Kategoria: About us

1887: The Sovereign Pontiff Leo XIII addressed a Brief to Lavigerie in which he said: “The distinguished services you have rendered to Africa recommend you so highly that you seem comparable to the men who have best received from Catholicism and civilization.”

Letter to the Holy Father (4 November 1891)
This prelate [Mgr Livinhac], Most Holy Father, has already had long years of experience in the mission in the heart of Africa. He has given there an example of heroic courage, faith, devotion and selfdenial. I recognize in him only one fault which can be overcome only by obedience: that is extreme humility which gives him a horror of all high office, and he would refuse, as he has himself declared to me several times, the title of Coadjutor of Carthage.

Letter to Father Louail (8th November 1882)
My dear Son,
As you begin your stay in Lille, I want to outline once more the program that has been laid down for
you and which you are to follow in your house. You must, therefore:
1) Supervise properly the young Arabs who are following classes in medicine. The goal to achieve with them is to see that they do not do anything stupid and that they work hard. But do not supervise these young people in a way which annoys them as you might with school children.

Letter to the Congregation of Propaganda Fide (7 November 1892)
Your Eminence,
The extensive mission of Upper Congo, situated within the territory of the independent State and serve by the priests of the Society of Missionaries of Algiers, is at the moment without a leader. Reverend Father Coulbois who had been in charge of the administration this last period, with the function of ProVicar Apostolic, returned to Europe in April of the present year for serious health reasons and finds himself obliged, for the same reasons, to resign definitively from his previous office.