Canons Regular of the Immaculate Conception

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The Canons Regular of the Immaculate Conception are a Roman Catholic congregation which follows the Augustinian Rule, and therefore belongs to the family of Augustinian orders.

[edit] History

This Roman Catholic Religious order was founded at Saint-Antoine, in the department of Isère, France, by the Abbé Dom Adrien Gréa, and approved by Pope Pius IX and Pope Leo XIII, in three rescripts (1870, 1876, and 1887).

Its members have undertaken the restoration of canonical life with its primitive observances, the recitation of the whole of the Divine Office day and night, perpetual abstinence and the fasts of early days. Their object is to unite the practices of ordinary religious life to clerical functions, principally in the administration of clerical duties and the education of young clerics.

The mother-house was maintained at Saint-Antoine, but following the French laws of 1901 and the persecution which was the consequence thereof, the community was transferred to Andora Stazione, in the province of Genoa, Italy.

In the early 20th century the congregation has houses in France, Switzerland, Italy, Scotland and Canada, where it was established in 1891, at Nomingue in Ottawa and at St. Boniface in Manitoba. There were four establishments in the Diocese of Ottawa, six in that of St. Boniface, two in Saskatchewan and one in Prince Albert. The community was composed of eight priests and major clerics, and of about as many scholastics, postulants and lay brothers. The priests have been successfully employed in colonization and the education of youth.