Servant of God Peter Coudrin

Pierre Coudrin, SSCC (1 March 1768 – 1837) was a French religious priest. He was the founder of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, a religious institute in the Roman Catholic Church known for its missionary work in Hawaii, Africa, Europe, Central America and the Pacific Islands. Marie-Joseph-Pierre Coudrin was born on 1 March 1768, at Coussay-les-Bois, near Poitiers. His parents were farmers. His uncle was a parish priest in a neighboring village. Pierre spent his vacations with him during the years of his primary education, and his uncle prepared him for first communion. He completed his secondary studies in 1785 at Châtellerault, and at 17 years of age, entered the University of Poitiers. He was only a deacon when the persecution, directed against the clergy, dispersed the students of the seminary of Poitiers, where he was being trained. Having learned that de Bonal, the Bishop of Clermont, was in Paris and would ordain him to priesthood, Coudrin set out for that city, and on 4 March 1792, was ordained in the Irish Seminary just as France was becoming embroiled in the Revolution. The ordination took place secretly in the library, because the revolutionaries had seized the chapel to hold their meetings. After ordination he returned to Coursay, but the violence of the persecution soon compelled him to go into hiding. Coudrin hid in an attic of the granary of the Chateau d'Usseau where he remained for six months. He reported that, during this time, he awoke one evening surrounded by an apparition of priests, brothers and nuns illuminated in albs. He took the vision to be a divine calling to establish a religious institute that would become the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. Coudrin quickly left the granary and traveled to Poitiers to begin an underground ministry, waiting for the right moment to start his group. During October of the same year, he also labored disguised in the Diocese of Tours.