Born at Barjols (Var), November 27, 1828
Taking of the habit at Notre-Dame de l’Osier, October 12, 1847
Oblation at Notre-Dame de l’Osier, October 15, 1848. (no. 211)
Ordination to the priesthood at Marseilles, June 27, 1852
Died at Marseilles, September 2, 1857.
Joseph Andrieux was born at Barjols in the diocese of Fréjus on November 27, 1828. As a result of a parish mission preached by the Oblates, he entered the minor seminary of Notre-Dame de Lumières in 1846. When the juniorate was closed down and before his final year in classical studies, he entered the novitiate at Notre-Dame de l’Osier on October 12, 1847 and made his oblation there on October 15, 1848. In the General Council session of October 2, he was unanimously admitted to vows with this comment: “Excellent candidate from every point of view.”
After four years as a scholastic brother at the major seminary of Marseilles, he was ordained to the priesthood by Bishop de Mazenod on June 27, 1852. He remained at Aix from 1852 to 1854 and at Notre-Dame de Lumières 1855-1856 as a retreat preacher. He taught Sacred Scripture at the major seminary of Marseilles from January to June of 1855. Taken ill in 1856, he spent the last year of his life at the major seminary of Marseilles. He died at the country house of Mr. Icard where he had been for a few weeks already. His funeral rites were celebrated at Le Calvaire in Marseilles.
Father Casimir Aubert, provincial of Midi, announced his passing in a circular letter dated September 8: “It is my sorrowful task,” he wrote, “to announce to you the loss that our Congregation has just suffered in the person of Rev. Father Joseph Siffren Andrieux, who died at Marseilles on the second of this month after a rather prolonged thoracic affliction, an affliction to which he succumbed at the age of 29. He was eight years in vows with five years of ordination to the priesthood. Everything seems concerted to make us mourn even more this beloved departed one which it has pleased God to call to him via a premature death, since he united in his person the qualities most apt to make of him an accomplished candidate: cheerful disposition, outstanding talents, genuine prayer life and a consummate fidelity to his duties of state as a religious. His ardent zeal for the glory of God went to the point of making him forgetful of the care his fragile health demanded and we can say, in some manner or other, that he died a victim of the sacred ardour for souls that consumed him. The few efforts he made at apostolic ministry in the first years of his priestly life had produced abundant blessings…”
Yvon Beaudoin, o.m.i.
