Mgr. Barron set up his mission between Harper and the new villages. In response to a request from Barron to Francis Libermann, the first missionaries of the Holy Heart of Mary arrived at Gorée on October 10, 1843. Their Society had only just been founded. It resulted from a meeting between three students: Francis Marie Paul Libermann, Frédérick Le Vavasseur and Eugène Tisserant.
A shared vocation
Eugène Tisserant |
In 1802, Jacob Libermann was born into a Jewish family in Alsace, the son a rabbi. Frederick Le Vavasseur came from a rich family of sugar planters on the island of Bourbon in the Indian Ocean, and Eugène Tisserant was born in Haiti, the son of a French chemist and a Haitian mother.
All three shared the same vocation which had its roots in their meeting in 1836 at the Sulpician seminary of Issy-les-Moulineaux in the suburbs of Paris.
Issy-les-Moulineaux
Francis Libermann had been a Christian for ten years when he met the other two, having been baptised on Christmas Eve in 1826, changing his Jewish name to Francis Mary Paul. Less than a year later, he had entered the seminary of Saint Sulpice to prepare to be a priest, but he had to give up the idea because of his bad health. He remained with the Sulpicians, living close to the philosophy students at Issy. He was an assistant to the Bursar and helped in the spiritual direction of the seminarians.
Frédéric was beginning his second stay in France. His father had wanted him to study at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, so he had put him in the care of a missionary in Bourbon who was returning to Paris, Nicolas Wernet of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit
FrédericLe vavasseur |
Frédéric could not settle down to scientific studies. He switched to law, but at the end of his first year, he decided to return to Bourbon to rejoin his family, which had grown very rich through its interests in the sugar plantations.
The work in these plantations was exhausting and the slaves were no better than beasts of burden. Their rest periods were simply to gather strength for more work. Frédéric was very distressed by the plight of these slaves, and determined to turn away
Francis Libermann |
definitively from the luxurious life-style that his family enjoyed. He decided to become a priest in order to help the Creoles. He returned to Paris and asked to be admitted as a seminarian at Issy-les-Moulineaux, arriving there in June of 1836. It was then that he first met Francis Libermann.
ugène Tisserant was the son of a French father and a Haitian mother. His maternal grandfather, General Beauvais, was one of the last French commandants resident in Haiti before the independence of this first Black Republic. He and his family witnessed both slavery in practice and the beginnings of the anti-slavery movement. What he had seen of the humiliating way that the masters and their subordinates treated the slaves undoubtedly had a profound effect on him. He entered the seminary at Issy at the same time as Frédéric.
