Congregation of the Holy Spirit

The Congregation of the Holy Spirit (officially the Congregation of the Holy Spirit under the protection of the Immaculate Heart of the Virgin Mary; Latin: Congregatio Sancti Spiritus sub tutela Immaculati Cordis Beatissimae Virginis Mariae) is a religious congregation for men in the Catholic Church. Members are often known as Holy Ghost Fathers or, in continental Europe and the Anglosphere, as Spiritans, and members use the postnominals CSSp.

Claude Poullart des Places was born on 26 February 1679, in Rennes, the capital city of Brittany, France. He was the eldest child and only son of Francis des Places and Jeanne le Meneust. Claude was tutored at home before being enrolled at the age of nine or ten as a day student in the nearby Jesuit College of St. Thomas, thus beginning his lifelong association with the Society of Jesus. Graduating at 16, Claude studied at the University of Caen, Normandy, before graduating at 22 with a Licentiate in Law from the Law School of Nantes.

In 1701 Claude Poullart began his studies for the priesthood, as a boarder at the Jesuit College in Paris. However, he soon left his college room to share lodgings with the poorer day students who often struggled to find food, lodgings, and facilities for their studies. With a dozen of such students, Poullart des Places opened the Seminary of the Holy Spirit. It gradually developed into a religious society.

The Spiritans were founded in Paris on Whit Sunday (Pentecost), 1703. Having opted for the priesthood, Claude Poullart des Places wanted to form a religious institute for young men who had vocations to become priests but were too poor to do so. He became especially interested in such students, and supported them with his own funds and donations from friends. In 1707 Poullart was ordained a priest. His work grew rapidly; and the foundation developed. But Poullart developed pleurisy and died on 2 October 1709, at age thirty-one.

After the founder's death, the Congregation of the Holy Spirit continued to progress. It became fully organized, and received the approbation of civil and ecclesiastical authorities. Formed in dedication to the Holy Spirit to minister to the poor and to provide chaplains in hospitals, prisons, and schools, the community soon developed a missionary role: some volunteered for service in the Far East and North America.

In 1765 the Holy See entrusted it with direct care of South American missions, in colonies such as French Guiana. Spiritans also sent missionaries to China, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand (Siam), and India under the auspices of the Paris Foreign Missions Society. In 1779 the first Spiritan missionaries arrived in Senegal, Africa.

Those in France served in various dioceses or alongside the de Montfort missionaries, due to the close friendship between Poullart and Louis de Montfort. The Congregation had trained 1,300 priests in the years leading up to 1792, when the seminary was suppressed by the French Revolution. Some Spiritans sought refuge in England, Switzerland, and Italy.

After the French Revolution, only one member, James Bertout, remained. He had survived miraculously, through a series of vicissitudes – shipwreck on the way to his destined mission in French Guiana, enslavement by the Moors, and a sojourn in Senegal, where he had been sold to the English, who then ruled there. On his return to France, after peace was restored to the Church, he re-established the congregation and continued its work. But it was found impossible to recover adequately from the disastrous effects of the dispersion caused by the Revolution, and the restored society was threatened with extinction.