Édouard-Charles Fabre

Who was Édouard-Charles Fabre?

Édouard-Charles Fabre was Archbishop of Montreal in 1886 and of Sherbrooke and Saint-Hyacinthe in 1887.

Fabre was the eldest of 11 children in an important Montreal business family. Despite his father's, Édouard-Raymond Fabre, efforts to steer him in another direction, he began his study of philosophy in 1844 at the seminary of Saint-Sulpice at Issy-les-Moulineaux after a privileged education in Lower Canada.

In 1846 Fabre finished his studies at Saint-Sulpice, visited Rome and met Pope Pius IX and returned to Montreal. He was ordained in 1850.

In 1876 Fabre became the third bishop of Montreal and, in 1886, Pope Leo XIII made him Archbishop of Montreal, and the following year the dioceses of Sherbrooke and Saint-Hyacinthe.

The parish municipality of Saint-Édouard-de-Fabre, Quebec, was named after him. The Montreal metro station, Fabre, is also named after him.