François de Garnier des Garets was the younger brother of Anne-Colombe, better known as “Mademoiselle d’Ars”. He was Captain of Dragoons (1) in the Penthièvre Regiment (Saint-Brieuc region) and is a Knight of the Royal and Military Order of Saint-Louis. He became the widower ofMlle de Bondy, who left him no descendants.
He has a good location and lives on the Faubourg Saint-Germain in Paris. A parishioner of Saint-Sulpice, he was a pious man known for his charity. President of the parish “fabrique” (2), he is in the habit of visiting and helping the poor in his neighborhood. In October 1823, he even wrote a letter to his sister in Ars asking her to distribute his woollen clothes to the needy in the village, as “it is a fault to lose what can be useful”…
His kindness also endeared him to the people of Ars, especially the poor. It was during a vacation in Ars in 1819 that his sister introduced him to Abbé Vianney. He comes to church with her every day, and is delighted to serve Mass as usual. Despite their different backgrounds and ages, the two men struck up a close friendship. How happy I am to have made the acquaintance of M. d’Ars,” exclaimed the holy Curé one day.
How pious he is! How he loves the Good Lord! How imperfect I am around him! How happyMlle d’Ars is to have such a holy brother! “. In return, François des Garets recommended that his sister “serve as sister supervisor to M. Vianney”. I ask you,” he wrote in a letter, “to demand that he have at least one pot-au-feu a week. I think it would be more profitable for us to keep him in Ars than to see him, like his predecessor, increase the number of our Guardian Angels in heaven!
In 1821, he was one of the supporters of the petition to King Louis XVIII to establish the Ars chapel as a parish. This was achieved on June 20 of the same year. He was in tune with the Curé d’Ars when he wrote to Mayor Mandy: “My greatest pleasure is to embellish the churches in which Our Lord is truly present under the holy consecrated hosts”.
This did not go unheeded, as he became one of the main supporters of the Ars parish. He has addresses in Paris, and describes the objects in detail, as well as how they are used and stored. He was responsible for three new banners, precious ornaments, the tabernacle for the high altar (now in the chapel of St. Jean-Baptiste) originally intended for Saint-Sulpice, the processional canopy and the work to widen the doorway, the perron and the wide, double-access staircase.
“This is absolutely necessary, for if the palaces of the kings of the earth are embellished by the magnificence of their arrivals, all the more so must those of the churches be sumptuous”.
He died in 1830 at the age of 72.
1 Soldiers on horseback but fighting on foot.
2 Equivalent to the Economic Council.
From Annales d’Ars no. 343 [mars – avril 2013].
