This prospect of being made bishop alarmed de Lestrange, and in the same year he severed all the ties that bound him to the world, and entered La Trappe Abbey, a Cistercian monastery.
De Lestrange was master of the novices in that monastery, when a decree of the National Assembly dated 4 December 1790 suppressed the religious orders in France.
From La Valsainte, de Lestrange established foundations at Santa Susana in Aragon, at Mont Brac in Piedmont, at Westmalle, Belgium, and at Lulworth in England.
Pope Pius VII, then prisoner at Savona, informed de Lestrange of the Bull of excommunication issued against the spoliator of the Papal States.
The abbot availed himself of the liberty thus accorded him to hasten the departure of his religious for America; he himself obtained from the police permission to go to La Valsainte and Mont-Genèvre, where his presence was required.
On the Caribbean island of Martinique, de Lestrange was taken into custody by the British governor, General Charles Wale, on foot of a complaint laid against him by an Irish member of the contingent from the monastery of St Susan at Lulworth, one James Power, who seems to have joined with Jeremiah O'Flynn[1] in a quarrel with the abbot.
His remains repose in the monastery of La Trappe in the Diocese of Séez alongside those of Armand Jean le Bouthillier de Rancé.