When François was three years old, his father was killed at the Siege of Rouen and the family returned to the household of Queen Caterina de Medici of France.

[2] On 29 July 1585 he was appointed bishop of Clermont, though he needed special Papal dispensation for not meeting all the usual canonical criteria.

[2] In February 1619, Louis XIII appointed de La Rochefoucauld to Sainte-Geneviève in an effort to mitigate the effects of previous canons.

By 1635, La Rochefoucauld had tired of the cardinalate, and perhaps of the politics of the Church at that time, and wished to end his life not as a cardinal but as a simple member of the Jesuits.

He communicated his desire to resign the cardinalate and enter the Jesuits to the current General of the Society, Father Muzio Vitelleschi.