He was ordained as a priest in June 1900, consecrated by his cousin, André du Bois de La Villerabel [it], bishop of Amiens, subsequently Archbishop of Rouen and Primate of Normandy.

[citation needed] After the liberation of France in 1944, Villerabel was the most senior of seven French mainland or colonial bishops who were obliged to submit their resignations to Pope Pius XII.

[2] The head of the French government, Charles de Gaulle, proposed that thirty collaborationist prelates should resign, but the diplomatic skills of the Papal Nuncio, Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, reduced the number.

[citation needed] Other bishops obliged to resign included Henri-Édouard Dutoit of Arras, François-Louis Auvity of Mende, and Roger-Henri-Marie Beaussart, auxiliary of Paris, who had welcomed de Gaulle at Notre-Dame in 1944 on behalf of the archbishop, Cardinal Suhard; the latter could not attend the ceremony as he was under house arrest.

[2][3] Villerabel's retirement (when he resumed his former titulature of Aenos or Enos which he had held as auxiliary bishop to the Archbishop of Tours from 1920 to 1940) was spent at Solesmes Abbey and at St Brieuc.