Besnard, Father Leo

1925, August 9

Date of Birth: 1859, November 4

Paris
October 18, 1925

Fathers and Very Dear in Our Lord:

You learned during the vacation of the death of our confrere, Father Besnard, a director at the Baltimore seminary. Some details have reached me from Father Bruneau and from the Baltimore Catholic Review of August 15, 1925. Put together, these details are such that they must arouse our regret for the loss we have suffered in the person of one of our best confreres. They must also be for us a consolation in our grief and justify our hopes in the favorable welcome that the good Master will have given to him who was always his faithful servant. What a beautiful soul of the priest – a soul simple, just, brave, generous, unselfish, without weakness or wavering, at a hard task for thirty-seven years, and seeking no other recompense than the acknowledgment of duty accomplished with the satisfaction of preparing good priests for God.

Father Léon Marie Emile Besnard was born at Lisieux in the Diocese of Bayeux on November 4, 1859. He had very good parents who gave him the example of a Christian life and the lesson of hard work.

The first idea that he had for planning his life was that of becoming a soldier in the service of France. At the qualifying age he enlisted in the artillery for a year as was then the law for military service.

After the year was over, he was inspired to think of a higher vocation. He wanted to be a priest. Without losing anything of what barracks life had been able to give him in the way of experiencing and communicating patriotic fervor, he entered the seminary of Bayeux. There he made the normal preparation, was ordained priest on June 29, 1837, and soon expressed his desire of being assigned to seminary work.

Admitted to the seminary at Paris, for a year he followed the special courses of study at the Catholic Institute of Paris and at Stanislas College. Then he made his Solitude at Issy. When the time came to receive his assignment, he opted for the Baltimore seminary.

Father Magnien, then Superior of our American work, thought it useful to have him enroll for a year at the University recently founded in Washington. It was to give him the means of familiarizing himself with the English language and of completing the scientific studies for which he seemed especially gifted. His preparation thus settled, he returned to the Baltimore seminary. Naturally, the science course was given to him. To it he added other jobs, such as the direction of music at the seminary and at the Cathedral. In this double role, he proved to be of exceptional virtuosity. As Professor he had a zest for teaching, a cleverness as an experimenter – one could say – the rare merit of being inventor and designer. As an artist in music, he knew how to liven the singing of the choir. He saw in it a duty, he brought to it a zeal – to the extent that even alone, without hearers, for the joy of his soul, for the good God, it often occurred to him to go, like St. Francis of Assisi, to the chapel organ and make music. His was a religious soul. On the occasion of his visits to France he had the joy of saying Mass at the Carmel of Lisieux, of speaking with the holy nun, Therese of the Infant Jesus, a saint whom he loved, whom he prayed to, whom he got others to pray to, like the Americans whom we are too readily tempted to see as business men and who show themselves as men of devotion, especially in regard to the young saint called by them the Little Flower.

His piety was also shown in the care he took to build a Lourdes grotto, a little structure which he made a gathering place especially for the seminarians who helped him build it and who, moreover, were encouraged by him to come there for frequent homage to the Blessed Virgin.

His was a will, alive, and always up to something. His recreations were always a continuation of his work in the sense that his work was for the benefit of the seminarians. The give-and-take of conversation was not for him. He was usually to be found in his Physics Room, in his laboratory, in the act of installing something, preferably something to benefit the community and to please either his confreres or the seminarians.

It might be feared that sometimes this external activity in various acts of service – especially those of a material nature – could be prejudicial to the interior life and could be an obstacle to good spirituality. With Father Besnard, this was not so. He was always known for the intense sincerity of his piety and virtue.