page_title: Bérenger Saunière
section_title: Later years
hierarchical_section_title: Bérenger Saunière / Later years
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Rennes-le-Château (Aude, France) - Tombe de l'Abbé Saunière.
context_page_description: François-Bérenger Saunière was a Roman Catholic priest in the French village of Rennes-le-Château, in the Aude region, officially from 1885 until he was transferred to another village in 1909 by his bishop. He declined this nomination and subsequently resigned. From 1909 until his death in 1917 he was a non-stipendiary Free Priest, and who from 1910 celebrated Mass at an altar constructed in a special conservatory by his Villa Bethania. Saunière's refusal to leave Rennes-le-Château to continue his priesthood in another parish incurred permanent suspension. The epitaph on Saunière's original 1917 gravestone read "priest of Rennes-le-Château 1885-1917".
  He would be virtually unknown today were he not a central figure in the conspiracy theories surrounding Rennes-le-Château which form the basis of several documentaries and books such as the 1982 Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln. Elements of these theories were later used by Dan Brown in his best-selling 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code, in which the fictional character Jacques Saunière is named after the priest.
context_section_description: Following the ecclesiastical trial, Saunière lived the rest of his life in poverty, selling religious medals and rosaries to wounded soldiers who were stationed in Campagne-les-Bains.
  Whatever money Saunière was still raising from selling Masses was used on his appeal to Rome that his lawyer, Abbé Jean-Eugène Huguet (doctor of canon law), was working on. In May 1914 Saunière planned to build a summer house, but abandoned the project because he could not afford the 2,500 francs required.
  François Bérenger Saunière died on 22 January 1917, his suspension lifted at the moment of death (in articulo mortis) by Abbé Jean Rivière, who performed the last rites. His death certificate dated 23 January 1917 was signed by Victor Rivière, the mayor of Rennes-le-Château. Saunière was buried on 24 January 1917. Marie Dénarnaud paid for Saunière's coffin on 12 June 1917.
  In September 2004, the mayor of Rennes-le-Château exhumed Saunière's corpse from the cemetery and reburied it in a concrete sarcophagus to protect it from grave-robbers. Since then, the cemetery of Rennes-le-Château has been closed to the general public.
caption: Saunière's Grave in Rennes-le-Château
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