Father Dehon was born in 1843 in La Capelle, a small town in Northeast France. The Dehon family was well known in town. His grandfather had been its mayor, while his father owned a rather large estate to which a racecourse was connected. He even operated a small beer brewery. The Dehon family belonged to the lower rural aristocracy.

Still a youngster, his parents send Leo Dehon to a boarding school in Hazebrouck, near the French-Belgian border. It was here that he felt a call to the priesthood on Christmas Eve of the year 1856. Since that time he always saw himself as a being a priest. He never seriously doubted his calling. We know that his father was not very pleased with his son's dreams. So he sent him to Paris to study law. While Leo Dehon was a student in Paris, between the ages of 16 till 21, he connected with the parish of Saint Sulpice. Here he was involved in the teaching of the catechism and in his spare time he did work for the Saint Vincent de Paul society by visiting the elderly in the parish. Doing his ministry Leo Dehon has his first experience of the „social question” as he was confronted for example with „the insults and threats of a female worker of the Mouffetard quarter of Paris.”¹⁾

But most importantly for his future, through his confessors at Saint Sulpice Dehon became acquainted with a spirituality, which would influence him deeply. The Sulpicians taught him about what is now called the French School of Spirituality. This spirituality was inspired by Cardinal Pierre de Bérulle (1575-1629). He was the founder of the Oratory of Jesus. Famous followers of de Bérulle included Jean Jacques Olier, Charles de Condren, and St. Jean Eudes. Among the friends of de Bérulle were Madame Acarie and St. Francis de Sales. One of the objectives of the French School was to renew the spiritual life of the clergy as well as to firm up the education of the priests. This spirituality, which was not a privilege limited to the clergy, stressed God's majestic greatness and the human response to God's grandeur in adoration and in service to one's neighbors. In addition, the French school placed a strong emphasis on the Incarnation and the mysteries of Christ. Jesus was the revelation of God's grandeur and at the same time he was the perfect adorer of God. The mystery of the Incarnation became the ground for an intimate union with Jesus Christ, especially in the different stages of his life. Pope Urban VIII called de Bérulle „the apostle of the Incarnate Word.” The priests who were followers of the French School of Spirituality, such as the Oratorians, the Sulpicians and the Eudists, were not priests belonging to a religious order but remained diocesan priests. They considered themselves „religious of God.”²⁾ As Dehon participated in the life of the parish of Saint Sulpice, he was exposed to elements of the French School of Spirituality.

Once Leo Dehon had completed his law degree, his father was still not satisfied with his son's continued desire to become a priest. So he offered him a trip to the Middle East with the hope that his son might change his mind about becoming a priest. However, the opposite occurred. Leo ended his trip in Rome where he made contact with the French seminary Saint Claire and he decided to pursue his studies to the priesthood there. During his years as a student in Rome, Dehon earned three more doctorates: one in philosophy, one in theology and one in canon law. Besides his academic achievements Dehon invested himself truly in his spiritual formation. A person who had a defining influence on the development of Dehon's spirituality was Father Freyd, the rector of the French seminary. Father Freyd was a member of the newly founded congregation of the Holy Ghost Fathers, also known as Spiritans. Father Freyd was strongly influenced by Father Francis Libermann (1827-1852), who is considered as one of the later representatives of the French School of Spirituality. Through Father Freyd Dehon had access to some of the unpublished writings of Father Libermann.³⁾ This spirituality finds its focus in the dignity and value of the priesthood. It is a sacerdotal spirituality which means that this spirituality is priesthood-centered. Dehon adopted this spirituality and made it his own. Based on this sacerdotal spirituality, Dehon formulated in his mind an idea of what an ideal priest should look like. For him the ideal priest is a person who is educated, a person who is a man of action, and finally a person who is holy. These three elements have always been crucial for Dehon as a priest. He continually stressed the need for education, mission, and holiness. He emphasized that we need three things in a priest: study, action and prayer.⁴⁾ I will return to this core concept of Dehon toward the end of my presentation.

The spirituality in which he was formed during his seminary years was explicitly a priestly spirituality. It will be this idea of priesthood that will lead him to live out the priesthood in religious life when he will found his own congregation in 1878.⁵⁾

During his years in Rome Dehon had an additional experience, which had a formative influence on him in terms of his vision of church. He was selected to be a stenographer for the First Vatican Council (1869-1870). Through this job as a stenographer Dehon was in close contact with the dynamics of an ecumenical council. The gathering of bishops from all over the world broadened his vision of the church. He came to know many bishops whom he would contact in later years as his congregation was spreading its wings beyond the borders of France. He also used his contacts during his many travels during his life. During his period in Rome, which culminated in his presence at Vatican I, Dehon developed a filial loyalty to the papacy. During his many trips to Rome, he always visited the reigning Pope. He certainly became an ultra-montanist.

About his experience of the First Vatican Council he wrote later in his memoirs: „The Council has taken up half of my time this year. It delayed my studies. But on the other hand, what a precious wealth new acquaintances it provided (connaissances diverses). I have put with my finger on the life of the church and have gained in one year more experience than I could have gained in ten years during the course of ordinary life.” ⁶⁾ Finishing his Roman period Dehon went through an intense discernment process to decide where to work in God's vineyard. He was a young priest with four doctorates. He was a person with a deeply developed interior life, formed in the spirit of the French School of Spirituality. He had developed a strong inclination for education. He looked at different options that were available to him. One option he seriously considered was to join the Assumptionists who wanted to establish a Catholic university in Nimes where Dehon would be teaching. However, with the guidance of his spiritual director Dehon decided against this opportunity. Instead he made himself available to his bishop of the diocese of Soissons, bishop Thibaudier. His bishop appointed him as seventh assistant at Saint Quentin where he began working in November. It was a community of about 30,000 parishioners.

Saint Quentin at that time was an industrial city in Northern France. We are in the time of the industrial revolution. The church as institution had become alienated from the workers, because the church was seen as part of the establishment. When Dehon arrived at his new assignment he was shocked by the poverty and low attendance of the church services. His pastoral heart was deeply troubled by the social conditions all around him. This became manifest already in the sermon he delivered for his first Christmas mass in Saint Quentin. Actually, Dehon was reprimanded by the archpriest (the pastor) because he had offended some industrialists in the congregation by passionately speaking about the demands of social justice!

Dehon did not limit his concern for social justice just to words but soon began setting up organizations in the parish to assist the victims of the industrial revolution. His first action was to set up a youth club in 1872, under the patronage of St. Joseph. The club was a meeting place for the working class youth. It included a reading room, a playroom, and a library. There was also a room where the music band could rehearse. The main objective of this work was to provide education to the young people. In 1873 Dehon initiated another group, called a Catholic Workers Club.

In the subsequent years Father Dehon was involved in the foundation of the Congregation and the establishment of Saint John College (1878). On September 6, 1888 Dehon was in Rome to thank Pope Leo XIII for the decree of praise the newly founded congregation of the Priests of the Sacred Heart had received. At this audience the pope made a special request: Preach my encyclicals! This papal demand marked the beginning of Dehon's intense investment in his social apostolate, especially in the period between 1889 and 1903.

1. In August of 1892 Dehon organized his first social meeting for seminarians at a textile factory owned by his good friend Leon Harmel. The seminarians came for two weeks to be with the workers at this factory and to learn about catholic principles in a working environment. (We may call this today a mini experience in Clinical Pastoral Education!) The Catholic social principles, which were introduced, included adjustment of wages according to family size, scholarship funds, a mutual aid society, an insurance and savings bank, and an office for legal advice. Leo Harmel was affectionately called the „Bon Père” while Dehon was called the „Très Bon Père.”
2. From 1874 till 1895 Dehon functioned as chair of the diocesan commission of social studies. In this capacity he sent a questionnaire out to the diocesan clergy about social activities in the local parishes. Only one third of them returned their questionnaire.

1. In 1895, Dehon planned and organized the first Ecclesiastical Congress of Social Studies at St. John's College in Saint Quentin. The Congress was held from 9 till 14 September and 200 clergy from 30 different dioceses in France participated. In his diary he noted: „These are great days, exciting, unforgettable, enlightening. It is a small council, a council of the young.” (NQT/XI, 33r-33v).

1. Finally, Dehon participated in two national church conventions. The first was held in Reims in 1896 and the second in Bourges in 1900: Dehon gave the opening talk and led the „particular exam” at midday. Dehon had become like spiritual director to the social movement in France.⁷⁾

I am highlighting here Dehon's flurry of social activities on the local and national level in France. They are all directed toward education, especially the education of the clergy. The social doctrine of the Church was not readily accepted in France. There was resistance among the priests and the bishops to accept, for example, Leo XIII's encyclical on social renewal, Rerum Novarum. Many bishops did not publish the encyclical in their diocese, because there was a reluctance to become involved in the social question, caused by the industrial revolution.

To respond to the need for education Dehon began in 1889 the publication of the magazine The Reign of the Sacred Heart in Souls and Societies. The year 1889 was the bicentennial of the message of Saint Margaret Mary Alacocque to Louis XIV (1689) and the centennial of the French Revolution (1789). In this magazine Dehon frequently addressed the social problems of his days, especially the poor conditions of the working class. He stopped this publication upon the death of Leo XIII in 1903. Father Manzoni points out that there certainly was a development in Dehon's reflections on the social question. At first the magazine gave a moralistic view of the social issues but gradually he developed a more analytical understanding of the complexity of the issues, especially under the influence of the encyclical Rerum Novarum, his work as director of the diocesan committee of social studies, and finally also his 'conversion' from monarchy to Christian democracy.⁸⁾

In addition to The Reign, Dehon published major works on social issues. I will highlight three of his eight books.

1. Christian Social Manual

As I mentioned earlier, the bishop of Soissons had appointed Father Dehon as chair of the commission of social studies for the diocese on June 8, 1893. The first objective of this commission was to bring together in a handbook the principles of catholic social teachings and their practical applications. The first edition, of which Father Dehon was the main editor, was published in August of 1894 and the second edition was published in 1895. Because the bishop of Soissons wanted a small practical manual to complement the theoretical and scientific parts of the book, Father Dehon wrote the second part of the Christian Social Manual in 1895. The work grew from 130 pages to 300 pages. Initially the Christian Social Manual came like a bolt of lightening but its influence was beneficial and lasting. It went through five editions in France. It was used in many seminaries. There were translations into Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Hungarian and Arabic. „The Manual,” writes R. Prélot, „soon became a classic for those who wished to engage in social action according to the directives of the pope.”⁹⁾

2. Social Catechism (1898)

After the publication of the Christian Social Manual, Dehon received several requests to write a simpler work that would be more accessible to the general public, a kind of catechism that would set forth the essential teachings of Leo XIII. The Catechism is divided in four parts: 1. Christian principles of the political order; 2 Christian principles of the economic order; 3. Social duties; 4. Apologetic and social history of the church.

3. Christian Social Renewal (1900)

This volume contains Dehon's Roman Lectures, lectures he had given in Rome for an audience, which at times numbered about five hundred, mostly clerics including bishops and cardinals. The content of the nine lectures was as follows: 1.The social crisis; 2. The causes and remedies of social unrest; 3. Judaism, capitalism and usury; 4. Socialism and anarchy; 5. The social mission of the church; 6. Christian democracy; 7. The democratic program; 8. The social role of the church and the priest; and 9. The Mission of the Third Order. Dehon's social writings are clearly directed at educating seminarians and the clergy about the social teachings of the church. As I mentioned earlier the clergy in France and other parts of the world were resistant to social concerns. Dehon encouraged the clergy to get out of their sacristies! He was simply echoing Leo XIII's slogan: Go to the people (Ite ad Gentes).

The Church in France was affected by the apathy of the 19^th century bourgeoisie to the social question. The priests often preached patience and resignation to the workers. To the rich they did not mention the duties and obligations of social justice. In his second talk held in Rome, Dehon poses these questions to his audience: „But do not the clergy have its share of responsibility in this lamentable situation? Alas! Yes. Driven out of public life by Gallicanism, we have become timid and cowardly… Our predecessors had become accustomed to the idea that nothing could be done for people.”¹⁰⁾ Dehon quotes from a textbook that was very popular in seminaries and was still in use in 1865. The book stated bluntly that pastorally nothing could be done for men. They are a hopeless case. Therefore, the textbook gave the following advice to candidates for the priesthood: „Concern yourself with the children and the sick. There is no other way. That is the rule, the law. That is what our Lord did. The children, the aged, the poor, the sick, and the afflicted: those are the five fingers of the rural apostolate. As for others, fathers, mothers, young men, it is not easy. Let us not be in hurry with regard to them.” Dehon comments: „Today, of course, those statements exasperate us. They distort the true Christ when they depict him as a timid apostle to children and the sick. In that light he is no longer the lion of Judah.”¹¹⁾ In his Christian Social Manual Dehon wrote: „The faint-hearted generation changed Christ for us. He was no longer the Christ of the workers… the Christ who carried out his incessant apostolate among the fishermen and the publicans. The Lion of Judah was transformed into a timid lamb. Our Christ, whose powerful and strong apostolate inspired those of the Pauls, the Xaviers, and all of the conquerors of souls, was changed into a fearful and weak man who only spoke to children and sick people.”¹²⁾ In this context it may be interesting to read the comments Father Dehon made about the American Priests in one of his Roman talks, entitled „The Social Role of the Church and the Priest.” He said: „We reproach American priests for an over-emphasis on the external life. But if the American priest has not yet bowed as perfectly as the French priest to the discipline of the interior man, does not the French priest in his turn display a disastrous aversion toward the active life? Does not the public life of his parish, in all its dimensions, center around him? St. Augustine, whose authority everyone invokes, practiced a very contemplative and retiring life as long as he had no souls in his care. Once he had become bishop of Hippo, he belonged to the public; and his correspondence shows us that. His unhappiness at seeing himself torn away from the pleasures of contemplation, for which he was suited, did not prevent himself from holding long audiences in which temporal conflicts were submitted to his judgment.”¹³⁾

In this presentation I have dwelled almost exclusively on Father Dehon's time in Rome as a student and on his social ministry in action and in writing. Time and space did not permit me to show you Dehon's work as founder of the Priest of the Sacred Heart and as General Superior of the congregation. Nor did I explain how Father Dehon came under the influence of the devotion of the Sacred through the superior of the Congregation of Sisters Servants of the Sacred Heart. There are many aspects of the life and person of our Founder.

What I hope became evident is that Father Dehon was very much interested in education, in education of the youth, the education of the workers, and mostly the education of the clergy particularly in the area of social justice. For Father Dehon education of the youth and the workers was a road to a more healthy society, while education of seminarians and the clergy was a road to a more active clergy that would get out of the sacristies, „to reach out to the people and to undertake social works.”¹⁴⁾

On January 25, 1893 Father Dehon wrote is in his diary: „L'oevre des oeuvres est de former des prêtres instruits, zélés, vertueux.”¹⁵⁾ (The most important task is the formation of priests who are knowledgeable, zealous and virtuous.) These threefold characteristics of education, mission and holiness are consistently present in the thinking of Dehon on the priesthood. The same thought is expressed in the already quoted talk he gave on the social role of the church and the priest. He was speaking of priests who must become involved in the social battle. „What means should be used? They fall into three categories: study, action and prayer. We must have scholars, apostles, and saints…We must have a special prayer, and ardent prayer, joined with sacrifice for our crippled Christian societies…We must have apostles, people of action… People no longer come to us so we must go to them. We must organize them in associations. We must become interested in their work, their prosperity, and their recreation. We must take the Christian spirit everywhere…We must have scholars and we should all be scholars to a limited degree. We must study in order to know; and we must study in order to teach. We must particularly study those social questions which are regarded as new issues and which should have always been studied in the Church. We must have at our disposal a journal (newspapers) and up-to-date books which deal with these questions. A priest cannot rush into this new apostolate without being prepared through serious study… The people will be the friends of the priest and the Church when the priest makes himself the friend of the people.”¹⁶⁾

What we learn from Dehon's work is to promote a clergy that is educated, zealous, and prayerful. This is our mission for the twenty first century.¹⁷⁾