At Angers in France, Blessed William Repin and Laurence Bâtard, priests and martyrs, who, amid the raging of the French Revolution, were beheaded for their fidelity to the Church.
Lifespan: 1709–1794
Beatified: 19 February 1984 by Pope John Paul II
Memoria liturgica: 2 January
“If we must preserve our life on the terms proposed to us, we declare that we prefer death rather than fail in the love we have sworn to our God.”
Blessed William Repin, parish priest and canon, aged 85, heads the list of the 99 martyrs — victims of the French Revolution in the diocese of Angers — who were beatified on 19 February 1984 by Pope John Paul II.
Guillaume Repin was born at Thouarcé (Maine-et-Loire) in France on 26 August 1709, the second child of René Repin and Renée Gourdon. At the age of nineteen he entered the seminary of Angers, where he was later ordained a priest. During his early years of ministry, from 1734 to 1749, he served as curate of the parish of Saint Julian in Angers, then as parish priest of Saint Simplicianus at Martigné-Briand, while also being appointed a canon. He exercised his ministry with serenity for more than forty years, loved and respected by his parishioners and by all who knew him for every manner of reason. He oversaw several embellishments of the parish church through well-considered restorations and renovations.
Meanwhile, the French Revolution had erupted, and in 1791 the new government demanded that clergy — viewed with deep suspicion — take an oath of loyalty to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. That legislation envisaged, among other provisions, the creation of a clergy subservient to state power and therefore in schism with the Church of Rome: a war against the God of Redemption waged in the name of the goddess Reason, the fruit of the revolutionary thought of that historical moment.
Some clergy complied, out of fear or expediency; but a good number of priests and religious refused the oath. These were branded “refractory priests” and subjected to persecution, which quickly turned into prosecution and execution. Parish priest William Repin likewise refused the oath demanded of him by the mayor of Martigné-Briand on 10 February 1791. He was consequently compelled to abandon his forty-year charge and took refuge in Angers, where he was arrested on 17 June 1792 and imprisoned in the local seminary together with a great number of other “refractory” priests. While in captivity — being the eldest among them — he was chosen to celebrate Mass and to give Communion to his brother priests.
On 14 August 1792, the National Convention voted to impose the oath of liberté–égalité on all public officials, and on 2 September 1792 this oath became compulsory for all French citizens.
Father Repin refused this second oath as well. On 30 November 1792 he was transferred, together with other elderly or infirm priests, to the “Rossignolerie,” as the school of the Brothers of the Christian Doctrine was commonly known. He remained there until 17 June 1793, when he and all the other prisoners were freed by the Vendean insurgents who had occupied Angers.
He moved from place to place, but unable to follow the Vendean army on account of his advanced age, he returned to hiding in the Mauges, where he was arrested again on 24 December 1793 and brought to prison in Chalonnes.
After being questioned by the local justice of the peace and deemed a suspect, he was referred to the Revolutionary Committee of Angers, which in turn — having interrogated him again and judged him “according to the law” — handed him over on 1 January 1794 to the Military Commission. That body sentenced Father William Repin to the guillotine; the sentence was carried out the following day, 2 January 1794, on the Place du Ralliement, together with Laurent Bárard, parish priest of Saint Mary in Chalonnes, and two other victims of the Revolution.
For their refusal to take the aforementioned oath, between 30 October 1793 and 14 October 1794, 177 persons were guillotined in Angers on the Place du Ralliement; between January 1794 and 16 April of the same year, approximately 2,000 more were shot for the same reason at the Champ des Martyrs d’Avrillé.
Among the thousands of victims, a special Commission established in 1905 by the Bishop of Angers identified with certainty 99 who had suffered martyrdom for religious motives: twelve priests were guillotined, and three sisters and 84 laypeople — fully 80 of them women — were shot.
The cause for their beatification concluded on 9 June 1983. The liturgical feast common to all 99 is celebrated on 1 February, while the twelve priests and the three sisters are also commemorated on the day of their death — which for Blessed William Repin falls on 2 January.