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Name: AUDREN, Jean-Marie (Father)
Birth Date: 4.4.1841 Herras en Moreac, Brittany
Death Date: 4.3.1907 Langonnet
Nationality: French
First Date: 1905
Last Date: 1905
Profession: Holy Ghost Father
Area: Bura
Book Reference: EAHB 1906, North
General Information:
North - Arr. Zanzibar from Madagascar late 1903; successively at Zanzibar, Mombasa, Pemba, Bagamoyo & Bura Missions; arr. Mombasa from Zanzibar and dep. for Bura Sept 1904; returned to France ill 1905.
Henry J. Koren, Spiritan East African Memorial, 1994: The first-born son of a prosperous farmer and a cousin of two Spiritans, he began his classical studies at Langonnet in 1858 before going to Chevilly for theology. Ordained on November 14, 1869, he made his vows nine months later during the Franco-Prussian War. Appointed to Haiti, he taught at the newly opened St. Martial's College while also functioning as dean of discipline or dean of studies. Overburdened, he went six years later to Martinique, teaching at the college there. After 16 years in the West Indies, he returned to France on leave, taught there at two colleges and then in 1888 became the director of a government-sponsored central agricultural school at Thies in Senegal. As this school was destined to teach modern tropical fruit production, he felt "in paradise" there: it reminded him of his father's progressive farming methods. His enthusiasm, however, sometimes got ahead of possibilities and he trespassed on ponderous administrative procedures, such as obtaining all the necessary government authorizations for new ventures.
In 1894 he was back in France and then went again to the West Indian islands of Haiti and Martinique. There he became a close witness to the disastrous eruption of Mont Pele, which totally destroyed the city of Saint Pierre, killing all but one of its 40,000 inhabitants. Among these there were 13 Spiritans. Suffering from anemia and eczema, he came, on doctor's orders, in late 1903, via Nossi-Be's Hellville station in the Little Malgache Islands, to the North Zanguebar vicariate. We find him there successively at Zanzibar, Mombasa, Pemba, Bagamoyo and Bura. This time another doctor ordered his immediate return to France in 1905. Diabetes added itself to his woes, but until a few days before his death, he continued to plan his future work in the climate of Reunion as if he were a man in his mid twenties. Gently he was told that it was time to prepare himself for his impending departure to heaven.
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