Pierre-Adrien Toulorge (4 May 1757 - 13 October 1793) was a French Roman Catholic priest and a professed member of the Premonstratensians and was killed during the French Revolution - he also remained in hiding for most of the revolution and celebrated secret Masses and administered the sacraments in secret.
Toulorge was beatified on 29 April 2012 after Pope Benedict XVI confirmed that the late priest was killed "in odium fidei" ('in hatred of the faith'). Cardinal Angelo Amato presided over the celebration on the pope's behalf in the Coutances Cathedral.
Life
Childhood and priesthood
Pierre-Adrien Toulorge was born in the Kingdom of France on 4 May 1757 as the third child to Julien Toulorge and Julienne Hamel; his parents married on 9 November 1747. He was baptized mere hours after his birth by the parish curate Le Royer. He had at least one brother and one sister. His mother died on 8 May 1757 (and was buried in a church the next day) and in 1861 his father remarried to the widowed Marie Duprey. His father died on 31 March 1782.
The assistant parish priest noticed his aspirations to enter the priesthood and took Toulorge under his wing and instructed him in Latin. He was later sent to school for his initial education. Toulorge was admitted to his studies for the priesthood - that the Eudists oversaw - where his superior was Jacques-François Lefranc. He underwent philosophical studies in 1777 and theological studies from 1778 until 1782. Toulorge received the tonsure and the minor orders on 12 June 1778 while being made a subdeacon on 23 September 1780 and being elevated to the diaconate on 8 May 1871. He was ordained as a priest in June 1782 and was made an assistant curate in Doville at the beginning of 1783. He often went to the Norbertine convent in Blanchelande and asked the prior to be admitted into the Premonstratensians; he commenced his novitiate in Beuport and in June 1788 returned to Blanchelande where he made his profession.
The Revolution
In 1790 officials during the French Revolution suppressed their branch of the order and he left on 11 October to live in a neighboring farm belonging to the Le Sens in La Cour until 1791. But he made a grave error in judgment: the banishment law affected him but he nevertheless obtained travelling papers and on 12 September 1791 travelled to the island of Jersey where he joined over 500 priests from the Coutances diocese where he lived a precarious existence of a penniless exile for five weeks. The error in judgment materialized when a confrere pointed out to him that leaving for the island painted him as a traitor to the revolution. Upon hearing this he rushed back to the mainland as soon as he could and hoped that his absence would not be noticed - he landed in secret at a beach in Cotentin and went underground from November 1792 until September 1783. He spent three weeks after his immediate return with his pastor cousin Jean-Nicolas Toulorge. He spent that time in hiding from place to place in disguise and he both administered the sacraments in secret and celebrated Mass in homes in private. Masses were celebrated with makeshift vestments while he copied from the Roman Missal in order to celebrate Mass.
Arrest and trial
On the evening of 2 September 1793 - close to the village of Saint-Nicolas-de-Pierrepont - a woman saw a man emerge from a thicket and invited him into her home and lit a fire for him; Toulorge revealed himself to the woman who then revealed herself to be the Benedictine nun Sister Saint-Paul and Toulorge accepted her invitation to spend the night at the house. The nun - the next morning - led Toulorge out in disguise as a woman to the home of her friend Marotte Fosse thinking he would be much safer there. But workers along the path - seeing an unfamiliar woman - noticed his men's stockings and shoes and so followed the two to Marotte's door and went to inform the authorities. Toulorge rested in the attic of the home when three guards knocked on the door so hard the door itself shook: "Open in the name of the law!" Toulorge froze as a guard bought Fosse from work to open the door. The house was ransacked as the priest hid under bundles of flax and he managed to elude bayonets that stabbed the piles. The soldiers were about to leave muttering to themselves when one went back and noticed the priest coming out of his hiding place. Toulorge was arrested on the spot and all he had with him - such as his vestments - were seized.