The Society of Priests of Saint-Sulpice (French: Compagnie des Prêtres de Saint-Sulpice; PSS), also known as the Sulpicians, is a society of apostolic life of pontifical right for men, named after the Church of Saint-Sulpice, Paris, where it was founded. Members add the postnominal letters PSS. Typically, the society's priests become full members only after ordination and some years of pastoral work. The purpose of the society is mainly the education of priests and, to some extent, parish work. Sulpicians place great emphasis on the academic and spiritual formation of their own members, who commit themselves to undergoing lifelong development in these areas. The society is divided into provinces of France, Canada, and the United States, which operate in various countries.
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In France
The Society of Priests of Saint Sulpice was founded in France in 1641 by Father Jean-Jacques Olier (1608–1657), an exemplar of the French School of Spirituality. A disciple of Vincent de Paul and Charles de Condren, Olier took part in "missions" organized by them.
The French priesthood at that time suffered from low morale, academic deficits and other problems. Envisioning a new approach to priestly preparation, Olier gathered a few priests and seminarians around him in Vaugirard, a suburb of Paris, in the final months of 1641. Shortly thereafter, he moved his operation to the parish of Saint-Sulpice in Paris, hence the name of the new Society. After several adjustments, he built a seminary next to the current church of Saint-Sulpice. The Séminaire de Saint-Sulpice thereby became the first Sulpician seminary. There the first seminarians got their spiritual formation, while taking most theology courses at the Sorbonne. The spirit of this new seminary and its founder caught the attention of many leaders in the French Church; and before long, members of the new Society staffed a number of new seminaries elsewhere in the country.
Sulpician priests contributed to the parish community during the day, but at night they would return to their institutions. Jean-Jacques Olier attempted to control diverse social groups by having laymen of the community give reports on family life, poverty, and disorder. The Sulpicians were very strict in regards to women and sexuality to the extent that they were eventually banned from the seminary unless it was for short visits in the external area with appropriate attire. The Sulpicians accepted aspirants to the company as long as they were priests and had permission from their bishop. The Sulpicians would thus recruit wealthy individuals since Sulpicians did not take vows of poverty. They retained ownership of individual property and were free to dispose their wealth. The Sulpicians soon came to be known for the revival of the parish life, reform of seminary life, and the revitalization of spirituality.
In the 18th century they attracted the sons of the nobility, as well as candidates from the common class, and produced a large number of the French bishops. The Séminaire de Saint-Sulpice was closed during the French Revolution, and its teachers and students scattered to avoid persecution. That Revolution also led to the secularization of the University of Paris. When France stabilized, theology courses were offered exclusively in seminaries, and the Sulpicians resumed their educational mission. Sulpician seminaries earned and maintained reputations for solid academic teaching and high moral tone. The Society spread from France to Canada, the United States and to several other foreign countries, including eventually to Vietnam and French Africa, where French Sulpician seminaries are found even today.
In Canada
New France
The Sulpicians played a major role in the founding of the Canadian city of Montreal, where they engaged in missionary activities, trained priests and constructed the Saint-Sulpice Seminary.
The Société Notre-Dame de Montréal, of which Jean-Jacques Olier was an active founder, was granted the land of Montreal from the Company of One Hundred Associates, which owned New France, with the aim of converting the indigenous population and providing schools and hospitals for both them and the colonists. The Jesuits served as missionaries for the small colony until 1657 when Olier sent four priests from the Saint-Sulpice seminary in Paris to form the first parish. In 1663, France decided to substitute direct royal administration over New France for that hitherto exercised by the Company of One Hundred Associates, and in the same year the Société Notre-Dame de Montréal ceded its possessions to the Seminaire de Saint-Sulpice. Just as in Paris, the Montreal Sulpicians had important civil responsibilities. Most notably, they acted as seigneurs for the island of Montreal.
The Sulpicians served as missionaries, judges, explorers, schoolteachers, social workers, supervisors of convents, almsmen, canal builders, urban planners, colonization agents, and entrepreneurs. Despite their large role in society and their influence in shaping early Montreal, each night they would all return to the Saint-Sulpice Seminary. The administration of the Séminaire de Montreal was modeled on that of the Séminaire de Paris, in which the company was run by the superior, the four-man Consulting Council, and the Assembly of Twelve Assistants. According to the rules of the seminary in 1764, the superior, during his five-year renewable term, was to act like a father and was to be respected. The seminary kept careful records of all employees including birthday, place of birth, marital status, and salary. Female employees posed a particular problem since although a cheap source of labour, their presence in a male religious community was problematic. The superior of the Séminaire de Montréal was inherently also the Island of Montreal's seigneur. In the case of M. Vachon de Belmont, who was responsible for the mission of La Montagne, sixth superior of the Montreal Sulpicians, the master designer of the fort and Sulpicians' residential château, and who was independently wealthy, was very well educated and had trained as draughtsman and architect, M. Belmont had a more than passing interest in military strategy and architecture. M. Belmont's military strategy stamp is also evident in the implementation of the Sault-au-Récollet's fr:Fort Lorette and the seigneurie Lac-de-Deux-Montagnes' fort.
After the Conquest
On April 29, 1764, the Séminaire de Saint-Sulpice de Paris executed an act of donation giving all Canadian property to the Séminaire de Montréal making possible the survival of the Sulpicians to become British subjects, loyal to the Crown. In the wake of the Conquest of 1760, the Séminaire de Montreal thus became independent from the Séminaire de Saint-Sulpice de Paris. By contrast, since 1763, other male-affiliated religious orders deemed to be too dependent on France and Rome, that is, the Récollets and Jésuit orders, were prevented from recruiting members and these religious orders properties were confiscated to become British Crown property.
In 1794 after the French Revolution, twelve Sulpicians fled persecution by the National Convention and emigrated to Montreal, Quebec. According to Pierre-Auguste Fournet, the Sulpicians of Montreal would have died out had not the British Government opened Canada to the priests persecuted during the French Revolution.
After lengthy negotiations, in 1840 the British Crown recognized the possessions of the Sulpicians, the status of which had been ambiguous since the Conquest, while also providing for the gradual termination of the seigneurial regime. This enabled the Sulpicians to keep their holdings and continue their work, while allowing landowners who so desired to make a single final payment (commutation) and be relieved of all future seigneurial dues. Inauguration in 1825 of the Lachine Canal opened up markets to the United States' interior via the Erie Canal (opened in 1822), which in turn provided the impetus for the rapid sudden development of North America's largest industrial park in the area known as Pointe-Saint-Charles, named after Charles le Moyne. A large part of Pointe-Saint-Charles was occupied by the Sulpicians' Saint-Gabriel Farm established in 1659 and named after the first superior, Gabriel de Queylus.
At the request of Bishop Ignace Bourget, in 1840 the Sulpicians took over the diocesan school of theology, creating the famous Grand Séminaire de Montréal. Since 1857 it has been located on Sherbrooke Street near Atwater Avenue. This operation enabled the Montreal Sulpicians to expand their primary work, the education of priests. They have trained innumerable priests and bishops, Canadian and American, down to the present day.
Canadian Sulpicians may be found operating in seminaries in Montreal and Edmonton. In 1972 the Canadian Province established a Provincial Delegation for Latin America, based in Bogotá, Colombia. In Latin America, the Society functions in Brazil (Brasília and Londrina) and Colombia (Cali, Cúcuta and Manizales). They have also served in Fukuoka, Japan since 1933.
In the United States
Sulpicians set foot in what is now the United States as early as 1670 when Fathers Dollier de Casson and Brehan de Galinee from Brittany landed in what would later become Detroit, Michigan. In 1684 Robert de la Salle headed an ill-fated expedition from France to what is now Texas, taking with him three priests, all Sulpicians. These were Fathers Dollier de Casson, Brehan de Galinee, and Jean Cavelier, the explorer's older brother. This expedition ended in failure, and the vessel carrying the three Sulpicians was shipwrecked in what is now the state of Texas. Among the survivors were the three Sulpicians, two of whom returned to France on the next available vessel. The third, Dollier de Casson, decided to remain to catechize the natives. This, after all, was a major motive for his coming. He met with little success in this endeavor, however, and finally decided to return to France as had his companions. His missionary zeal unslaked, he soon found a vessel to transfer him to the Sulpician enterprise in Montreal, which was quite successful and has endured down to the present day.
In July 1791, four Sulpicians, newly arrived from France, established the first Catholic institution for the training of clergy in the newly formed United States: St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore. They were Francis Charles Nagot, Anthony Gamier, Michael Levadoux, and John Tessier, who had fled the French Revolution. Purchasing the One Mile Tavern then on the edge of the city, they dedicated the house to the Blessed Virgin. In October they opened classes with five students whom they had brought from France, and thereby established the first enduring community of the Society in the nation.
In March, 1792 three more priests arrived, Abbé Chicoisneau, Abbé John Baptist Mary David, and Abbé Benedict Joseph Flaget. Two seminarians arrived with them, Stephen T. Badin and another named Barret. They were joined in June of that same year by the Abbés Ambrose Maréchal, Gabriel Richard and Francis Ciquard. Many of these early priests were sent as missionaries to remote areas of the United States and its territories. Flaget and David founded the Catholic Seminary of St. Thomas, at Bardstown, Kentucky. It was the first seminary west of the Appalachians. Their St. Thomas Catholic Church, built there in 1816, is the oldest surviving brick church in Kentucky. In 1796, Louis William Valentine Dubourg arrived and became the president of Georgetown University. Later he became the first bishop of the Louisiana Territory.
A decade later, Dubourg was instrumental in the transfer from New York City of the widow and recent convert Elizabeth Seton, who had been unsuccessful in her efforts to run a school, in part to care for her family. With his encouragement, she and other women drawn to the vision of caring for the poor in a religious way of life came to found the first American congregation of Sisters in 1809. The Sulpicians served as their religious superiors until 1850, when the original community located there chose to merge with another religious institute of Sisters. In 1829, Sulpician Fr. James Joubert worked with Mary Lange, a Haitian immigrant, to establish the first community of black sisters in the United States, the Oblate Sisters of Providence.
Sainthood Causes
Blesseds
Bernard-François de Cucsac and 11 Companions (died 2 September 1792), Martyrs of the French Revolution, beatified on 17 October 1926
Charles-René Collas du Bignon (25 August 1743 - 3 June 1794), Martyr of the French Revolution, beatified on 1 October 1995
Joseph Juge de Saint-Martin (4 June 1739 - 7 July 1794), Martyr of the French Revolution, beatified on 1 October 1995
Claude-Joseph Jouffret de Bonnefont (23 December 1752 - 10 August 1794), Martyr of the French Revolution, beatified on 1 October 1995
Servants of God
Jean-Jacques Olier (20 September 1608 – 2 April 1657), founder of the Society
Jacques-Martin Ploquin (3 February 1766 - 25 February 1794), Martyr of the French Revolution
Sulpicians today
The 2012 Annuario Pontificio gave 293 as the number of priest members as of 31 December 2010.
List of superiors general
The following is a chronological list of superiors general of the Society of the Priests of Saint Sulpice:
List of Canadian Province Superiors
Source: https://sulpc.org/devenir-formateur/
Notable members
Raymond E. Brown
John Francis Cronin
Étienne-Michel Faillon
Joseph Martin
Georges Morand
Marc Ouellet
Emmanuel Célestin Suhard
Joseph Tixeront, Theologian of the late 19th and early 20th Century
François du Plessis de Grenédan (1921–2013), a chaplain of the FTP and FFI maquisards of the Saint-Nazaire Pocket during World War 2.