Draft:Isidore Quemerais
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Father Isidore Armand Quémerais (9 September 1847 - 15 September 1873) was one of the five Breton missionary priests to Louisiana who made a free and willing sacrifice of their lives in the 1873 Yellow Fever Epidemic in Shreveport, Louisiana. The group is collectively known as the Shreveport Martyrs. On December 8, 2020, Bishop Francis Malone of the Diocese of Shreveport declared him to be a Servant of God, opening the diocesan phase of inquiry into a Cause of Beatification and Canonization.[1] In 2022, the Vatican's Dicastery for the Causes of Saints permitted Father Quémerais and the other four Shreveport Martyrs to proceed for consideration as a single Cause.[2] Very Rev. Peter B. Mangum serves as the Episcopal Delegate for the Cause.
Born in Pleine-Fougères, Brittany, France to a large rural farming family, Isidore Quémerais attended seminary at Saint-Meen in Rennes before Bishop Augustus Marie Martin recruited him to serve in the Diocese of Natchitoches in Louisiana. A passenger record documents his departure from the port of Le Havre to the United States in early 1871, traveling with Bishop Martin who had recently attended the First Vatican Council in Rome.[3] Ordained a priest for the Diocese of Natchitoches, Father Quémerais served briefly in Moreauville, Louisiana before Bishop Martin assigned him to serve as assistant pastor to Father Jean Pierre at Holy Trinity Catholic Church (Shreveport, Louisiana) in 1872.[4]
Father Quémerais had just passed his twenty-sixth birthday on 9 September 1873 when he and Father Jean Pierre worked to care for patients in the Shreveport Yellow Fever epidemic. Already ill himself with tuberculosis, Father Quémerais nevertheless entered the fever-stricken areas willingly, "already not expected to live."[5] He died on 15 September 1873 of yellow fever, certainly exacerbated by his pre-existing poor health.[6]
Originally buried in a Catholic family plot in City Cemetery (today known as Shreveport's Oakland Cemetery),[7] Father Quémerais was re-buried at Holy Trinity Church in 1876 before being moved to the final resting place at St. Joseph's Cemetery in Shreveport in 1884.[8]
Father Isidore Quémerais features in the book, Shreveport Martyrs of 1873: The Surest Path to Heaven (The History Press, 2021) and in the major feature documentary, The Five Priests (2021).
Website: https://www.shreveportmartyrs.org
- ^ Diocese of Shreveport.
- ^ Dicastery for the Causes of the Saints, Rome.
- ^ Archives of the Archdiocese of New Orleans.
- ^ Mangum, Smith, White. Shreveport Martyrs of 1873: The Surest Path to Heaven (Charleston, SC: 2021).
- ^ Diary of Father Joseph Gentille, Archives of the Diocese of Shreveport.
- ^ Mangum, Smith, White. Shreveport Martyrs of 1873: The Surest Path to Heaven. (Charleston, SC: 2021).
- ^ Department of History and Social Sciences, Louisiana State University at Shreveport, archaeological investigation, 2024.
- ^ Diocese of Shreveport.