Henri Le Floch

Henri Le Floch, C.S.Sp. (6 June 1862 – 21 February 1950) was a French priest of the Catholic Church who served as rector of the French Seminary (Collège Français) in Rome from 1904 to 1927.

Biography

Henri Le Floch was born on 6 June 1862 in Caouet in the commune of Plonévez-Porzay, now in Kerlaz, in Brittany. He said he modeled himself on relatives who had remained faithful priests during the French Revolution. In 1875 he entered the Petit Séminaire de Pont-Croix and in 1878 the Petit Scolasticat de Langonnet, run by the Holy Ghost Fathers (Spiritans). In 1882 he continued his studies at the Grand Scolasticat in Chevilly. He was ordained a priest on 31 October 1886 and on 28 August 1887 he took his final vows as a member of the Holy Ghost Fathers. Because of health problems he was not allowed to join the African missions. Instead he worked in seminary education, serving in various locations as professor of rhetoric or philosophy, prefect of studies, and prefect of discipline. He earned his baccalaureate and then began studying for a licenciate in philosophy in Paris in 1894. He was named head of the Collège du Saint‑Esprit in Beauvais in September 1895. On 8 September 1900, he was appointed superior of the community in Chevilly and head of the Grand Scolasticat. His politics were traditional and conservative, showing no inclination to compromise with government attempts to restrict the role of the Church in the public sphere. During the 1902 legislative elections, he made his opposition to universal suffrage clear to his seminarians.

When the French government exerted control over religious orders under the Associations Act of 1 July 1901, it threatened the order with dissolution unless it could document its origins. The superior general of the Holy Ghost Fathers, Bishop Alexandre Le Roy, asked Le Floch to research the founding of the order in 1703 by Claude-François Poullart des Places. The order had come close to extinction in the early nineteenth century. It survived by being integrated into a congregation with a similar commitment to missionary work, the Society of the Holy Heart of Mary, founded by Francis Libermann in 1842. The two congregations were joined under the name of Congregation of the Holy Spirit under the protection of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Until Le Floch's research, the Holy Ghost Fathers had regarded Libermann, whose life was well documented and whose writings they knew well, as their founder. Le Floch's research both satisfied the French government's requirements and gave the order a second founder as inspiration. His work ran to 550 pages and was published in 1906.

He became rector of the French Seminary in Rome in September 1904. During his tenure the number of seminarians increased from about 100 to 140 at the start of World War I and to 207 when he left, as French bishops sent more students to Rome as the government restricted their own activities. This raised Le Floch's profile and made him political enemies. In 1921, Canet opposed awarding the Legion of Honor to Le Floch, writing that he was "not a loyal citizen", that "grouped around him were all those who oppose the establishment of an honorable modus vivendi between the Holy See and France".

In 1927, Pope Pius XI asked him to resign. The ostensible rationale was that his political views, especially his support for the right-wing political group Action Française and its founder Charles Maurras, were at odds with the Vatican's attempt at rapprochement with the French government. French government officials had also sought his removal and unsympathetic clerics both in France and Rome sought his removal. (On 8 September 1926, Pope Pius had forbidden Catholics to belong to Action Française or read its publications.)

In December 1927, Le Floch drew a distinction between the role of clerics and political activists. He wrote that he and Billot "fought against liberalism, secularism, the principles of the revolution, from the doctrinal point of view. Now it so happened that the Action Française was fighting against the same plagues, but on the political plane."

Le Floch resigned and returned to France. He lived first in his order's seminary at Orly and later in a chateau in the south of France. His students published a large volume of essays in 1937 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of his ordination. In 1939 he visited Rome and met privately with Pope Pius XII.

Le Floch died on 21 February 1950 in Barbegal near Arles.