(Translation.)

Most Holy Father,

Pierre Janvier, priest, and the dean of the chapter of the metropolitan church at Tours, and director of the Confraternity of the Holy Face, prostrate at your feet, humbly presents to you the following petition.

In the town of Tours, there exists a sanctuary which the deceased archbishop, Mgr Colet, of pious memory, on the 29^th June 1876, being the feast of the apostle St Peter, solemnly constituted to be a public chapel, in order to favour the devotion to the most Holy Face of our Lord Jesus Christ, already existing in that place. There, in fact, since the year 1851, fervent Christians, therein following the example set them by a great servant of God, Mr Leon Dupont, offered a worship of adoration and prayer to the Face of our Lord, outraged in his passion, before a picture of that Holy Face, being a faithful representation of the true effigy preserved at the Vatican.

This pious devotion, so conformable to what has been performed from time immemorial in the Church of Rome with regard to the veil of Veronica, has, in our days, been deemed particularly suitable for exciting in our souls a more lively and more tender love to our suffering Lord, and a more ardent and efficacious zeal to repair the outrages indicted in every place on his adorable person.

Therefore, this sacred devotion, entering, as of itself, into all hearts, has, by little and little, become popular. During the lapse of thirty four years, it has extended not only throughout France, but in Belgium, in Holland, in  Switzerland, in England, in Canada, in the United Stales of America, in Spain, in Italy, in Germany, as far as the centre of Asia (at Bagdad and Mosul), as far also as the extremities of the east (at Shang-Hai and at Saigon); and everywhere pious laymen, eminent priests, holy religious, pastors and theologians, bishops and archbishops, welcome it, favour and propagate it.

Now the public Oratory at Tours, commonly called “the Oratory of the Holy Face”, has been and still is the starting point of this providential movement of faith and of piety towards the divine Face of the Redeemer. Consequently, it is a centre which is frequented, and already celebrated, and to which pilgrimages of penance and expiation are daily made from all parts. Many come there to pray, priests celebrate there the holy mysteries, the faithful assist at mass and communicate there; the conversion of sinners is asked for, the cure of the sick and success in affairs; above all, efforts are made, especially on certain days, to offer to the heavenly Father, in presence of the Face of his divine Son, a worthy homage of reparation, in order to appease his justice, irritated as it is by so many crimes, blasphemies and profanations committed in our days, and to avert the chastisements by which we deserve to be struck. God, it appears, looks with a favourable eye on these supplications and deigns to grant these prayers; spiritual and temporal graces of all kinds are often obtained; in proof of which the walls of the sanctuary of the Holy Face are decorated with numerous tablets of marble given as ex-votos, and the altar is surrounded with crutches and sticks left there by lame persons and by the infirm who have been cured.

So great is the influx of those who corne to pray there, that, for the last eight years, the archbishop of Tours has been obliged to establish a new sacerdotal society which is de signated as that of “the Priests of the Holy Face», with the special mission of serving the said Oratory, and of responding to all the needs of the faithful who frequent it. These priests are in daily communication with the pastors of parishes, the superiors of communities, the faithful of all ranks and conditions, who address themselves to them from all parts, directly or by letters, in order to solicit recommendations for prayers and to have the means of establishing or propagating, in their neighbourhood, the same salutary devotion.

Since they have been set apart for this work, these priests state that, in the course of eight years, they have sent to different places more “than twenty thousand engravings, being authentic fac-similes of the Veronica of the Vatican; that all these effigies have been asked for in a spirit of faith, of veneration and of love for the sorrowful Face of our Lord; and that the greater proportion of them, exposed as they are with lamps burning before them in cathedrals and parish churches, or in the chapels of communities, have become, as is the case at Tours, the object of a similar worship and often the source of great graces.

In order to direct aright this devotion, which is daily on the increase, and in order to make it produce all the fruits to be desired from it, a pious association, regularly established in proper and due form, has been deemed necessary. For a long time, the minds of many have been disposed to it and a Confraternity having its special title, its organisation and its own statutes was demanded for the worship of the Holy Face. This desire was realised, most happily and to the great joy of the faithful, by our present venerable archbishop, the Right Rev. Mgr Meignan, through an ordinance dated the 23^th October 1884. This archiepiscopal ordinance, with the statutes or rules which it approves and which depend upon it, has already been placed before His Holiness, who deigned, by apostolical letters of the 9^th of December 1884, and the 30^th of March 1885, to grant to the Confraternity of the Holy Face precious plenary and partial indulgences.

The joy and pious consolation which these first favours of the Holy See have been the means of bestowing upon priests and the faithful are incredible. Several thousands of persons hastened to inscribe their names in the register of the Confraternity, and continue daily to do so. Confraternities, known by the same title, adopting the same statutes and pursuing the same object, have been canonically established. In addition, there has been formed, during several years past, in different places, analogous associations or confraternities in honour of the Holy Face, which are already more or less united with us, and will be disposed to affiliate themselves canonically to our Confraternity as to a centre, if we obtain this permission.

If pastors and the faithful show so much fervour and zeal for the devotion to the Holy Face and the Confraternity consecrated to it, it is because they see the precious advantages which result from it for the glory of God, the conso­lation of the just, the conversion of sinners and, above all, the expiation of sacrileges, of profanations and of other crimes with which the world is at this moment inundated by hell. For the express object proposed by the associates of the Confraternity in honouring the sorrowful Face of the Saviour Jesus is that of hindering, or at least of repairing the inexpressible outrages which blasphemers, free thinkers and free-masons inflict on the majesty and sove­reignty of God, on the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ and the authority of the Church. It is evident that these most desirable effects would be obtained in a still surer and more widely diffused manner if the association at Tours, the cradle and centre of an ancient devotion and one ardently embraced now as a means of reparation in these our times, had the power of canonically aggregating and attaching to itself, by still closer and more sacred links, the multitude of associates spread over all parts of the universe. There would result from it, in all probability, under the banner of the sorrowful Face of the Redeemer, a great and strong unity of minds and hearts, which would favour the need so keenly felt of prayer and expiation, and which would advantageously fight against the demon of impiety and his members, united together by the hatred of all that is good.

These then are the reasons, most Holy Father, why we petition Your Holiness to deign to grant to this association of the Holy Face, established at Tours, the title and the privileges of an Archconfraternity, in such a manner that it may possess the power of aggregating to itself all other associations of the same title, already established, or which shall hereafter be established, and to communicate to them all the indulgences, with which it has been or shall be itself enriched by the holy apostolic See.

1. Janvier

Tours, 1^st September 1885.

We earnestly recommend this petition to Your Holiness; we consider it to be entirely worthy of your paternal benevolence, and we are persuaded that the favour demanded responds to numerous and deep seated needs, and that if you deign to grant it according to your wonted goodness, it will contribute in an admirable and powerful manner to augment the knowledge and love of our divine Redeemer in the souls of men; devotion to the interests of his worship and his honour, and above all zeal for the reparation of the crimes which so grievously outrage the dignity of his adorable Person and the authority of his holy Church.

Guillaume-Rene,

Archbishop of Tours.

To this petition, thus recommended by the archbishop of Tours, were attached a series of special recommendations inscribed in the following order:

FRANCE

His Em. Cardinal Guibert, archbishop of Paris.

His Em. Cardinal Caverot, archbishop of Lyon.

His Em. Cardinal Desprez, archbishop of Toulouse.

Mgr Place, archbishop of Rennes.

Mgr Fonteneau, archbishop of Albi.

Mgr Le Coq, bishop of Nantes.

Mgr Catteau, bishop of Lucon.

Mgr Dabert, bishop of Perigueux.

Mgr Marpot, bishop of Saint-Claude.

Mgr Garaguel, bishop of Perpignan.

Mgr Sourrieu, bishop of Chalons.

Mgr Bourret, bishop of Rodez.

Mgr Besson, bishop of Nimes.

Mgr Becel, bishop of Vannes.

Mgr Laborde, bishop of Blois.

Mgr Le Hardy du Marais, bishop of Laval.

Mgr Bellot des Miniores, bishop of Poitiers.

Mgr de Dreux-Breze, bishop of Moulins.

Mgr Denechau, bishop of Tulle.

Mgr Fava, bishop of Grenoble.

Mgr Dennel, bishop of Arras.

Mgr Lebreton, bishop of Le Puy.

Mgr Gay, bishop of Anthedon.

The abbots of La Trappe, assembled in chapter.

Dorn Couturier, abbot of Solesmes.

The Superior general of the Lazarists.

The Provincial of the Capuchins.

The Provincial of the Dominicans.

The Superior of the great Seminary at Versailles.

BELGIUM

Mgr Bracq, bishop of Ghent.

Mgr Doutreloux, bishop of Liege.

Mgr Belin, bishop of Namur.

ITALY

Mgr Salvaj, bishop of Alexandria.

Mgr the bishop of Teano.

Mgr the bishop of Muro.

Mgr the bishop of Acireale.

The Superior general of the Redemptorists.

SPAIN

Mgr the bishop of Calahorra.

The Provincial of the Carmelites.

SWITZERLAND

Mgr Mermillod, bishop of Lausanne and Geneva.

AUSTRIA

Mgr Strossmayer, bishop of Agram.

The Superior of the Seminary of Gran.

The Reverend the Father Abbot of Beuron.

ENGLAND

His Eminence Cardinal Manning, archbishop of Westminster.

Mgr Bagshaw, bishop of Nottingham.

IRELAND

Mgr Duggan, bishop of Clonfert.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

His Eminence Cardinal Mc Closkey, archbishop of New-York.

Mgr Gibbons, archbishop of Baltimore.

Mgr Elder, archbishop of Cincinnati.

Mgr Keane, bishop of Richmond.

Mgr Neraz, bishop of San-Antonio (Texas).

Mgr Jansens, bishop of Natchez.

The Fathers of the Sacred Heart at Watertown.

CANADA

Mgr Taschereau, archbishop of Quebec.

Mgr Colin, the superior of the seminary of Saint Sulpice at Montreal.

COLONIES

Mgr Colombert, bishop of Samosate, vicar apostolic of French Cochinchina.

Mgr Gouin, archbishop of Port of Spain at Trinidad (West Indies).