Stephen Larigaudelle Dubuisson

Stephen Larigaudelle Dubuisson (October 21, 1786 – August 14, 1864) was a French Catholic priest and member of the Society of Jesus.

Family

Stephen Larigaudelle Dubuisson was born as Étienne de La Rigaudelle du Buisson on October 21, 1786 in the town of Saint-Marc in the French colony of Saint-Domingue in the Caribbean. He was born to mother Marie-Elizabeth-Louise Poirer, who was born in Fort Dauphin, and father Anne-Joseph-Sylvestre de La Rigaudelle du Buisson, who was born in Saint-Marc in 1748, at the family home located at 55 rue Dauphine in the center of town. He was the second son of his parents and was reared by one of the family's house slaves who acted as his wet nurse. The family he was born into was wealthy and enjoyed the high social status of grand-blancs, being related to the French minor nobility. Étienne was named after his godfather, François-Étienne Théard, the French lieutenant governor of Saint-Marc.

Stephen's mother died in December 1791, and his father married Adélaïde-Marie Favereau of Saint-Nicolas in May of that year, and their marriage produced several daughters. In light of the impending Haitian Revolution, he along with his older brother, Noël-Marie, and younger brother, Joseph, were sent to Nantes, France sometime between March and May 1791 by their father, who remained in Saint-Domingue and whom they did not see again for many years. Upon arriving in Nantes, the children survived the massacres of the War in the Vendée, which involved the occupation of Nantes by the Catholic and Royal Armies in 1792, and the Reign of Terror in 1794.

Education

Later in life, Dubuisson lamented the fact that he never had the opportunity to receive formal education in his youth. Despite having no such training, helikely studied in secret under the tutelage of a non-juror priest who had not sworn allegiance to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. On his own, he also studied literature and poetry, and came to be fluent in English by the age of fifteen. Eventually, Dubuisson came to speak seven languages: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Latin, and Ancient Greek, in addition to having a working knowledge of Hebrew.

In 1804 or 1805, Dubuisson sat for and passed the agrégation (French civil service exam) at the Congrégation de la Sainte-Vierge in Nantes. He thereafter worked in the office of the receiver general of the French Army during the Napoleonic Wars, where he was stationed in Germany and worked in the Army of the Rhine from May 1809 to March 1810. He was then assigned to occupied Vienna from 1811 to 1814 as assistant cashier of the special crown land, then as assistant cashier of the crown treasury.

Dubuisson then returned to France, where he resided at an apartment in the Tuileries Palace in Paris and worked as the cashier-comptroller of the crown from December 1814 to June 1815. In Paris, he became close to Baron François Roullet de La Bouillerie, a member of the Conseil d'État and intendant of the treasury of the civil list. With the restoration of Louis XVIII as the King of France, Dubuisson remained in the civil service, which allowed him to support his family members. During this time, he would pay visits to the sick in Parisian hospitals alongside young nobles, including Viscount Mathieu de Montmorency and Count Alexis de Noailles.

Missionary to the United States

When Dubuisson first expressed his desire to enter religious life, specifically the Society of Jesus, his family was staunchly opposed. He affiliated with Simon Bruté of the Society of the Priests of Saint Sulpice, which was active in North America, and set sail for the United States, unbeknownst to his family. He arrived in New York City on November 21, 1815 and at Georgetown College in Washington, D.C. on December 1. In White Marsh, Maryland, he entered the Jesuit novitiate on December 15, 1815, where he took the anglicized version of his name, Stephen Larigaudelle Dubuisson.

Georgetown College

He did not enjoy the company of his fellow adolescent students, who he thought irreverent. In 1816, he was appointed by President Giovanni Grassi the prefect of the college, which was renewed in 1817 under President Anthony Kohlmann. In this role, he was caught in a dispute between the European Jesuits who sought that Georgetown be essentially ecclesiastical in nature and produce priests and the Anglo-American Jesuits who sought that it enroll lay students. With the former prevailing, Dubuisson was to enforce strict discipline among the students. The antagonism this inculcated in the students was so great that in 1818 they plotted to assassinate him with penknives and stones. Upon being discovered, this plot was preempted by Kohlmann, who expelled six students, but not before they staged a revolt.

Dubuisson continued his studies while prefect with his fellow Jesuit seminarians. He professed his first vows on December 26, 1817, and was made the director of the seminarians. Having been selected to train for the priesthood, he studied under Anthony Kohlmann at the Washington Seminary (later known as Gonzaga College High School). Finally, on August 7, 1821, he was ordained a priest by Archbishop Ambrose Maréchal of Baltimore at Georgetown College. On August 15, 1829, his membership in the Jesuit order was completed with his profession of solemn vows.

Following his ordination, Dubuisson undertook his work in the cure of souls. He paid visits to the sick and was present to the miraculous cure of Ann Mattingly in 1824. Further, the eloquence in his sermons captured the attention of Washington's high society. On September 9, 1825, Dubuisson became the fourteenth President of Georgetown College. He took this assignment with great hesitation, due to his reputation among students for disciplinary severity; his reservations were borne out by lackluster student enrollment. After just seven months, he asked the Jesuit Superior General, Luigi Fortis, to be given leave of the post.

Following a nervous breakdown, he was transferred to Rome for recovery. There, he acted as an advisor to Superior General Jan Roothnaan on American affairs. He also resided in Marseille for a time.

He later became the pastor of Holy Trinity Church in Georgetown.

Dubuisson died on August 14, 1864 at the Jesuit novitiate in Pau, France.