Augustin-Magloire Blanchet

Augustin Magloire Alexandre Blanchet (22 August 1797 – 25 February 1887) was a French Canadian prelate of the Catholic Church. He served as the first bishop of the now-defunct Diocese of Walla Walla and of the Diocese of Nesqually in present-day Washington.

Along with his elder brother and other fellow French Canadian missionaries, Blanchet established the Catholic Church presence in what later became Washington.

Biography

Early life and priesthood Augustin Blanchet was born on 23 August 1797 in the village of Saint-Pierre-de-La-Rivière-du-Sud, in what was then the British colony of Lower Canada. The younger brother of François Norbert Blanchet, Augustin Blanchet studied at Le Petit Séminaire de Québec and then at the Grand Seminary of Quebec.

Blanchet was ordained to the priesthood on 3 June 1821 for the Archdiocese of Quebec and held several church positions in Lower Canada, mainly around Montreal, and in the Cape Breton region what was then the British colony of Nova Scotia.

Bishop of Walla Walla On 28 July 1846, while serving as a canon in Montreal, Blanchet was appointed bishop of the new Diocese of Walla Walla in the Oregon Country area of the Pacific Northwest. Francois Blanchet had set up a Catholic church presence there in 1838, serving a bishop of the Diocese of Oregon City. Blanchet also tried to claim an Oblate mission property that the order had received from a Native American tribe.

Described as an inflexible and arrogant leader, Blanchet quickly alienated most of the secular priests in his diocese. Many of these priests attempted to join the Jesuit and Oblate orders to escape his control. In response, Blanchet introduced rules to make these transfers more difficult and to steer seminarians away from the orders. In 1853, the diocese became part of Washington Territory.

In 1868, Francis X. Prefontaine, a young priest and fellow Lower Canada native, requested Blanchet's permission to build a church building near Pioneer Square in Seattle to support the city's first Catholic parish, Our Lady of Good Help. Blanchet believed that Seattle was a lost cause, but nevertheless he gave Prefontaine permission to build a church there, on the condition that Prefontaine raised all the money. Prefontaine in 1869 opened Seattle's Catholic church.

Retirement and legacy Pope Leo XIII accepted Blanchet's retirement as bishop of Nesqually on 23 December 1879, at age 82, and named him titular bishop of Ibora. He continued to live in the Nesqually area during his retirement. Augustin Blanchet died in Vancouver, Washington, on 25 February 1887.

Bishop Blanchet High School in Seattle's Green Lake neighborhood is named for Blanchet. In 1955, a priest conducting an exhumation of Blanchet's body to transport to a different burial site declared that it was incorrupt, or preserved by miraculous processes.