Étienne Pernet

Biography

He was born on the July 23, 1824 at Vellexon, a small village in Franche-Comté (in the east of France), into a Christian family, country people of humble background. His father was an agricultural labourer and also worked at the blast furnaces attached to the ironworks in the region. His mother, Magdeleine Cordelet was the village midwife. Étienne was the second of seven children, of whom only four survived.

As a child, he wanted to become a priest. He was fourteen years old when his father died.

His personality was formed by his mother, a simple woman who was greatly loved in the village.

In spite of the difficult financial situation they were in, his mother didn't place any obstacle in the way of his vocation and Étienne Pernet entered the seminary. He had a lively intelligence and a simple and anxious temperament.

After his first year of theology he left the seminary for a time of reflection. He was twenty. For four years he worked as "supervisor in a school".

In 1848, like so many other young country people, he found himself obliged to go to Paris to find work. There he experienced the difficulties of all those who arrive in a big city without experience, without friends, feeling homesick for their own home place. At a loss, he fell ill. Every day he went to the Basilica of Notre-Dame-des-Victoires to ask for light about his vocation. He continued to question himself about what God wanted of him, and was thinking of going on mission to distant countries.

A series of events led to his meeting Mother M. Eugénie de Jésus, foundress of the Religious of the Assumption, who suggested that he go to work at the College of Father Emmanuel d'Alzon at Nîmes. This priest, a man with very strong convictions who had just founded a new Congregation - the Augustinians of the Assumption - helped him to clarify his vocation and communicated to him his passion for Christ and his love for the Church.

He found his way in life as an Augustinian of the Assumption, a long maturing journey lay ahead of him.

In 1850, aged 26, he pronounced his first religious vows. In 1858, on April 3, he was ordained a priest. He then taught at Nîmes and looked after a club that cared for some 200 children from working-class families.

He recounted his experience :

"I've always had a love for the poor in my heart. Coming from a working-class background, my parents were rural workers, I already had some inkling of it ; however, I wasn't in the family home very much. It was at Nîmes, when Fr d'Alzon was at the height of his activity as a man initiating charitable works, that I really understood what you call "the hardships afflicting workers" and a possible response to bring to them. He had given me responsibility for the boys' club that people still talk about down there. God alone knows the trouble those two hundred lads gaves [sic] me on Thursdays and Sundays! I was inevitably in touch with their parents whom I visited as often as possible, without bringing them any monetary assitance [sic] of course. I don't why those poor people told me about their hardships and worries ; the women of the Enclos Rey in particular showed great confidence in me and it was there above all that I saw forms of distress I had hardly even heard about. So it was at Nîmes that, first of all, I had the idea of the Little Sister. At that time, the carpet factories, and others, were flourishing, there was no time to care for the sick, who were almost driven to despair. Moreover, in poor families, as in rich ones (although I wasn't thinking of them), there are things to be done and said that a man and a priest cannot do or say. A woman was needed, but a religious woman. It is true people mentioned Fr Soulas's nurses but they weren't exactly what was needed and, besides, I was thinking of workers others than those at Nîmes. I said nothing about all that and kept quiet about my idea for many years, until God's time came. When that time came I met your Mother Marie de Jésus, known then as Antoinette Fage. So there, it's quite simple."

Timid by nature, with frail health, he painfully bore this question for fourteen years :

"I had suffer, severely, for fourteen years to be certain of what God wished of me."

On October 17, 1863, he arrived in Paris to join the community of the Rue François 1er.

Being very simple, he entered easily into contact with people, gained the trust of all by his kindness and understanding. He heard confessions, preached and visited the sick.

More and more affected by the suffering and disarray of workers' families, especially when the mother of the family was ill, he felt an apostolic call. He thought of bringing an evangelical response to it : "through simple acts of service, women, religious, apostles" would testify to the love of God among them.

It was in this context that in 1864 he met two nurses who came to ask him find work for them and some months later met M. Antoinette Fage with whom he became the bold and tenacious founder of the Congregation of the Little Sisters of the Assumption.

In 1896, Fr Pernet sought approval from Rome for the congregation. This he received in 1897.

Throughout his life, characterised by self-effacement, he worked to "refashion a People for God" and to bring about "Unity of minds in truth and union of hearts in charity".

After a two-day illness, he died on Easter Monday, April 3, 1899, the anniversary of his priestly ordination.