[1] Born in Bron, François Varillon grew up in a middle-class Catholic family in Lyon, a city to which he remained deeply attached throughout his life.
[2] His friend Lucien Rebatet, also a student in Lyon, drew on this episode for his novel Les Deux Étendards (1951), portraying François as Régis Lanthelme.
[3] Similarly, Simone depicted François as Vincent Ramenel in her novel La Ville aux deux fleuves (1945).
[1][6] After World War II, he served as chaplain to the Association catholique de la jeunesse française and spent over a decade training young Catholics.
His intellectual influences included Fénelon, Paul Claudel, and Richard Wagner, whose works represented, respectively, wisdom, passion, and joy.