Born: Kamouraska, Lower Canada, February 2, 1819.
Took the habit: Longueuil, March 20, 1848.
Vows: Longueuil, March 26, 1849 (N. 249).
Priestly ordination: Montreal, August 8, 1852.
Died: Leeds, England, November 11, 1892.
Thomas Horace Pinet was born in Kamouraska, diocese of Quebec on February 2, 1819. His parents were Charles Pinet and Adélaïde Chassé. He was a notary and widowed when he entered the novitiate of Longueuil on March 20, 1848. He made vows there on March 26, 1849. He was then sent to the house of Saint-Alexis de Grande Baie, in the Saguenay Region (1849-1853), where Father Jean-Baptiste Honorat had incurred debts. Bishop de Mazenod wrote to Bishop Guigues on January10, 1851: “Measures are being taken to remedy [the mistakes of Father Honorat]. Father Durocher gives credit for that to Brother Pinet and asks insistently that he be left there for some time yet.”
Thomas Horace Pinet was ordained to the priesthood in Montreal by Bishop Ignace Bourget on August 8, 1852. He was sent to Quebec in 1853 and was in that community when Bishop de Mazenod appointed him treasurer for the English Province on August 17, 1856. He was concerned about the substantial debt of 200,000 Francs owed by that Province of which 100,000 was for the house and church in Leeds where building was about to begin. The Founder wrote to Father Pinet on October 29, 1856: “with some order and firmness you will succeed in what has to be done; but you will have to be equipped with those two qualities … open your treasury only when you have good reason to do so”.
Father Pinet spent all his life in England. He was living in Manchester in 1856, in Leeds in 1856-1866, in Sicklinghall in 1866-1867, and then again in Leeds as Provincial (1867-1873) and afterwards until his death. He was a friend of Cardinal Henry Manning and his necrology note mentions that Father Pinet: “was always known for the wisdom of his advice, for his prudence and for his strictly religious mentality … In Saint Mary’s, Leeds, he was constantly at the altar, or in the confessional or in the oratory, and that for forty years, morning, noon and night. Whether in the school or in the pulpit from time to time or often in his responsibility as superior he was zealous, a zeal which was sometimes harsh, but always straight, honest and disinterested.” He died in Leeds on November 11, 1892 and is buried in the cemetery of that city.
Yvon Beaudoin
and Gaston Carrière, o.m.i.
