Saint François de Laval

François-Xavier de Montmorency-Laval was born on April 30, 1623, at Montigny-sur-Avre, in the Perche, today in the Eure-et-Loir, and was baptized the same day in the church of Saint-Martin. His father, Hugues de Laval, was lord of Montigny. Destined for the Church as a boy, he entered the Jesuit college of La Flèche in 1631 and went on to study philosophy and theology at the Collège de Clermont in Paris. He was made a canon of the cathedral of Évreux in 1637, was ordained a priest on May 1, 1647, and in December of that year became archdeacon of Évreux.

In 1654 he gave up the archdeaconry and spent about three years at the retreat near Caen founded by Jean de Bernières-Louvigny. The Jesuits put his name forward for the Church in New France, and on June 3, 1658, he was named vicar apostolic, with the title of bishop of Petra. On December 8, 1658, the papal nuncio Celio Piccolomini consecrated him in the abbey church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris. He sailed from La Rochelle on April 13, 1659, and reached Quebec on June 16.

On March 26, 1663, he opened the Seminary of Quebec, a college and mother house for the secular priests of the colony, and a minor seminary followed in 1668. He fought the sale of alcohol to the Indigenous peoples, threatening the traders with excommunication, and on May 24, 1679, he obtained a royal decree against the trade. When the diocese of Quebec was created on October 1, 1674, he became its first bishop. Failing health led him to step down, and Jean-Baptiste de La Croix de Saint-Vallier succeeded him in 1688.

Laval retired to the Seminary. While Saint-Vallier was absent in Europe from 1700, he again acted as bishop, and he died at Quebec on May 6, 1708. His heart was kept in the chapel of the Seminary, to which he had given most of his life and his fortune. Université Laval and the city of Laval, north of Montreal, bear his name.

Pope John Paul II beatified him on June 22, 1980. Pope Francis canonized him on April 3, 2014, by equipollent canonization, a papal decree issued without the usual process and ceremony, and on October 12, 2014, he celebrated in Saint Peter’s Basilica a Mass of thanksgiving for him and for Marie of the Incarnation, the Ursuline of Quebec. His memorial is kept in Canada on May 6. His remains rest in a shrine for veneration in the Cathedral-Basilica of Notre-Dame de Québec, and the Centre d’animation François-De Laval receives pilgrims and holds a novena from April 30 to May 8 in his honor and that of the founders of the Church in Canada.

Images of Laval show him in the dress of a bishop. In Quebec City the monument to Monseigneur de Laval is the work of the sculptor Louis-Philippe Hébert. In France the parish of his native village is named Saint-François-de-Laval-en-Thymerais.

• Montigny-sur-Avre, church of Saint-MartinThe church of the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, with Renaissance stained glass, where he was baptized on the day of his birth; the château of his family nearby is private, its grounds open by appointment.
• Évreux, cathedral of Notre-DameThe cathedral where he was a canon from 1637 and archdeacon from 1647 to 1654.
• Paris, Saint-Germain-des-PrésThe former abbey church where he was consecrated bishop on December 8, 1658.