Florian-Jules-Félix Desprez

Julien Florian Félix Desprez, who used the name Florian Desprez (14 April 1807 – 21 January 1895) was a French prelate of the Catholic Church, who became a bishop in 1850, first in Réunion from 1850 to 1857 and then in Limoges until 1859. He spent 36 years of his ecclesiastical career as archbishop of Toulouse from 1859 to 1895. He was made a cardinal in 1879.

Early years Florian Desprez was born in Ostricourt, Nord, on 14 April 1807. He was the eldest of three children born to a family of modest means; an uncle was a priest and an aunt a religious sister. He studied at the Royal College of Douai from 1819 to 1824. He then entered the Major Seminary of Cambrai. Immediately upon his ordination as a priest on 19 December 1829 he was appointed vicar of the cathedral church in Cambrai. His sister Justine, then seventeen years old, joined him there and lived with him throughout his career, including during his overseas assignment, until her death 63 years later on 23 November 1892.

In February 1834 he was assigned as a parish priest to Pont-à-Marcq, a poor village south of Lille, and then in September 1843 as pastor in Templeuve and in February 1847 as pastor of the newly established parish of Notre Dame in Roubaix, an industrial center.

Bishop After negotiations between the Holy See and the French government resulted in the erection of several dioceses in French island colonies in 1850, During his tenure in Réunion he made five pastoral visits to the parishes of his diocese.

Archbishop

After just eighteen months he was promoted to archbishop of Toulouse on 26 September 1859 and installed on 29 November.

In 1861, he completed the plans of his predecessor to use the Roman liturgical rite in Toulouse, He participated in the First Vatican Council and joined the majority in support of that dogma.

In 1862, Desprez provoked a firestorm of protests by proposing a religious observance to mark the 300th anniversary of events that occurred in Toulouse during the Wars of Religion, when Catholic forces massacred several thousand Huguenots who had been granted safe conduct. He wrote that the Church had a duty to remember "the most remarkable events of its history" and would celebrate "a glorious act" of three hundred years ago. Desprez' announcement described the grand scale of past celebrations, though not Voltaire's protest that the 1762 celebration was held to "thank God for four thousand murders". The government banned the planned procession. Desprez, in a lengthy letter, presented his intentions in a different light. He said he was completely surprised at the reaction and that the Church would never glorify the violence of past centuries. His position was that the Catholics of Toulouse should celebrate the fact that their prayers had been answered in 1562.

After the French government forbade the publication of Pope Pius IX's Syllabus of Errors condemning modernism, Desprez protested the Church's right to publish it. On 5 January 1865, he asserted the Church's rights calling the document "doctrinal instruction" of which the pope is "the one and only judge". He told the government that it was "abdicating the right to impose moderation by setting no example of it" and "giving joy only ... to the enemies of religion and order". He later described Pius as speaking from a point of view "above the events of this world" and seeing "on the horizon like vapors rising from the abyss the rude and corrupting errors of our time"; he said Pius' work demonstrated the power of the Church, which is "never greater than when it seems most oppressed".

He pressed the case for the canonization of the recently beatified Saint Germaine of Pibrac, a 17th-century shepherd girl abused by her step-mother in a village just west of Toulouse. Pope Pius XI declared her a saint on 29 June 1867 before a vast assembly of clerics who on that day celebrated the 18th centenary of the martyrdom of Saint Peter and the pope congratulated Desprez in person on 1 July.

Following the July 1875 enactment of a statute allowing Catholic higher education, he spearheaded the establishment of the Institut Catholique de Toulouse in 1877. In addition to theological studies, Desprez emphasized its mission in opposition to secularism and contemporary society: "What is the purpose of founding Catholic universities? To provide doctors, lawyers, solicitors, engineers, magistrates, professors, writers, business leaders who will be motivated by Catholic feelings."

Pope Leo XIII made him a cardinal priest on 12 May 1879 and gave him his red galero and the title of Santi Marcellino e Pietro on 22 September 1879. He took possession of his titular church on 25 September 1879.

A doctor who worked in Toulouse during the cholera epidemic of 1885 reported that Desprez was "the only official personage who had the courage at that time to cross the perilous threshold" of the lazaretto. He also reported being told several times that Desprez was the biological son of Emperor Napoleon, though "it was pretty generally agreed that he had not inherited the great intellectual gifts of his supposed father".

He died of heart disease on 21 January 1895 in Toulouse; (The inscription on his tombstone expresses the date of his death using the Roman calends system as "XII KAL FEBRVARII", that is, the eleventh day before 1 February, which is 21 January.) This report also errs in transcribing the year of his death as "MDCCCXCX" rather than "MDCCCXCV". (The end of his tenure is unknown, but his chair was assigned to someone else in 1887.) The instructions he left for his funeral declined the military honors associated with his officer's rank.