«If you talk about me, you must say that I was poor, that I was a simple man and that I suffered. »
First bottling of the Coca-Cola beverage, invented 8 years before by John Pemberton.
Henri was the third among five brothers and sisters. His family was modest and deeply Christian. They settled in the coal-mining area of Cransac, where the father, August, was a worker.
Discovered in 1895 by the German physicist, Wilhelm Röntgen, who received the first Nobel Prize in Physics.
After a long agony, Sister Therese died in the Carmel of Lisieux surrounded by her sisters. « I shall spend my heaven doing good on earth… »
Marius, the oldest of the siblings, then Fernande, and finally Henri (the little boy at the bottom left of the photo). Not on the photo: the two younger sisters, Angèle and Berthe.
The Pope remained in office until he died on 20 August 1914.
The English physicist Joseph John Thomson announced the discovery of the electron. Experimenting with cathode rays, he concluded that the light rays in the cathode ray tube were composed of electrons, that is, very light, negatively charged particles. Until then the atom had been considered as the smallest constituent unit of matter. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1906.
Auguste Grialou died of tuberculosis, leaving his wife and 5 children. Henri was not yet 10 years old. Marius, the eldest brother, five years older than the other children, became the support of his mother, and was respected by the four younger ones.
Since early childhood, Henri had felt attracted to becoming a priest. Every morning, on his way to school, he passed by the church. Later, he would say : «I often took the path going up to the presbytery, sat on the wall and looked around. This is how I decided to become a priest.»
After a bitter debate lasting nine months, the law on the separation of Church and State was passed by the Senate with 179 votes in favour and 103 against. The President of the Republic, Emile Loubet, proclaimed the new law which was published on the following day in the Official Journal. All properties of the Church were cataloged and distributed to cultural associations. This separation of the institutions was mainly aimed at combatting the influence of the Catholic Church on the vote of the French people and on the political life of the nation. Strongly encouraged by Pope Pius X, the French Catholics vigourously condemned this law.
