[1] He spent large amounts of money that left the seminary in great debt at the time of death in 1727.

He was suspected of Jansenism, and his administration of the diocese led to popular revolts and struggles with various religious groups.

Accomplishments during his 42-year reign include: the founding of the Hôpital-Général de Québec (1692); the edifice for the bishop (1688); commissioning architect Hilaire Bernard de La Rivière to build Notre-Dame-des-Victoires Church; and the installations of religious reformist communities in the Montreal area.

[3] A wealthy family, the La Croixs held large landholdings in France, including Saint-Vallier Castle, a chateau in the Rhone Valley.

Educated at Lycée Stendhal, the Jesuit college in Grenoble, he quickly gained a reputation for his charitable deeds.

[3] Deciding to become a priest, Saint-Vallier entered the seminary of Saint-Sulpice in Paris, where he obtained his Licentiate in Theology in 1672 at age 19 years.

In 1676, he was appointed as almoner-in-ordinary, in charge of helping the poor, to King Louis XIV, probably due to the La Croix family connections.

A close friend of the bishop of Grenoble, Étienne Le Camus, Saint-Vallier would regularly visit hospitals, prisons and country parishes in the diocese.

In 1685, Francois de Laval, bishop of Quebec, sent his resignation to Louis XIV and proposed Saint-Vallier as his replacement.

[3] However, Saint-Vallier saw the position of bishop as a chance to bring the reforms of the Counter-Reformation to the new world and spread the gospel to the native peoples.

During 17th and early 18th centuries, the Diocese of Quebec covered all of the French colonies in North America, known collectively as New France.

The European colonists included farmers, fishermen, sailors, merchants and ‘coureurs des bois.

The religious priests were primarily governed by their orders and frequently clashed with bishops over matters of jurisdiction.

[3] While the clergy in Quebec admired Saint-Vallier for his passion and energy, he quickly alienated them with his autocratic managerial style.

While serving as vicar general, he left the Seminary of Quebec, founded by Laval, 10,000 livres in debt.

He also objected to the sale of alcohol to the First Nations peoples, which was a profitable business for the merchants in New France and their church allies.

When Saint-Vallier arrived back in New France, he discovered that Laval, in his absence, had established the Seminary of Quebec as its own religious order.

"Mgr de Saint-Vallier worked on establishing more strict and clear pastoral norms […] the directives that he fixed throughout his episcopate concentrate mainly on the administration of the sacraments, especially the sacrament of penitence, and on the preaching"[7]In 1691, Saint-Vallier went to Paris to resolve the conflict with the Seminary of Quebec.

He had just acquired the Friary of Our Lady of the Angels (Notre-Dame-des-Anges) from the Recollects, who then relocated to the Place d'Armes in Quebec City.

[10] In October 1695, the Council of State in Paris overruled the interdicts that he had placed on the religious priests in Montreal the previous year.

[8] Three years later, in 1697, Saint-Vallier begged Louis XIV to change his mind, promising to be more prudent and moderate in his administration of the diocese.

In 1698, the Seminary of Quebec requested permission from Saint-Vallier to send a mission to a village of the Tamaroa tribe in the Illinois colony.

They considered the Illinois colony to be part of their sphere of influence for evangelizing the Native American tribes and that included the Tamaroas.

He had forced them to close the primary school that they ran in their college and took over Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, a Jesuit church in the Saguenay Valley of Quebec.

At that time, the Jesuits and the priests of the Missions Étrangères were competing for the right to evangelize the Native Americans in Louisiana.

To ensure their rights, they wanted Saint-Vallier, whose diocese included Louisiana, to appoint a Jesuit vicar general for that area.

Reverend Martin Bouvert, the Jesuit superior in New France, attacked the books as heretical, labeling them as a "...lapse into Arianism, Pelagianism, Jansenism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism".

[14] Saint-Vallier wrote to Louis XIV about the dire state of the Catholic Church in the diocese and begged permission to return there.

Saint-Vallier continued to preach morality, condemn alcohol consumption and trading, and set up new parishes in the colonies.

The Abbot August Gosselin described Saint-Vallier in the late 19th century: "Especially by his great virtues and the holiness of his life, he is revealed in history with the halo of charity and disinterest: his memory shall be eternal"[2]