Part of a Series on Vincentian Heritage Places
Lyon
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Lyon was the city that Ozanam would always call home. Although he was born in Milan, Italy– French victories over Austria had brought Milan into the French fold– but after Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte’s final defeat, Milan was returned to Austria in 1815. Ozanam’s father had “no taste to live under the new regime of the Lombard-Venetian Kingdom.” The family found their way back to Lyon, France, from which both his parents originated. Frederic Ozanam was raised there from the age of 3-1/2 years until he left to study Law in Paris.
The citizens of Lyon had a particular devotion to the Blessed Mother. Many made the pilgrimage to the shrine of Notre Dame de Fourvières, located on a height above the city, where it had existed since the second century. Lyon sparked in Frédéric a fire of devotion to the Virgin Mary that would last throughout his life.
A journalist in the early twentieth century asserted that “The soul of the natives of Lyon is deeply religious and accompanied by a remarkably practical and cool spirit and a bold enterprising character.” Ozanam, proud of his origins in Lyon, exhibited much of this Lyonnais soul in his lifetime.
Source: Antoine Frédéric Ozanam by Raymond L. Sickinger, University of Notre Dame Press

Lyon view (dated “after 1858”)

Lyon Cathedral c. 1850s

Lyon, Carmelite Convent

Saone River floods in Lyon (photo taken 3 years after Ozanam;s death)
All Vincentian Places in this Series
Red = Vincent de Paul, Blue = Frederic Ozanam
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