MGR. FRANÇOIS DE LAVAL DE MONTMORENCY
Fur three years he remained in Paris and associated with the congregation of pious laymen and others, mostly graduates from Jesuit colleges. In 1650 he joined a small group of five of these earnest men who lived in common in a kind of religious life under the direction of the Jesuit, Père Bagot, and a society was formed under the title of the "Society of Good Friends," with the purpose of charitable and social work. These five men were increased to twelve, of whom some were priests.
In 1652 the Jesuit, Père de Rhodes, one of the most remarkable men of the Cochin-China missions, came to Paris in search of recruits to form an ecclesiastical hierarchy, and it fell to the lot of three of the priests of the Society of Good Friends to be chosen to have their names sent to Rome as suitable bishops for the purpose, François Paillu, canon of St. Martin de Tours; Bernard Picquet (or Piques), doctor of the Sorbonne, and François de Laval, archdeacon of Evreux. The long negotiations did not end till 1658, when Paillu was named vicar apostolic of Tonkin, and two others of the above society vicars apostolic of Cochin-China and China.
In the meantime in 1657, on the nomination of Queylus for the bishopric of New France, the Jesuits made their overtures to Laval to adopt him as their candidate for the same post, and he accepted. The curia at Rome moved slowly and it was not till fifteen months later that the bull naming the Abbé François de Laval de Montigny, bishop of Petrea in Arabia and vicar apostolic of Canada was promulgated. On December 8th, the papal nuncio consecrated him in the church of the abbey of St. Germain-des-Prés.
When the archbishop of Rouen, Mgr. de Harlay, who had looked upon New France as a part of his diocese, heard of this, he resented it and obtained a decree of the parliament of Rouen ordering word to all the officers of the kingdoms and the subjects of the king, to refuse to accept the new vicar apostolic.
Louis XIV on March 27, 1659, retorted by letters patent bidding acceptance of Laval, but on the other side he wished "that these episcopal functions should be exercised without prejudice to the rights of the jurisdiction of the Ordinary, that is to say the archbishop of Rouen; and that, while awaiting the erection of a bishopric, of which the titulary occupant shall be the suffragan of the archbishop."
Rome objected to the concession granted in the clause "without prejudice to the rights of the jurisdiction of the Ordinary" because it could not admit the pretensions of the archbishop of Rouen. However, M. de Harlay, supported by Mazarin, maintained his position and Laval left La Flèche on Easter Sunday, April 13, 1659, for Canada, accompanied by the new superior of the Jesuit missions, Father Jérome Lalemant, who had formerly worked in the missions and now came, sent by the general of the Jesuits, Goswin Nickel, at the special request of Laval.
He arrived unannounced at Quebec, on June 16th, as a simple vicar apostolic, a bishop indeed, but with his see in far-off Arabia, and shorn of the dignity of canons and a chapter, and the external emblems of a bishop in his own see. The colony could not support, with its scanty revenues, such a position. Still he was the first ecclesiastical superior, and thus he brought unity to the church government, then split between the superior of the Jesuits at Quebec and the Abbé de Queylus, at Montreal.
On arriving Laval found the colony in two divisions: on the one side, the majority, composed of the missionaries, the communities of religious women, and those colonists most sincerely devoted to the church; on the other the governor, the partisans of the Abbé de Queylus and a group of traders who scented trouble on the appearance of a man whose unflinching character would not allow him to truckle his duty or his conscience.