Venerable Melchior de Marion Brésillac

Melchior-Marie-Joseph de Marion-Brésillac, S.M.A. (2 December 1813 – 25 June 1859) was a French Catholic prelate and the founder of the Society of African Missions. Brésillac was born at Castelnaudary, France, on December 2, 1813. He was eldest of five children. He joined the seminary and was ordained as a priest on December 22, 1838. Brésillac served briefly as a parish priest in the parish of Saint-Michel in the town of his birth. However, the young priest felt dissatisfied and began to discern his calling to mission. Both his bishop and his father opposed his desire to become a missionary, but Brésillac was determined and consecrated himself totally to that calling. Eventually, his bishop supported his choice, but the opposition of his father was so strong that the young priest left to enter the seminary of the Paris Foreign Missions without even saying goodbye to his family. He remained at the seminary for nine months then was appointed to Pondicherry in India where he arrived July 24, 1842. During his 12 years in India, Brésillac served in many capacities,as Curate at Salern and as Superior of the minor seminary at Pondicherry. This seminary later became as Petit Seminaire Higher Secondary School. Fr.Marion was made the Titular Bishop of Prusa and later he became the provicar of Coimbatore. His rise was swift, achieving the rank of bishop at age 29. Through it all, he cherished the desire to train Indian priests. He wanted to establish an indigenous clergy, with their own hierarchy, capable of taking on responsibility for the missions, with Europeans acting only as assistants. Brésillac found his progressive ideas were strongly resisted by many of his fellow missionaries. He was also distressed by many of the cultural realities he discovered in India, particularly the caste system, a practice that assigned people to strictly defined social classes of "desirables" and "undesirables".