Xaupi, Father Honoré Xavier

1869, July 11

Date of Birth:  1787, April 12

Honoré Xavier Xaupi was born at Brignole in Provence [or in Marsailles] on April 12, 1787. At the beginning of the French Revolution his family emigrated to Spain, and from there to the United States. He attended St. Mary’s College. Desiring to become a priest, he was tonsured on September 22, 1810 and was appointed as a prefect in the college while he was studying Latin which he had up to then neglected to study. He entered the seminary on September 6, 1814, and received minor orders on October 2, 1815, subdiaconate on November 30, 1816 from Bishop Cheverus who had come to Baltimore to confer the pallium on Archbishop Neale. He became a deacon on December 19, 1818, and a priest at Trinity on June 5, 1819. He remained at the college as a prefect and teacher, and with the consent of the Superior General of St. Sulpice he was admitted to the Society in 1821, along with Father Chanche. In 1826 he left the Society to go to Emmitsburg to teach French and Spanish. He returned to Baltimore in 1830, but two or three years later he went back to Emmitsburg. According to Meline and McSweeney in The Story of the Mountain [Mt. St. Mary’s], Father Xaupi had a breakdown in 1866 and entered Mt. Hope, an asylum for the insane. He died on July 11, 1869.

Translated and adapted from Reg. Bk. I.