1. Alfred Baudrillart campaigned to rouse international support for France during the First World War, while in the Second World War he supported the Vichy regime and backed the Germans for leading the international struggle against Bolshevism.
23 Facts About Alfred Baudrillart
1. 2.
Alfred Baudrillart's father was professor of political economy at College de France, editor in chief of the Journal des Economistes, and a member of Academie des Sciences Morales et Politiques.
3.
Alfred Baudrillart attended the Ecole Normale Superieure from 1878 to 1881, where his classmates included Jean Jaures and Henri Bergson.
4.
Alfred Baudrillart earned his doctorate with a thesis entitled Philippe V et la Cour de France and earned a theology degree as well.
5.
Alfred Baudrillart taught at several schools, including the College Stanislas de Paris.
6.
Alfred Baudrillart joined the Oratory of St Philip of Neri in 1890.
7.
Alfred Baudrillart was ordained to the priesthood in Paris on 9 July 1893, at the relatively late age of 34.
8.
Alfred Baudrillart then served as professor of history at the Institut Catholique from 1894 to 1907, when he was named its rector; he held this position until his death thirty-five years later.
9.
Alfred Baudrillart served as General Assistant of the Oratorians from 1898 to 1908, and again from 1919 to 1921.
10.
Alfred Baudrillart was a "ferocious opponent" of "modernism", a complex of ideas and social developments that the Catholic Church identified broadly as historicism, secularism, and rationalism, and which Baudrillart identified with the bishops of Germany and their resistance to the teaching of Pope Pius X in his encyclical denouncing modernism, Pascendi dominici gregis.
11.
Alfred Baudrillart was an ardent supporter of France in the First World War and promoted its cause internationally.
12.
Alfred Baudrillart founded the Comite catholique de propagande francaise a l'etranger and reached an audience of 15 million with articles written for publication in US newspapers.
13.
Alfred Baudrillart gave lectures in Spain and the US In May 1917, he rejected an overture from Matthias Erzberger of the German Catholic Centre Party because he thought it wrong for Catholics or any other group to act in the place of the lawful government.
14.
Alfred Baudrillart was made an honorary canon of the metropolitan cathedral chapter of Paris in 1906, and a Domestic prelate of His Holiness on 17 April 1907.
15.
Alfred Baudrillart was elected as a member of the Academie francaise, like his grandfather, on 2 May 1918.
16.
On 29 July 1921, Alfred Baudrillart was appointed Titular Bishop of Hemeria by Pope Benedict XV.
17.
Alfred Baudrillart was later advanced to Titular Archbishop of Melitene on 12 April 1928.
18.
Alfred Baudrillart was one of the cardinal electors in the 1939 papal conclave, which elected Pope Pius XII.
19.
Pius was close friends with General Maurice Gamelin, whom Alfred Baudrillart had once taught.
20.
Alfred Baudrillart supported the Vichy government of Marshal Philippe Petain, issuing a statement titled Choisir, vouloir, obeir on 20 November 1940, which shocked his colleagues and veterans of the First World War.
21.
Alfred Baudrillart was a member of the Legion's Honorary Committee of Sponsors, and his views, according to his diary, were influenced by meetings with Kurt Reichl, an Austrian Catholic, German officer, and Nazi counter-intelligence agent.
22.
Alfred Baudrillart died in Paris on 19 May 1942 at the age of 83.
23.
Alfred Baudrillart was interred in the Eglise des Carmes at the Institut Catholique.