St Peter Fourier

Peter Fourier is a learned and energetic canon regular from Lorraine who might easily have had an easier career, but instead gave himself to hard pastoral work. After study with the Jesuits and life among the canons regular of St Augustine, he was sent to Mattaincourt, a village badly damaged by Calvinist influence and moral disorder, and there for many years he served as preacher, confessor, catechist, reformer, and practical father of the poor.

He helped found the Augustinian Canonesses of Our Lady for the free education of girls, pressed steadily for reform among clergy and religious, and kept the whole work grounded in prayer, austerity, and patience. When political pressures later drove him into exile for refusing a demanded oath, he did not become bitter or idle, but spent his last years still counseling, teaching, and serving until his death in 1640.