Pierre de Keriolet: with Mary, one cannot be lost

In 1636, a witchcraft case was shaking the town of Loudun in western France, attracting curious onlookers. Among them was a Breton magistrate named Pierre de Keriolet, who was a great public sinner and had come to amuse himself with public credulity and ecclesiastical comedy. But even though nobody knew him in Loudun, one of the possessed, or rather the demon who spoke through her, challenged him and publicly revealed his past, in details unknown to all but him, revealing that if he had escaped the worst perils and hell ten times, it was thanks to the Virgin Mary. When he realised this, Keriolet suddenly converted. He then spent the rest of his life serving the poor, greatly mortifying his body, and serving God as a priest.

Les raisons d'y croire :

• From childhood, Pierre de Keriolet reveled in violence, malice and cruelty. He ran away from home after his father caught him stealing from family's savings, and this was the start of a downward spiral of moral depravity.

• Convinced that God didn't exist, Keriolet rejected all moral constraints, doing all the evil he could and scandalising as many people as possible. He decided to go to the Ottoman Empire to convert to Islam, in order to benefit from the advantages granted to renegade Christians and to buy himself a harem.

• While travelling through a forest in Germany, with two fellow travellers, he was attacked by thieves. His friends were killed and Keriolet, despite his atheism, implored Our Lady of Liesse, whose shrine was then the largest in France, to save him. Instead of shooting him, the robbers took everything they could and left, as if he was invisible.

• Although he had been granted his wish and miraculously saved, Keriolet forgot the vow he had just made to the Virgin Mary and set off again, still intent on becoming a Muslim. But the obstacles multiplied and he never managed to find a passage to Turkey. He didn't wonder why so many obstacles had arisen.

• To prevent his brothers-in-law from competing for his father's inheritance, Keriolet returned to France in 1635. Taking advantage of legislation in favor of the Reformed, he converted to Protestantism, which he immediately abjured in exchange for greater benefits. This demonstrated his growing atheism and contempt for religion.

• Keriolet then launched into a series of provocations against God: for example, he set out to seduce a nun and kidnap her from the convent.

• Following the apparitions of Saint Anne near Auray in 1625, the pilgrimage dedicated to her grew in popularity. Keriolet ridiculed these apparitions, as he did all religious ceremonies, causing scandals during the Masses he attended in order to mock and make sacrilegious communions.

• One day in the summer of 1635, during a terrible storm, disturbed by thunder, Keriolet, in front of his panicked servants, fired a pistol at the sky, blaspheming and daring God to punish him. That evening, lightning struck his castle and set fire to his bed; yet he escaped. The next day, lightning struck again, killing his horse. Somehow he did not reflect on the improbability of this double event.

• One night, Keriolet had a terrifying dream that lasted an unusual length of time - over six hours - but which seemed real: he had a detailed vision of hell and was certain he would end up there. Seized with anguish, he briefly made amends and retired to the Carthusian monastery in Auray, but soon left, more enraged than ever at the Catholic faith. As was his wont, he refused to interpret the events of his life according to a providential logic.

• In the light of Church teaching, it is probable that Keriolet had long been, if not possessed, at least under a demonic influence aggravated by his continual and increasingly serious faults and enslavement to his passions, from which he could not extricate himself.

• During an exorcism in the church of Sainte-Croix in Loudun, the devil, speaking through the mouth of a possessed woman, publicly challenged him and revealed that Keriolet had been protected all these years, revealing by whom and why. At the end of each story, he made it clear that he was standing there to take him to hell, shouting: "If it hadn't been for her and your angel, I'd have taken you with me!" By "she" he meant the Blessed Virgin, whose name the demons cannot pronounce.

• What convinced Keriolet was the revelation, point by point, of the various events that miraculously saved him, without his understanding, from certain death and hell; and, even more, the revelation of the origin of this undeserved miraculous protection.

• No one could say that this was all staged, because Keriolet was a complete stranger in Loudun. He only confessed his sins after his confrontation with the demon, shocked to hear of facts so shameful that he had told no one. It was impossible to predict Keriolet's sudden, unexpected and total conversion, which propelled him towards sainthood.

• Although the devil had just publicly displayed Keriolet's depravity, the latter denied nothing and, falling to his knees, acknowledged all his faults before everyone. He then made a general confession. This reaction indicates that the dialogue between Keriolet and the evil spirit speaking through the possessed woman's mouth was genuine.

• While his first repentance had only lasted a few weeks, this time his conversion was definitive. Returning to Brittany, he devoted himself to a life of absolute penitence until his death, striving to make amends for his faults. He donated his castle to the Church to turn it into a hospice for the poor. His bishop, forgetting his past and convinced of his repentance, ordained him to the priesthood on 28 March 1637.

• His spiritual director - Father Dominique, from the Carthusian monastery in Auray -, the Sulpician M. du Ferrier and Father Collet, who collected his life story and his confidences, published his biography. All are reliable witnesses whose word and honesty cannot be questioned.