by 1855

A bishop, a village, and a childless house

The money came from three places. The bishop carried it longest: for eighteen years Canoz sent at least two thousand francs a year toward the building. The village raised its share out of its own pockets, a little at a time, through seven years. And one family gave in thanksgiving. Christopher Bilderbeck was the European merchant of the village, and he and his wife had been married twenty-seven years without a child; he was past fifty by then, which is the age at which a man stops asking. They asked anyway. They prayed to Our Lady of this church, and before the year was out a son was born to them. Over all of it stood the parish priest: it is to Fr Joseph Grégoire's “persevering energy”, wrote the mission's own chronicler, that “this fine Christian community owes its great church.”