16 June - Jean-François Régis, born 31 January 1597 in Fontcouverte, Aude (France). Of modest origin, Jean-François Régis obtained a scholarship, at the age of 14, to study at the Jesuit college of Béziers, now the Lycée Henri IV.
After entering the Jesuit novitiate in 1616, he followed the ordinary course of religious formation, at the end of which he was ordained priest in 1630 and was entrusted with various teaching missions which revealed his talents as a teacher and catechist. He dreamed of going with so many other Jesuit brothers to evangelize "New France". But, at the request of his superiors, Jean-François Régis remained in France and became a "missionary from within". From 1636 onwards, he travelled the mountains of Vivarais, Cévennes and Velay, especially in winter, in order to approach the peasants freed from the work in the fields to announce the Good News to them.
His catechesis as well as his very austere way of life attracted the crowds of Le Puy. He created a refuge there for repentant prostitutes, which would earn him a lot of incomprehension. A certain intransigence on the part of Jean-François Régis gave rise in the Protestant tradition to the "principle of St Régis" which designates a position without nuance or a binary alternative. He nevertheless ensured himself a great popularity in the town by defending his famous lacemakers and by obtaining from the Toulouse parliament the right to make again the famous lace of Le Puy, the main income of many poor inhabitants. He visits hospitals and prisons and multiplies charitable actions (such as the "œuvre du bouillon", a kind of soup kitchen).
His last days were spent in Vivarais, at the end of December 1640. In spite of a violent snowstorm, he set off for Lalouvesc, today in the department of Ardèche. As usual, he gives himself without counting to all these families of the hamlets of the deep Ardèche, he spends hours in the icy church of December to listen, reconcile, give the sacraments, and contracts pneumonia. Bedridden, he will not get up again: he dies on December 31st, when the village is completely isolated by snow. Later, when the fathers came from the city to collect the body of their confrere, Father Régis, the villagers refused to give it back to them. Thus the village was transformed almost immediately into a place of pilgrimage and is still so today. Jean-François Régis was canonized in 1737 by Pope Clement XII.
In the XIXth century, after the Revolution, the diocese sends missionaries to Lalouvesc to accompany the pilgrims who return in number. Among them, a priest: Étienne Terme. This one creates many groups and religious communities to support the Christian life of the ardéchois and the service of the poorest, in particular by teaching. He thus founded the Congregation of the Sisters of Saint Regis, which split into two branches: one for education, which kept the name of Saint Regis, and another for the service of the pilgrimage to Saint Regis and spiritual retreats. The latter, after the death of Father Terme and under the responsibility of Thérèse Couderc, became the Congregation of the Sisters of Notre-Dame du Cénacle.
