Félix Dupanloup

Félix Antoine Philibert Dupanloup (3 January 1802 – 11 October 1878) was a French Catholic prelate who served as Bishop of Orléans from 1849 to 1878. He was among the leaders of Liberal Catholicism in France.

Biography

Dupanloup was born at Saint-Félix, in Upper Savoy, (which at the time was part of the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia rather than France) an illegitimate son of Prince Camillo Borghese. In his earliest years he was confided to the care of his brother, a priest in the diocese of Chambéry. In 1810 he was sent to a pensionnat ecclésiastique at Paris. Thence he went to the seminary of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet in 1813, and was transferred to the seminary of Saint Sulpice at Paris in 1820. In 1825 he was ordained priest, and was appointed vicar of the Madeleine at Paris. For a time he was tutor to the Orléans princes. He became the founder of a celebrated academy at St Hyacinthe, and received a letter from Gregory XVI lauding his work there, and calling him Apostolus juventutis.

He was elected to the Académie française in 1854, occupying the thirty-eighth chair and leading the academy's "religious party", in which capacity he manoeuvred against the election of agnostic intellectuals. Dupanloup resigned in 1875 after Émile Littré, an agnostic, was elected to the academy.

When made bishop of Orléans in 1849, he pronounced a fervid panegyric on Joan of Arc, which attracted attention in England as well as France. Joan of Arc was later canonized, due partly to Dupanloup's efforts. Before this, he had been sent by Archbishop Aifre to Rome, and had been appointed Roman prelate and protonotary apostolic.