Lord, I loved walking, and you have taken my limbs. Lord, I loved speaking, and you have taken my tongue. Lord, you can take all of me, for I have given you all.

Cardinal Saliège (1870-1956)
Archbishop of Toulouse

“Cardinal Saliège’s life was marked by paradox. No sooner had he been instated in Toulouse, his energy and talent a presage of great success, than he was struck by an incurable illness. His pain stretched from his heel even to what Homer called the fence of his teeth. The cardinal was reduced to nothing more than a very lucid mind and an embarrassed speaker… Such was the first twist of fate that would play a deciding role in his life. There is a second, which would be the reward for his patience. During the Occupation… he emerged as the leader of spiritual resistance. His frail body, which he nevertheless dominated by his energy, was the symbol of the state of his homeland. This illness which could have wiped him from the face of the earth, instead turned him into the epitome of life, that is, into a man who remained master of himself whatever the difficulties: he was the bishop of freedom. What he was inside, secretly, the man of doctrine, the man of courage inside of him, was thus revealed to the nations. And it did happen… Rome came to consecrate him in red. There sprung up an unlikely concurrence: the voice of the people, of the government, and of the pope all agreed. And he remains forever known as “Cardinal Saliège”… The extraordinary thing about his life was that two improbabilities, so contrary to one another, formed an arch by pushing all their weight against the keystone of his destiny.”

Jean Guitton (1901-1999)
Writer