Bust of Father Lafra - Troyes

There is no Trojan who does not know by name Father Lafra, the "Monsieur Saint-Vincent" of the Quartier bas.

Jean Lafra was born in Anzin in 1871. After a solid education in Dunkirk, he enrolled at the Faculty of Medicine in Lille. Then, at the age of 18, he became a novice in the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) by vocation and then a teacher at the Saint-Joseph College in Reims.

The law separating Church and State forces him into exile . He ended up in Belgium. To escape the German invasion of 1914 , he returned to France. He was seized by the enemy and his Red Cross armband could not protect him. He was arrested, beaten and left for dead . It took him 7 months to recover.

In 1919, he moved to the Quartier Bas in Troyes, in this "poor district". For decades, he was close to those he helped, day and night, he cared for them, accompanied them and comforted them . He was always on the front line, calm, discreet and tireless.

As an amateur clarinetist, Father Lafra founded a wind orchestra in 1922, with which he won several prizes.

He founded the "Patronage de l'Alerte", with a band of 150 children. He set up a holiday camp in Piney , followed by Malo-les-Bains and Lentilles, for the suffering children he met every day.

He founded a gymnastics department whose reputation soon spread beyond our borders. Four youngsters went all the way to Rome for an international gymnastics competition, but they also won numerous competitions in Bordeaux, Rouen, Strasbourg, Paris, Louvain, Namur, etc.

Father Lafra set up a family cinema , silently as it was in those days; that's why the band plays a piece from his repertoire during the interval on Sundays. It was the "most filled" cinema in Troyes (according to the critics) and often played to full houses. He placed benches along the walls and discreetly let in a group of poor children.

He organised extraordinary fairs, with street parades, music, dancing, counters...

Theatre also played an important role.

Everyone thinks he is a doctor. He only studied medicine, but his innate gift for diagnosing evil makes him "a class therapist" . He starts by treating aches and pains, then parents come to him for advice and soon for remedies. He made his own syrups, salves and ointments, and everyone flocked to him to be cured of eczema, panariasis, cysts, impetigo, whooping cough, ulcers, lumbago, etc. There was a queue for his consultations. All classes of people came there and the doors were always open - there were no bells or locks.

In 1950, the Parisian press took an interest in him in the program "Reine d'un jour" and he received donations from all over France.

In 1953, Mayor Terré awarded him the Légion d'Honneur, before a crowd of laymen and believers, workers and industrialists, politicians of all persuasions...

He died in 1965. The city council named a street after him in the neighborhood of Saint-Nizier (the part of the rue de la Cité between the rue Simart and the rue Célestin-Philbois), with a monument in his honor.

At his death the bishop said at his funeral: "He wanted to live among the humble, as poor as they were, detached to the limit of human possibilities. Long before the Council just concluded expressed this ardent desire, he had already realized it by bringing the charity of Christ into contact with his time and bringing the evangelical ideal of the Beatitudes into the hearts of the masses. Like his master, he felt compassion for the immense need of the multitude. He sank into it and lived his ideal of faith, goodness and peace."

In 2011, the Alerte Harmonie Orchestra , with some sixty musicians, and the music school, with 80 students, still have an excellent reputation, and just like 90 years ago, many people still come to Alerte concerts.

Willem Vandenameele