Andrew Fournet

André-Hubert Fournet, known in English as Andrew Fournet, was born on 6 December 1752 in the village of Saint-Pierre-de-Maillé in Poitou, in west-central France. He belonged to a respectable local family of some means. In boyhood and youth he was restless, poorly disciplined, and little inclined to study; at one stage he even fled his schooling and considered a secular or military path rather than the Church. A gradual conversion of life, fostered by family and clergy, turned him toward the priesthood. He completed seminary formation at Poitiers and was ordained a priest for that diocese in 1776. After early assignments he became parish priest of his native Saint-Pierre-de-Maillé, where he was known as a straightforward, somewhat rustic pastor rather than a polished orator.

The French Revolution transformed his ministry. Fournet refused the oath to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and remained loyal to Rome, which made him a hunted non-juring priest. He celebrated the sacraments in secret in barns, woods, and private houses. After a period of clandestine work he fled across the Pyrenees into Spain, remaining in exile for several years in the 1790s. He returned to France once the worst of the Terror had passed and resumed pastoral care under still-difficult conditions, helping to restore Catholic practice in a countryside marked by dechristianization, confiscated churches, and scattered congregations.

In the early nineteenth century he encountered Jeanne-Élisabeth Bichier des Ages, a devout woman of noble background who shared his concern for the education of poor girls and the care of the sick and aged. Together they founded, around 1807, the Congregation of the Daughters of the Cross (also called the Sisters of the Cross, or Filles de la Croix), first associated with Maillé and soon established at La Puye in the same region. Fournet, a diocesan priest rather than a religious himself, served as the community’s founder, spiritual father, and director. He shaped a rule of simplicity, poverty, and practical charity. The sisters taught, nursed, and served the rural poor; the congregation grew and obtained ecclesiastical approval during his lifetime. Saint Jeanne-Élisabeth, later canonized in her own right, was the co-foundress and first superior of the women’s institute.

Fournet spent his last decades at La Puye, guiding the sisters and continuing ordinary priestly ministry. Contemporary accounts stress his humility, patience, blunt speech, and unshowy piety rather than mystical phenomena or public fame. He died at La Puye on 13 May 1834. His cause advanced in the twentieth century: Pope Pius XI beatified him on 16 May 1926 and canonized him on 4 June 1933. His liturgical feast is kept on 13 May, the anniversary of his death. His remains are venerated at the motherhouse of the Daughters of the Cross in La Puye, the house most closely associated with the last years of his life and with the congregation he helped to found.