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You are here:Home / Family News / NEF 2017 / Family News - March 14th, 2017 / The first companions of Michael Garicoits
Mar 15, 2017

The first companions of Michael Garicoits

The first companions of Michael Garicoits

Jean-Louis Larrouy

On 28th September 1834, Jean Chirou arrived in Betharram. Who would follow him? The response is in a letter from Monsignor d’Arbou to Michael Garicoïts dated 22nd December: “I am going to appoint Mr Larrouy”. Jean-Louis Larrouy was 32 years old; he had been a priest for 2 years; first of all a curate, then a parish priest in a little village in the Aspe Valley. He left his presbytery on 31st December 1834 and arrived in Betharram in January. Starting as a missionary, he became a superior in Sarrance in 1850. He was a volunteer in America and left with the first team in 1856. A deep man, he was the spiritual director of the group. In 1862, he was the chaplain and the superior of San Juan in Buenos Aires. As a missionary, he didn’t understand that he should open schools; he therefore opposed Fr Barbé and the San Jose High School, even writing to Fr Garicoïts. However, he stayed faithful to the original ideal: he was the spokesman and reproached Fr Chirou: “The spirit of the foundation is extinguished and the ideas of the founder crushed.

In 1857, an outbreak of cholera claimed more than 10,000 victims in Montevideo: Mr Larrouy went to volunteer there and the population wanted him to be apostolic curate of Uruguay; being humble, he returned to Argentina. In 1871, yellow fever decimated the city of Buenos Aires; together with his colleagues, he provided help to the sick and became ill himself. On 6th April, Mr Larrouy, Mr Irigaray and Brother Fabian died.

The names of Fr. Larrouy and Br. Fabien are engraved on the monument dedicated in Montevideo to the victims of the yellow fever in 1871.

 

Pierre Perguilhem

After Larrouy, Fathers Fondeville and Perguilhem were admitted to Betharram on 13th and 15th July 1835. Who were they? Let’s start with Fr Perguilhem who was also a “true missionary”. Born in 1798 – one year later than Michael Garicoïts – very near Orthez, he did all his ecclesiastic studies in Toulouse, where François Lacroix (the future bishop of Bayonne) taught. Monsignor d’Astos ordained him priest on 22nd December 1821. “Cultivated, pious, eloquent” (Miéyaa), he joined the Hasparren Society of Missionaries as from January 1822. When the revolution of 1830 forbade this ministry, he became “priest with no pastoral task” in Pau: despair for this passionate soul! Fortunately, in 1831, Michael Garicoïts asked him to lead the ordination retreat at Betharram: there he met Fr Guimon, and the one who aspired to set up a congregation. In 1832, as parish priest of Labastide-Clairence, he found the limits of his parish of 2,000 faithful to be narrow. As soon as he could, he left to preach elsewhere, as far as the neighbouring diocese: His bishop reproached him for it! Monsignor d’Arbou accepted his request for Betharram, but urged him to wait! In his heart, however, Fr Perguilhem had already left. The dream became reality on 15th July 1835. At last! Fr Perguilhem was endowed with some good physical and intellectual qualities: “handsome, good-looking, magnificent height”; cultivated, great speaker … he organised Betharram’s grand receptions and surpassed himself by welcoming Napoleon III and the Empress Eugenie. In the country, the women loved to listen to him; but were not attracted to his confessional. They could recognise that: “he was a pleasant, fine man, but quite a scary man!”. Pitiless when it came to sin, he scared people with hell and death; and before absolving them, he was very lengthy, perhaps even neverending, and above all strict. He stayed with the habits of his early days; Michael Garicoïts did not manage to make him more gentle. When Fr Guimon set off for America, he advised this man that he had known at Hasparren: “Be merciful to souls!”. And Fr Perguilhem himself recommended to other colleagues: “Be good, all you others; I myself cannot be…” His only consolation, his only comfort, was his devotion to Mary.

This man who was general councillor several times, founder and superior at Orthez from 1849 to 1861, died in Betharram on 22nd December 1872. Surely, in his goodness, God welcomed him.

Beñat Oyhénart scj

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