Pierre Bonhomme was born on 4 July 1803 in the Rue Saint-Roch at Gramat, in the diocese of Cahors, the son of a cutler, and was baptized that very day in the church of Saint-Pierre. His sister Elisabeth was the companion of his childhood, and to her he would later be not only a most affectionate brother but a spiritual guide who opened her heart to the love of God, to prayer, and to an intense ascetical life. From boyhood he showed in miniature what would shine in maturity: a love of study, quickness to learn and to express himself, a deep religious sense, and a leaning toward simplicity and poverty. He made his First Communion in 1813, and his first teacher, the parish priest Abbé Prunières, later said that he congratulated himself on having had such a pupil.
From 1815 to 1818 he studied at Reilhac, and in November 1818 he was received into the minor seminary at Montfaucon. Already he held so high a notion of the priesthood that, still uncertain of his future and still aware in himself of a strong inclination to games and amusements, he refused a scholarship offered him by the lycée as an ecclesiastical student, unwilling to take the place of a surer vocation. Rather than pass directly to the major seminary, he chose a season of maturing at the royal college of Cahors, where he took his baccalaureate in letters in 1824. That November he entered the major seminary of Cahors, received the subdiaconate in 1827, the diaconate at Montauban that same November, and was ordained priest at Cahors on 23 December 1827, celebrating his first Mass at Gramat. Throughout his studies his conduct was excellent; masters and companions alike esteemed him, and at home he was a model of love, respect, and help toward his parents.
His priesthood began at once with an almost breathless energy for the glory of God and the good, spiritual and material, of his brethren. On 11 August 1827, while still only a deacon, he opened at Gramat a school of primary and secondary studies; gathering a teaching staff, he soon had a college of some hundred and fifty boys. His mother died in his arms on 5 July 1830. After the July Revolution the town turned troubled: Bonhomme, suspected of sympathy for the fallen king, was insulted and threatened, his teaching salary suppressed, and on 13 August 1832 his enemies petitioned the prefect to close the college — the decree was annulled by the minister when part of the town rallied to him. Undiscouraged, in 1831 he opened another school at Prayssac to prepare boys for the major seminary.
Helping the aged parish priest of Gramat, he saw that the girls of the region were left without education or guidance, and in 1832 he formed the Children of Mary: one hundred and nine enrolled, binding themselves not only to a life of prayer but to visiting the poor, the aged, and the sick with material and spiritual relief. On the old curé's death, 8 December 1832, Bonhomme was named parish priest of Notre-Dame, and he threw himself into the church, its repair, its chant, its ceremonies and processions. He was among those who restored the pilgrimage of Our Lady of Rocamadour, inaugurating in 1835 the Marian Weeks of September; his devotion to that shrine never left him.
Agreeing with the town's charitable board to build a hospice, and finding no religious community in the district to serve it, he turned to his own Children of Mary. Four young women of Gramat — Hortense and Adèle Pradel, Cora and Mathilde Rousset — pronounced their first vows in 1833 and were sent to be trained by the Daughters of Charity, the Sisters of Nevers, the Sisters of Mercy, and the Carmelites, learning to nurse the sick and to teach children. They returned to Gramat in Lent of 1834, cared for the destitute, and opened a school that soon held fifty-two little girls. On 15 October 1835 four new postulants received the habit of the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Calvary. The purposes of the Institute were the education of children and the assistance of the poor, the aged, the deaf and mute, the mentally ill, and other gravely disabled persons.
After a long retreat at the Trappist monastery of Mortagne in Normandy he felt a strong pull toward the hidden, contemplative life of Carmel, but his bishop insisted that he remain in the active ministry; he obeyed, gave up the direction of the college, provided a substitute for the parish, and gave himself to preaching missions and to the growth of his congregation. Then came his heaviest trial. The first superior, Mother Marie de la Croix, whose mind gave way, turned against him in 1838, and her accusations, joined to the falsehoods of another family, were taken up by a local newspaper and divided the town. He endured mock serenades in which his portrait was burned, stones thrown at him as he returned from Rocamadour, and an ambush escaped on the road to Figeac; rather than defend himself in Rome, he refused the journey. He bore it in silence, and the work grew: foundations at Fons in 1838, at Limogne-en-Quercy and Rocamadour in 1839, then at Luzech, Leyme, Le Vigan and Latronquière, while the great convent of Gramat rose. By 1848 the congregation numbered sixty-one sisters.
All the while a disease of the larynx was eating away the voice of this powerful popular orator, who had preached even in the local patois so that the poorest might understand; by 1848 it silenced his preaching, and he poured his remaining strength into his daughters, guiding them and writing their Rule. Like his model Saint Vincent de Paul, no distress left him unmoved. He grieved over the deaf and mute, so often despised and ill-treated: two sisters were sent for training at the school of Larnay near Poitiers, and in 1854 a property at Mayrinhac-Lentour received ten little deaf-mute girls; in 1860 the congregation bought the château of Henri IV at Bourg-la-Reine, which became one of its greatest institutions. His sisters had already nursed the mentally ill at the asylum of Leyme, and from 1844 they took charge of the workroom-asylum opened in Paris by Doctor Falret, where they remained a hundred and fifty years.
Spiritually free of every self-seeking, convinced and expert in the value of prayer, he found in the Word of God — above all in the Beatitudes and the accounts of the Lord's Passion — the pattern of intimacy with Christ, whom he imitated under Mary's guidance. Amid a general reputation for holiness he ended his earthly course at Gramat on 9 September 1861. His congregation spread through France and beyond, to Brazil and the Philippines. His cause was opened at Cahors in 1952, formally introduced on 15 March 1980, and the Positio submitted in 1984; Pope John Paul II declared him Venerable on 23 October 1987, and, after the recognition of a healing worked through his intercession, beatified him in Rome on 23 March 2003.
May Blessed Pierre Bonhomme obtain for us his fearless charity, and let us today seek out one forgotten or despised neighbour and serve him for the love of Christ.
