The Canons Regular of the Immaculate Conception (Latin: Congregatio Canonicorum Regularium Immaculatæ Conceptionis) are a Catholic religious order for men founded in France in 1871.
Adrien Gréa was born on February 18, 1828, and studied law at L’École des Chartes in Paris, where he became friends with Frederic Ozanam, the founder of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul.
The congregation was founded at Saint-Claude, in the Department of Jura, by Adrien Gréa, then a secular priest and Vicar General of the Diocese of St.-Claude, a position he had accepted in 1863 at the bishop's urging, despite his feeling of being called to life in a religious community.
Having studied Church history while preparing for his ordination as a priest, he felt that a solution could be found in the communal lives of the canons regular, who combine a monastic way of life with the pastoral care of the secular clergy.
[7] The motherhouse of the congregation was maintained at Saint-Antoine from 1890 until 1903, when, following the anti-clerical laws passed by the French government in 1901 and the persecution of the Church which resulted from them, the community was transferred to Andora, in the Italian region of Liguria, and then near the Gianicolo in Rome in 1922, where it remains today, and where the Superior General resides.
In the United States the community has charge of St Sebastian's and Our Lady of Guadalupe parishes and a house of formation in Santa Paula, California, in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.