He also helped to establish the Société Notre-Dame de Montréal, which organized the settlement of a new town called Ville-Marie (now Montreal) in the colony of New France.

The young student became a man of great ambition; he also frequented fashionable society, which caused anxiety to those interested in his spiritual welfare.

[1] When his eyesight began to fail, Olier made a pilgrimage to the Shrine of the Holy House in Loreto, Italy, where his official biographies attest not only to a cure, but also a complete religious conversion.

The Catholic Church felt that its success in its own renewal lay in the thorough and systematic formation of the clergy through their education in these schools.

The attempts in France to carry out the designs of the Council having failed, Condren, unable to succeed through the Oratory, gathered a few young ecclesiastics around him for that purpose, Olier among them.

On 29 December 1641, Olier and two others, the Abbés de Foix and du Ferrier, formed a small community at Vaugirard, then a suburban village near Paris.

[2] Impressed by the reports of this reform, the curé of the Church of St. Sulpice in Paris, who had become discouraged by the deplorable state of his parish, offered it in exchange for some of Olier's benefices.

Special instructions were provided for every class of persons, for the beggars, the poor, domestic servants, midwives, workingmen, the aged, etc.

[4] During the period of the Fronde (1648-1653), the civil war which reduced Paris to widespread misery and famine, Olier supported hundreds of families and provided many with clothing and shelter.

Olier perceived that the reform of boys' schools could be accomplished only through a religious community; which in fact came about after his death through the work of Jean-Baptiste de la Salle, a former pupil of St. Sulpice.

Olier led the movement against duelling, formed a society for its suppression, and enlisted the active aid of military men of renown, including the marshals of France and some famous duellists.

He worked to overcome the common idea that Christian perfection was only for priests and religious orders, and inspired many to the practices of a devout life, including daily meditation, spiritual reading and other exercises of piety, and to a more exact fulfillment of their duties, whether at the court, in business or at home.

By his parish, which he intended to serve as a model to the parochial clergy, as well as by his seminary, he hoped to help give France a worthy secular priesthood, through which alone, he felt, the revival of religion could come.

The seminary was at first installed in the rectory of the parish, but very soon (1 October 1642) moved to a little house in the vicinity, de Foix being placed in charge by Olier.

The repeated requests of bishops, considered by him as indications of God's will, caused him to modify his plan, and to accept a few seminaries permanently.

Olier wished it to remain a small company, decreeing that it should never consist of more than seventy-two members, besides the superior and his twelve assistants.

He resigned his pastorate into the hands of Abbé de Bretonvilliers and, when he regained sufficient strength, on the orders of his physicians he visited various spas of Europe in search of health, as well as making many pilgrimages.

[3] Olier's last years were full of intense suffering, both bodily and mental, which he bore with the utmost sweetness and resignation.

[citation needed] Diocesan attempts to canonize Olier were introduced in Paris and Montreal between 1865 and 1867, but the Vatican did not proceed with the cause.

Writing to Mademoiselle d' Aubrai on 26 July 1660, just two months before his own death, Vincent de Paul stated that he had "asked God for great graces through the intercession of M.

"[3] Church historian, Frederick William Faber, in his Growth in Holiness (Baltimore ed., p. 376) says of him: "Of all the uncanonized servants of God whose lives I have read, he most resembles a canonized Saint."