Joseph-Marie-Pélagie Havard

Life Havard was born in 1790 in Thourie, in the ancient province of Brittany, during the final days of the Kingdom of France. Nothing is recorded of his upbringing or how he fared during the turmoil of the French Revolution and the First French Empire.

Some time about 1815, Havard entered the seminary of the Paris Foreign Missions Society to give his service to the Church in Asia. After completing his studies there, he was sent to Vietnam, where he received Holy Orders on 16 June 1821 from Bishop Jacques-Benjamin Longer, M.E.P., who had served as the Apostolic Vicar of the Vicariate Apostolic of Western Tonkin since 1787.

Havard died in Hanoi in 1838, being succeeded by Pierre-André Retord, M.E.P.