The Pontifical French Seminary (La. Pontificium Seminarium Gallicum, Fr.: Séminaire Pontifical Français, It. PontificioSeminario Francese) is a
Roman College dedicated to training French-speaking
Roman Catholic priests.
History
In 1853 the French bishops held the
Council of La Rochelle, where they proposed a plan for a French Seminary in Rome to train priests strongly attached to the
Holy See and able to counteract
Gallican ideas. They successfully petitioned
Pius IX to approve this idea. The seminary opened in 1853 with 12 students under the direction of Lamurien of the
Congregation of the Holy Spirit, an order which was in charge of the college until 2009. Its first site was the old
Irish college near
Trajan's Forum.[1]
Santa Chiara was rebuilt on the plan of
Notre-Dame-des-Victoires in Paris, in 1883 the monastery was entirely remodeled to suit its present purpose. Leo XIII declared it a
pontifical seminary in 1902. As of the early 1900s there were between 100 and 120 seminarians.[4]
Henri Le Floch was the rector in the early 20th century until the late 1920s.[5] Le Floch's support of
Action Française led to his removal at the request of the French government.[6] One of Le Floch's students was Archbishop
Marcel Lefebvre, the founder of the
traditionalist Roman CatholicSociety of Saint Pius X, and he attributed his conservatism to the time he spent in the seminary.[7] The first priests belonging to the Society of Saint Pius X were from the French Seminary.[8]
In 2009, management of the seminary was transferred from the
Spiritans to the Bishops' Conference of France.[9]
College life
Most of the studies are conducted at the
Gregorian University. The students are made up both of seminarians and existing priests pursuing further study. The seminary is located in the Via di Santa Chiara.[10] Non-French students are also admitted.
^Escheat, "Le séminaire français de Rome", Rome, 1903 quoted in Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Roman Colleges" . Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
^In a profoundly Catholic seminary of this sort Marcel Lefebvre received his preparation for the Holy Priesthood in the 1920s during the reign of Pope Pius XI — at the prestigious French seminary of Rome, then under the direction of the distinguished Father Henri Le Floch, of the Holy Ghost FathersThe Society of Pius XArchived 2007-09-28 at the
Wayback Machine, Douglas Laudenschlager, The Angelus, February 1979