Jean-Baptiste Chevreuil

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Jean-Baptiste Chevreuil

Fifth Provincial of Oceania 1918–1924

Jean-Baptiste Marie Chevreuil was born in Les Touches, Loire-Inférieure, France to Jean Chevreuil, tailor, and Louise Pageot on 2 February 1865 in the Diocese of Nantes. After secondary schooling at Petit séminaire de Notre-Dame des Couëts, he completed philosophy at Grand séminaire de Nantes (1884-86). He then decided to join the Society of Mary and after novitiate at Paignton, Devon, England made his profession on 24 September 1887. According to his military record he entered major orders on 12 December 1888, and his record was no longer used. He continued Theology at Barcelona 1888-90 and was ordained on 31 May 1890. His records indicate he had shown an interest in and aptitude for missionary life. He made his first request to be sent to the missions while he still had a year to go at Barcelona before ordination.

On 1 October 1890, with fellow Nantais, Julien Maillard, and eight other Marist priests and scholastics, Jean-Baptiste Chevreuil sailed from Marseilles on the Yarra, arriving in Sydney on 7 November 1890. He was aged 25. A week after his arrival, it was announced that he would remain at Hunters Hill. He commuted from there to St Michael’s to work at the Procure.

Once Louis Hurlin arrived from Fiji in Sydney in February 1892 to take over the procurator’s office, Chevreuil left for Fiji via New Caledonia. According to his appointment sheet, from 1893 we find him on Rotuma at Fagauta, and later at Motusa. During his 15 years on Rotuma, he observed and wrote about Rotuman customs. His findings were published in 1917 in the separate French and English issues of the American Marist Messenger. Another document on Rotuman Games was translated by Lucien Soubeyran.

He arrived in Sydney on 6 July 1904 to attend the second novitiate for which he received a positive report, making his vow of stability on 16 August 1905. He was a capitulant at the 1907 Provincial Chapter held June.

After a misunderstanding with the government resident in Rotuma and conflict with Bishop Julien Vidal, Chevreuil left Rotuma in early 1908 and went to Solevu until recalled to Sydney with Vidal’s approval by the Provincial, André Marion. He arrived there on 27 January 1909. The Provincial Council decided his presence in Australia could be useful.

Marion asked Raffin, the Superior General, to write to Chevreuil with a strong request that he accept the position of procurator. Chevreuil assented in March with the encouragement of the superior general. This appointment was made public in May 1909 and he lived at St Patrick's. He again ran into conflict, this time with Pierre Piquet, parish priest, who believed that Chevreuil was not helping enough in the parish. The Superior General had to intervene to resolve the issue. In a letter to Gaston Regis, after being appointed provincial, Chevreuil confessed that the “procure has been getting me down a great deal in recent years.”

At the 1914 Provincial Chapter, he was elected capitulant to the 1914 General Chapter.

Chevreuil’s name was the fourth on the list of possible successors which Nicolas sent to the general administration at the end of December 1918. In fact, Nicolas’ thoughts were irrelevant, since the general council had already named Chevreuil to the post of Provincial of Oceania on 13 November 1918, but the letter of appointment did not reach Sydney until 24 February 1919, taking more than three months in transit. Before this decision was made, Antonin Moussey had been appointed acting Provincial.

A tough, single-minded man, Chevreuil was authoritarian, nationalistic (Francophile), and did not want any help from the New Zealand province in building up the Marists in Australia. He had scant regard for Australians' ability to live the religious life and found them “independent, frivolous and out and about too much”. He also believed that they were not interested in becoming missionaries. Chevreuil believed that to counter all these tendencies it was necessary to pay particular attention to the formation of Australian subjects, and “that only a French Marist could do this adequately”. His whole Provincialate is marked by those traits.

Admittedly he had a ragtag group of men in Australia but his insistence on retaining St Patrick's and Villa Maria as French enclaves and his notions that only French Marists could be suitable formators precluded his even considering the possibilities of help from the New Zealanders.

Due to a shortage of young and healthy men he took over Villa Maria parish as acting parish priest in 1919. But the following year the Superior General admonished him for neglecting Visitation of the islands.

While he was acting parish priest of Villa Maria in Sydney, he once admonished the parishioners quite strongly for not sufficiently supporting the works of the parish and he arranged a special collection to lower the debt, telling the people that he would call to every household to find out how much they would give in the fund-raising drive. This sermon is still extant and clearly shows his rather harsh attitude towards people.

One of his first tasks was the transfer of Montbel Apostolic School from Hunters Hill to Mittagong where it became known as Blessed Peter Chanel Seminary. He had to fight Archbishop Kelly for permission to move the school, reminding him that the Marists had not endorsed the complaints about him to the Holy See, made some years earlier.

Again, because of manpower difficulties, he tried to take the Marists out of Gladstone parish, but the General Administration refused to comply with his wishes, reminding him that the Marists had accepted the care of this parish in perpetuity.

In 1920 a New Zealand Marist, Bernard Quinn, spent some time in Australia for health reasons. On becoming acquainted with the situation of the Marists there, he wrote to the Superior General suggesting the New Zealand Province be allowed to move into Australia and begin works there. In this way, he believed, the Australian Province could be helped to firmly establish itself. This correspondence added to that of John Rausch, James Monaghan and Eugène Courtais, who had brought up this issue from 1917. The matter was raised at the 1921 General Chapter. The sole dissenting voice seems to have been that of Chevreuil. However, the Chapter approved it. Chevreuil returned to Sydney a very disappointed man.

Early on in his administration there were complaints to the General Administration about his authoritarianism with reference to the way he treated the Third Order Regular Sisters at Villa Maria. Relations between Chevreuil and the Sisters continued to worsen. In 1923 Courtais, then Procurator, was appointed by the General Administration to investigate. Courtais found fault with nearly all the parties concerned but ascribed a lot of the blame to Chevreuil and to Moussey, Superior of Villa Maria. However, it was deemed more prudent not to confront Chevreuil with this fact lest the situation deteriorate even more for the Sisters.

The General Administration sent Assistant General, James Moran, an Australian who had been reared in Ireland, as Visitor General to visit New Zealand and Australia to assess the situation. He arrived in Sydney in May 1923. In October that year the General Administration considered Moran's report. It placed most of the responsibility on Chevreuil for the poor relations between New Zealand and Australia, between Marists and others in Australia, and for the lack of growth of the Marists in Australia itself. Because of Chevreuil's unsatisfactory attitudes and bizarre behaviour some consideration was given to replacing him before the end of his term as Provincial in 1924. The final decision was not to do so but, at the end of his Provincialate, to detach all the communities in Australia, except for Villa Maria, from the Oceania Province and place them under New Zealand.

For someone who had shown himself to be anti-Antipodean, he had enough insight that it would be politic to attend Archbishop Redwood’s episcopal golden jubilee celebrations in Wellington in 1924.

In fairness to Chevreuil he indeed had a heavy burden and probably became a scapegoat for all the ills of Marist affairs in Australia. But his irascible character drew him little sympathy. Despite this tetchiness, he still held the confidence of his Marist confreres after his term as provincial, being elected a member of the 1928 and 1935 Provincial Chapters.

By 1924, at the end of his term as Provincial, Chevreuil was a sickly and broken man. He did not wish to return to the islands and made several attempts to persuade the General Administration to allow him to remain on in Australia. But they were afraid that if he stayed, he would disrupt the smooth transfer of the Australian houses to the New Zealand Province. He was appointed to New Caledonia, where he arrived on 15 March 1925.

After a year on Lifou, he was called to St-Louis in April 1926 and made Pro-Vicar and Superior of the St-Louis Mission. At the end of the year, he was appointed Parish Priest of La Conception until June 1940, except for five months in 1937 as acting chaplain to the Little Sisters of the Poor. His move to Nakéty was short-lived; in November 1940 he returned to La Conception, unable to fulfil the functions of parish priest. He remained at La Conception until his hospitalisation in Nouméa shortly before his death on 29 December 1943. He was buried at Saint-Louis.

Notes

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