page_title: Michel d'Herbigny
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Michel d'Herbigny / Early life
caption_attribution_description: Mgr Michel d'Herbigny, Bishop and Rector of the Pontifical Oriental Institute (Rome)
context_page_description: Michel-Joseph Bourguignon d'Herbigny was a French Jesuit scholar and Roman Catholic bishop. He was president of the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome, and of the Pontifical Commission for Russia. He was secretly consecrated a bishop and was instrumental in a failed attempt to establish a clandestine hierarchy for the Catholic Church in the Soviet Union during the religious persecutions of the 1920s.
context_section_description: D'Herbigny was born in Lille, in northern France. He entered the Jesuit order at the age of seventeen, and studied in Paris, and in Trier in Germany. He was ordained priest on 23 August 1910. In 1911 his thesis on the Russian religious philosopher Vladimir Solovyov was published as Vladimir Soloviev: A Russian Newman, and was awarded a prize by the Académie Française. Because of this, he was noticed and investigated by the Sodalitium Pianum.  Having become known as the leading Jesuit Russian scholar, d'Herbigny was assigned to a teaching post in Rome in 1921. He was appointed president of the Pontifical Oriental Institute in 1922. He was appointed president of the Pontifical Commission for Russia in 1926.
caption: Mgr. Michel-Joseph Bourguignon d'Herbigny S.J.
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