[Illustration: MGR. FRANÇOIS DE LAVAL DE MONTMORENCY]
Fur three years he remained in Paris and associated with the congregation of pious laymen and others, mostly graduates from Jesuit colleges. In 1650 he joined a small group of five of these earnest men who lived in common in a kind of religious life under the direction of the Jesuit, Père Bagot, and a society was formed under the title of the "Society of Good Friends," with the purpose of charitable and social work. These five men were increased to twelve, of whom some were priests.
In 1652 the Jesuit, Père de Rhodes, one of the most remarkable men of the Cochin-China missions, came to Paris in search of recruits to form an ecclesiastical hierarchy, and it fell to the lot of three of the priests of the Society of Good Friends to be chosen to have their names sent to Rome as suitable bishops for the purpose, François Paillu, canon of St. Martin de Tours; Bernard Picquet (or Piques), doctor of the Sorbonne, and François de Laval, archdeacon of Evreux. The long negotiations did not end till 1658, when Paillu was named vicar apostolic of Tonkin, and two others of the above society vicars apostolic of Cochin-China and China.
In the meantime in 1657, on the nomination of Queylus for the bishopric of New France, the Jesuits made their overtures to Laval to adopt him as their candidate for the same post, and he accepted. The curia at Rome moved slowly and it was not till fifteen months later that the bull naming the Abbé François de Laval de Montigny, bishop of Petrea in Arabia and vicar apostolic of Canada was promulgated. On December 8th, the papal nuncio consecrated him in the church of the abbey of St. Germain-des-Prés.
When the archbishop of Rouen, Mgr. de Harlay, who had looked upon New France as a part of his diocese, heard of this, he resented it and obtained a decree of the parliament of Rouen ordering word to all the officers of the kingdoms and the subjects of the king, to refuse to accept the new vicar apostolic.
Louis XIV on March 27, 1659, retorted by letters patent bidding acceptance of Laval, but on the other side he wished "that these episcopal functions should be exercised _without prejudice to the rights of the jurisdiction of the Ordinary_, that is to say the archbishop of Rouen; and that, while awaiting the erection of a bishopric, of which the titulary occupant shall be the suffragan of the archbishop."