Désiré-Joseph Mercier
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Cardinal Désiré-Félicien-François-Joseph Mercier (1851-1926) was a Belgian prelate of the Roman Catholic Church, noted for his staunch resistance to the German occupation of 1914.
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[edit] Early Life
He was born at Braine-l'Alleud, in the province of Walloon Brabant.
He was ordained in 1874. His comprehensive knowledge of St. Thomas Aquinas earned him the chair of Thomist instruction at the Catholic University of Leuven in 1882. It was here that he forged a lifelong friendship with Columba Marmion, an Irish Thomist. In 1899, he founded the Higher Institute of Philosophy at the Catholic University of Leuven to be a beacon of Neo-Thomist philosophy.
His reputation within his field caught the recognition of Pope Leo XIII, and he became archbishop of Mechelen in 1906. He became a Cardinal the following year.
He founded in 1894 and edited until 1906 the Revue Néoscholastique, and wrote in a scholastic manner on metaphysics, philosophy, and psychology, several of his works being translated into English, German, Italian, Polish, Spanish, etc. His most important book was Les origines de la psychologie contemporaine (1897).
[edit] World War I
In August, 1914, the German army attempted a surprise invasion of France by invading neutral Belgium.
Mercier had to leave his diocese on August 20 to attend the late Pope Pius X' funeral and the following conclave. His first port of call upon his return to Belgium was Havre to meet wounded Belgian, French and British troops. When he returned to his diocese, his Cathedral was partially destroyed.
In the atrocities that ensued, thirteen of the priests in Mercier's diocese were killed, not to mention many civilians, by Christmas 1914, when Mercier's pastoral, Patriotism and Endurance, was distributed to be read aloud in all churches in January 1915. The pastoral letter had to be distributed by hand as the Germans had cut off the postal service. His passionate, unflinching words were taken to heart by the suffering Belgians.
He embodied Belgian resistance to the occupying power. He sometimes became a focus of Allied Propaganda during the War. He was kept under house arrest by the Germans, and many priests who had read the letter aloud in public were arrested as well. Pope Benedict XV sent his portrait and a letter of whole-hearted support to Mercier in 1916, and a one point told him "You saved the Church!"
[edit] Later life
In the period 1922-1926 he held regular conversations with Anglican theologians, notably Edward, Lord Irwin (later Lord Halifax). Also worthy of note, is Mercier's role in recognizing the mathematical talent of a young Belgian seminarian, Georges Lemaître, and urging Lemaitre to study Einstein's theories of relativity. Lemaître became an early expert in General relativity as it applied to cosmological questions; and he went on to propose an expanding model of the universe, based on both Einstein's and de Sitter's models. His Primeval Atom hypothesis was developed by Gamow, Alpher and Herman into the better known Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe.
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from an edition of the New International Encyclopedia that is in the public domain.
[edit] See also
[edit] External Links
Patriotism and Endurance (the full text of his pastoral Patriotism and Endurance)
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mercier, Désiré-Joseph |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Mercier, Desiré-Félicien-François-Joseph;Mercier, Desiré-Félicien-François-Joseph Cardinal |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | Roman-Catholic Cardinal |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 21, 1851 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Braine-l'Alleud, Belgium |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 23, 1926 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | Brussels |
