Pierre Vigne (20 August 1670 – 8 July 1740) was a French Roman Catholic

priest A priest is a religious leader authorized to perform the sacred rituals of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and one or more deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particu ...

who established the Blessed Sacrament Sisters of Valence.

Pope John Paul II Pope John Paul II ( la, Ioannes Paulus II; it, Giovanni Paolo II; pl, Jan Paweł II; born Karol Józef Wojtyła ; 18 May 19202 April 2005) was the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 1978 until his ...

beatified him in 2004.

Life

Pierre Vigne was born in 1670 as one of five children to Pierre Vigne and Frances Gautier. He was better educated than most of his peers and served as an active member in his parish. A religious vocation manifested in his late teens when he received a sudden and active awareness of

Jesus Christ Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious ...

in the

Eucharist The Eucharist (; from Greek , , ), also known as Holy Communion and the Lord's Supper, is a Christian rite that is considered a sacrament in most churches, and as an ordinance in others. According to the New Testament, the rite was instit ...

. Vigne entered the Sulpician Seminary in Viviers in 1690 to commence his studies, and was

ordained Ordination is the process by which individuals are consecrated, that is, set apart and elevated from the laity class to the clergy, who are thus then authorized (usually by the denominational hierarchy composed of other clergy) to perform va ...

to the priesthood on 18 September 1694. After this, he served as a parish curate for six years and joined the Vincentian missionaries in Lyon in 1700, acting as a

missionary A missionary is a member of a Religious denomination, religious group which is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Tho ...

and a preacher. He left the Vincentians in 1706 and became known as a travelling priest for the next three decades. He would preach and celebrate Mass at the places he visited and also visited the sick and carried out confessions. It was on 30 November 1715 that he founded the Blessed Sacrament Sisters of Valence and following this established schools for children. He died in 1740.

Beatification

The official cause of beatification commenced on a local level in France on 19 September 1894, before the

Positio In the Catholic Church, a ''positio'' (''Positio super Virtutibus'') is a document or collection of documents used in the process by which a person is declared Venerable, the second of the four steps on the path to canonization as a saint. Des ...

was submitted to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.

declared that he lived a life of heroic virtue and proclaimed him to be

Venerable The Venerable (''venerabilis'' in Latin) is a style, a title, or an epithet which is used in some Western Christian churches, or it is a translation of similar terms for clerics in Eastern Orthodoxy and monastics in Buddhism. Christianity Cathol ...

on 7 July 2003. That same pope beatified him after the recognition of a

miracle A miracle is an event that is inexplicable by natural or scientific lawsOne dictionary define"Miracle"as: "A surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divin ...

on 3 October 2004.

References

External links

Pierre VigneSaints SQPN
{{DEFAULTSORT:Vigne, Pierre 1670 births 1740 deaths French beatified people Beatifications by Pope John Paul II 18th-century venerated Christians Venerated Catholics by Pope John Paul II