Oblates of St. Francis de Sales
The community was founded in Troyes in 1875 by Louis Brisson and are affiliated with the Oblate Sisters of St. Francis de Sales.
The establishment of an Oratory at Thonon, where Francis served as the first Provost, was a preparatory step toward carrying out his design, the accomplishment of which was prevented by his death.
With Chantal's encouragement and assistance, Raymond Bonal of Adge, in France, carried out his plan, but this congregation died out at the beginning of the 18th century.
Two hundred years later it was revived by Marie de Sales Chappuis (died 7 October 1875) and Louis Brisson, a professor in the Seminary of Troyes.
In September 1871, a priest by the name of Gilbert (died 10 November 1909) joined him and Emmanuel-Jules Ravinet, Bishop of Troyes, received them and four companions into the novitiate.
Today the Oblates are located throughout the world, in Holland, Germany, Austria, France, Switzerland, Italy, India, South Africa, Namibia, Benin, Ivory Coast, Uruguay, Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, Haiti and the United States.
The Oblates of St. Francis de Sales offer an Associate Program, designed to help young men discern a possible call to religious life and priesthood during their college years.
[4] In the early 20th century they had the following membership: In Walmer (Kent, England) they operated a boarding school for boys, the chaplaincy of the Visitation Convent and Academy of Roselands and a small parish in Faversham.
[1] When the Vicar Apostolic of Cape of Good Hope, John Leonard, heard that the Society of African Missions of Lyons had decided to recall its subjects from Namaqualand and the North Western Cape, he made a trip to Europe in 1880 in hopes of finding a Congregation willing to assume the responsibility of evangelizing these districts.
In 1893, the first Oblate priest arrived in the United States to serve as chaplain for the Sisters of the Divine Compassion, a religious community founded in 1886 in the Archdiocese of New York by Mary Dannat Starr and Thomas S. Preston.
Once the buildings went up and the "Novitiate of the Oblate Farthers of St. Francis de Sales" was dedicated on October 6, 1907, a local newspaper reported.
[9] After early years of modest expansion, the American Province flourished during the 1940s and 1950s with many vocations from schools it conducted in the Wilmington, Philadelphia, Toledo, Detroit, and Niagara Falls, New York, areas.
