on the street.
They had been at school together as young men, before the Revolution.
Robespierre invited Dubois to join him for breakfast, and impulsively Dubois asked for
his assistance in escaping.
Although he was already a significant leader in the revolutionary government, Robespierre
wrote his old friend forged papers to get him out of Paris safely.
And so in late June 1791, Father John Dubois used papers forged by Robespierre to pass
by the Paris guards.
At Le Havre he booked passage for America.
In his pocket he carried a letter of introduction to Lafayette’s friend, James Monroe.
To be continued.