Achille Liénart

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Styles of Achille Cardinal Liénart


Reference style	His Eminence
Spoken style	Your Eminence
Informal style	Cardinal
See	Lille (emeritus)

Achille Cardinal Liénart (February 7, 1884—February 15, 1973) was a French prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as Bishop of Lille from 1928 to 1968, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1930.

[edit] Biography

Born in Lille, Liénart studied at College Saint-Joseph, the Seminary of Saint-Sulpice in Paris, the Institut Catholique de Paris, Collège de Sorbonne, and the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome. He was ordained to the priesthood on June 29, 1907, and then taught at the Seminary of Cambrai until 1910, and then at Lille until 1914. During World War I Liénart served as a chaplain to the French Army, and did pastoral work in his hometown from 1919 to 1928. As a priest, he championed social reform, trade unionism, and the Worker Priest movement^[1].

On October 6, 1928, he was appointed Bishop of Lille by Pope Pius XI. Liénart received his episcopal consecration on the following December 8 from Bishop Charles-Albert-Joseph Lecomte of Amiens, with Bishops Palmyre Jasoone and Maurice Feltin serving as co-consecrators, in Tourcoing. He was created Cardinal Priest of S. Sisto by Pius XI in the consistory of June 30, 1930. By coincidence, one of the first priests he ordained, on September 21, 1929 was a certain Marcel Lefebvre, ^[2]. Liénart's and Lefebvre's paths would be interwined during the following years, and it was Liénart who, as Cardinal, in 1947 would consecrate Lefebvre as Vicar Apostolic of Dakar in Senegal.

During the German occupation, Liénart initially supported Philippe Pétain, but was greatly opposed to Nazi Germany^[3].

Liénart, who participated in the 1939 papal conclave, was elected President of the French Episcopal Conference in 1948, representing the Catholic Church in France, and remained in that post until 1964. An elector in the 1958 papal conclave, he was named the first Territorial Prelate of Mission de France on November 13, 1954, and later resigned from this post in 1964.

An active participant of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), Liénart was a leading liberal voice at the Council and sat on its Board of Presidency. When the Roman Curia, composed predominantly of conservative prelates, issued a list of nominees for the members of the Council's commissions, Liénart objected that nothing of the nominees' qualifications were included^[4] ^[5]. Liénart, assisted by Cardinals Alfrink and Colombo, delivered one of the closing messages of the Council on December 8, 1965^[6]. He was also one of the cardinal electors in the 1963 papal conclave, which selected Pope Paul VI.

Liénart resigned as Lille's bishop on March 14, 1968, after forty years of service. After his death at age 89, he was buried in the Cathédrale Notre-Dame-de-la-Treille.

^ Time Magazine. Recent Deaths February 26, 1973
^ Ordained priest at Lille, France, by Msgr Achille Liénart, Bishop of Lille, on 21 September 1929 Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre - Useful Information Society of Saint Pius X, District of Great Britain
^ Leaders of the Church During the Vichy Regime. Cardinal Achille Lienart
^ Time Magazine. The Council Opens October 19, 1962
^ Lefebvre, Marcel. "They Have Uncrowned Him". 4th ed. Kansas City: Angelus Press, 1988.
^ Christus Rex. To Rulers

Preceded by Hector-Raphaël Quilliet	Bishop of Lille 1928–1968	Succeeded by Adrien-Edmond-Maurice Gand
Preceded by Emmanuel Célestin Suhard	President of the French Episcopal Conference 1948–1964	Succeeded by François Marty