Blessed Jean-Joseph Lataste, Apostle of Prisons and Founder of Bethany

Who was Blessed Jean-Joseph Lataste?

Blessed Jean-Joseph Lataste was a French Dominican priest who looked at women in prison and saw sisters. In 1864 he preached a retreat to the prisoners of Cadillac, near Bordeaux, and two years later he founded a religious community where women leaving prison could become nuns beside women who had never been in trouble with the law, with nothing to mark the difference. He died at thirty-six. The French Church calls him the apostle of prisons. He was declared Blessed at Besançon in 2012.

The life of Jean-Joseph Lataste

A young man of Cadillac

He was born Alcide Vital Lataste on September 5, 1832, at Cadillac in the Gironde, the youngest of seven children of Vital Lataste, a cloth merchant with a few acres of vines, and Jeanne Grassiet. His father wanted a secure career for him, and after school he trained as a tax inspector. He worked in the towns of Privas, Pau and Nérac.

All this time his heart was with the poor. On August 4, 1852, he joined the St. Vincent de Paul conference of Saint-André in Bordeaux. In Nérac in 1856 he founded a new conference with eight other laymen. A love story ended in grief: he hoped to marry a young woman of Privas, Cécile de Saint-Germain, but her father refused, and she died in November 1856.

A Dominican priest

On November 13, 1857, he received the white habit of the Order of Preachers at Flavigny, taking the name Brother Jean-Joseph. He made his first vows at Toulouse on May 10, 1859, and his solemn vows at Saint-Maximin on May 10, 1862. He was ordained a priest at Marseille on February 8, 1863. His health was never strong, and he spent long periods in spa towns trying to recover.

The retreat at Cadillac

In September 1864 his superiors sent him to preach a retreat to the women prisoners held in his home town of Cadillac, in the old castle of the Dukes of Épernon, which was then used as a women's prison. From the first day he addressed them as "mes chères sœurs," my dear sisters. The French Church's biography gives his fuller words: "mes chères sœurs, mes sœurs en Adam, mes sœurs en Jésus-Christ" (my dear sisters, my sisters in Adam, my sisters in Jesus Christ).

He heard their confessions and came away convinced that God was at work in their souls, and that society offered them nothing once their sentences ended. He described the problem himself: "Je sais une plaie saignante de la société et celle-là, nulle main pour la panser" (I know a bleeding wound in society, and there is no hand to dress it).

The founding of Bethany

Father Lataste dreamed of a contemplative Dominican community where former prisoners could live the full religious life. Refuges for such women existed, but they could not become nuns there. At Bethany there would be no distinction between the sisters who came from prison and those who did not. He called it Bethany, after the home of Martha, Mary and Lazarus, and he saw St. Mary Magdalene as its model. To him the work was "une œuvre tombée du cœur de Dieu," a work fallen from the heart of God.

Many people thought the idea was foolish. With the help of Sister Henri-Dominique, a Sister of the Presentation of Tours, he opened the first house of Bethany at Frasne-le-Château, in the diocese of Besançon, on August 14, 1866. On Christmas Day 1868 he gave the habit to the first woman from prison to be received, Angélique Jourdain, who became Little Sister Noël.

He did not have long to see it grow. Tuberculosis had weakened him since Lent of 1868, and he died at Bethany on March 10, 1869, with the sisters around him. He was thirty-six. Near the end he said he forgave everyone who had opposed him. In 1870 the community moved to Montferrand-le-Château, near Besançon, and his body went with it. The Dominican Sisters of Bethany still live his vision today.

Beatification and the approved miracle

The cause for his beatification opened at Besançon in 1937. Pope Benedict XVI recognized his heroic virtues on June 1, 2007. In June 2011 the Church accepted as an approved miracle a healing that took place in Belgium, in the diocese of Namur, in 1942, after prayers to Father Lataste. He was beatified at Besançon on June 3, 2012.

Symbols of Blessed Jean-Joseph Lataste in art

Because he died in 1869, we know his face from photographs. Painted images and statues show him:

• In the white Dominican habit with a black cloak, as a Friar Preacher.
• With open hands, the gesture of his welcome to the prisoners.
• With a rosary, the Dominican prayer.

Feast day and prayer

We keep the feast of Blessed Jean-Joseph Lataste on September 5. More saints of early September are on our feast days page.

One saying of his is beloved in Bethany: "Jésus ne pèse les âmes quelles qu'elles soient, qu'au poids de leur amour," Jesus weighs souls, whatever they are, only by the weight of their love. Let us ask Blessed Jean-Joseph to pray for all who are in prison and for those who are leaving it, and for everyone who carries a past they are ashamed of. "Blessed Jean-Joseph Lataste, pray for us."