Apostolus Jesu Christi ("Apostle of Jesus Christ")
Coat of arms
Désiré Félicien François Joseph Mercier (21 November 1851 – 23 January 1926) was a Belgian Catholic prelate who served as Archbishop of Mechelen from 1906 until his death in 1926. A Thomist scholar, he had several of his works translated into other European languages. He was known for his book, Les origines de la psychologie contemporaine (1897). He was elevated to the cardinalate in 1907.
Mercier is noted for his staunch resistance to the German occupation of Belgium during World War I. After the invasion, he distributed a strong pastoral letter, Patriotism and Endurance, to be read in all his churches, urging the people to keep up their spirits. He served as a model of resistance.
Mercier was born at the château du Castegier in Braine-l'Alleud, as the fifth of seven children of small business owners Paul-Léon Mercier and his wife, Anne-Marie Barbe Croquet. Three of Mercier's sisters became religious sisters. His brother Léon became a physician.[1]
One of Mercier's maternal uncles was Adrien Croquet. In the 1860s Croquet became a missionary to the Grand Ronde Indian Reservation in western Oregon near the Pacific coast, where his surname was anglicized to Crockett. In the 1870s, a Mercier cousin, Joseph Mercier, joined their uncle Croquet in Oregon. He married a woman of one of the Native American tribes resident there. Today, several thousand descendants of Joseph and his wife are members of the tribe.[2]
Mercier studied at the College Saint‑Rombaut of Malines (1863-1868), and entered the minor seminary at Mechelen in 1868 to prepare for the church. He attended the Major Seminary, Mechelen, from 1870 to 1873.[3]
He founded in 1894 and edited until 1906 the Revue Néoscholastique, and wrote in a scholastic manner on metaphysics, philosophy, and psychology. Several of his works were translated into English, German, Italian, Polish, and Spanish. His most important book was Les origines de la psychologie contemporaine (1897).[5]
During the modernist controversy, Mercier was both progressive and antimodernist. He sought to assess the compatibility of Thomistic philosophy with rapidly developing scientific knowledge.[8] He was a brilliant scholar, open to contemporary ideas and sufficiently respected for being able to protect scholars at Louvain, such as BollandistHippolyte Delehaye, from accusations of "modernism". Through his influence, Mercier prevented Albin van Hoonacker's Les douze petits prophètes traduits et commentés ["The twelve minor prophets translated and annotated"] from being placed on the Index.[9]
Returning from the conclave Mercier passed through the Port of Le Havre, where he visited wounded Belgian, French and British troops. Once back in his archdiocese, he found Mechelen Cathedral to have been partially destroyed. In the Imperial German atrocities that ensued in the Rape of Belgium, thirteen of the priests in Mercier's diocese were killed, not to mention many civilians, by Christmas 1914. With his pastoral letter, Patriotism and Endurance, of Christmas 1914, Mercier came to personify Belgian resistance to the German occupation. The pastoral letter had to be distributed by hand as the Germans had cut off the postal service. Mercier's passionate, unflinching words were taken to heart by the suffering Belgians. He sometimes became a focus of Allied propaganda during the war.[9] He was kept under house arrest by the Germans, and many priests who had read the letter aloud in public were arrested.[citation needed]
In Ireland, Cardinal Mercier's detention and indeed the German occupation was used to help recruitment for the British Army among Irish Catholics. Following the war, Mercier helped with the re-establishment of the Irish Franciscan College (St Anthony's College, Leuven), with his friend since their seminary days in Louvain, Mons. James J. Ryan.[11] Mercier Press in Ireland is named in his honour.[12]
Final years and death
Following World War I, Mercier undertook an excursion to raise funds to rebuild and stock a new library of the University of Leuven. The original library had been burned by the Germans in the war. In his travels to raise funds, Mercier visited New York City for the only time. In 1919, he addressed the General Convention of the Episcopal Church in Detroit, expressing gratitude for American relief efforts.[13][14] Among other projects, Mercier also unsuccessfully attempted to have the League of Nations mandate of Palestine awarded to Belgium.[15]
Mercier suffered from persistent dyspepsia. In early January 1926 he underwent surgery for a lesion of the stomach. During surgery, the cardinal held a conversation with his surgeon on anatomy while under local anesthesia .[16]
Mercier is known for favouring French speakers and opposing the use of the Dutch language. Though in general social-minded, he was blind to the social aspects of the Flemish Movement and opposed many of its aims. Two examples. (1) Claiming that Dutch could never be a full-fledged cultural language, he fought all attempts to have Flemish high school and university students educated in their native Dutch. He relented only when overwhelmed by the political pressure the Flemish Movement was generating.[21] He managed to have Pope Benedict XV address him a letter[22] in which he admonished priests that they should not address arguments extraneous to their supernatural commitment nor publish on secular subjects without their superior's permission. Mercier promptly published this letter.
He went on to propose an expanding model of the universe, based on both Einstein's and de Sitter's models. Abbé Georges Lemaître developed his "primeval atom" hypothesis, together with researchers of the University of Louvain, and Gamow, Alpher and Herman into the better known Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe.
References
^Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church. "Mercier, Desiré", fiu.edu. Accessed 25 February 2024.
^Fr. Cawley Martinus, Father Crockett of Grand Ronde: Adrien-Joseph Croquet, 1818–1902, Oregon Missionary, 1860–1898
^ abcCourtois, Luc (2017). "Mercier, Désiré Joseph". In Ute Daniel; Peter Gatrell; Oliver Janz; Heather Jones; Jennifer Keene; Alan Kramer; Bill Nasson (eds.). International Encyclopedia of the First World War. Berlin: Freie Universität Berlin. doi:10.15463/ie1418.10207/1.1. Retrieved 15 November 2017. {{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help)
