Jacques Marie Antoine Célestin Dupont was born in Iglesias (Sardinia) on February 2, 1792. After his studies at the major seminary of Nice and of Saint Irenaeus in Lyon he was ordained to the priesthood at Nice on September 24, 1814. He exercised his ministry in Paris and in Sens. He was auxiliary bishop of Sens from 1824 to 1830 bishop of Saint-Dié from 1830 to 1835, archbishop of Avignon from 1835 to 1842, archbishop of Bourges from 1842 to 1859, cardinal in 1847.
Bishop de Mazenod got to know him especially at Avignon when Bishop Dupont accepted the Oblates as mission preachers in his diocese and entrusted to them the direction of the shrine of Notre-Dame de Lumières. See below the article: Notre-Dame de Lumières. The Founder wrote him a dozen letters and received as many in return. He visited Bishop Dupont in Avignon in 1837 and at Bourges in 1859. Bishop Dupont stopped in Marseilles in 1849 and in 1850. The two prelates met at the senate in Paris in 1857 and 1858. They got along well, but Bishop de Mazenod complained several times in 1837-1842 about the archbishop of Avignon’s opposition to the Oblates recruiting vocations in his diocese. The cardinal died on May 26, 1859.
Yvon Beaudoin, o.m.i.
