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The Sentinellist Movement

Faith, Language and Defiance

The Croisés (Crusaders), a Franco-American secret society dedicated to the preservation of the French language, was organized in Woonsocket in 1920. In 1921, Bishop William A. Hickey was the bishop of Providence, RI. Hickey was involved in creating Providence College and decided to further his vision by creating more diocesan controlled, Catholic high schools. These new schools would conduct classes in English only. French would only be taught as a separate language course. In 1922, the bishop started a capital drive to raise $1 million from  parishes in the state to build these schools, including Mount Saint Charles Academy in Woonsocket. Every parish had a quota. If a parish did not reach a quota for fund raising, a special tax was imposed on the church.
 
The Croisés went on record as rejecting the bishop’s initiative. Local French Canadian Catholics were also unhappy about this idea. They felt it was unfair for French speaking parishes to be forced to subsidize the building of English speaking schools and believed parish funds stay within the parish. At the same time, an effort to assimilate different foreign nationalities and have English as the common language was happening in the state. The French Canadians objected to this, as they considered faith, Roman Catholic traditions and language their three cornerstones. They felt that Bishop Hickey was violating those sacred issues.

By 1924, the Croisés were publishing, La Sentinelle a French newspaper. Its founder Elphège Daignault, was dedicated to the preservation of Franco-American interests and to the survival of Franco Americans as an ethnic group. He is viewed by many as the architect of the The Sentinellist Movement. Through the use of their newspaper, the Sentinellists as they were now called, concentrated their attack on Bishop Hickey and the explosive Mount Saint Charles controversy.

Bishop William A. Hickey
Elphège Daignault
La Sentinelle Rally, September 18, 1927

The unrest during The Sentinellist Movement in Woonsocket began at St. Ann’s parish and spread throughout the state as well as New England and Canada. The Sentinellists attacked speeches from the Catholic Church and held pew strikes, refusing to pay the “pew rent” to sit in the pew at church. With more and more support, the Sentinellists sued Bishop Hickey over his right to appropriate church funds, taking the case to Rome in 1928.

This inter-ethnic battle between the Irish-American bishop of Providence, RI and Franco-American Catholics in the Woonsocket area, climaxed on Easter Sunday 1928, when the Roman Catholic Church excommunicated Elphège Daignault and 60 other Franco-American plaintiffs who took legal action against Church Officials. Bishop Hickey spoke out against the Sentinellists, and it became a sin for Catholics to read, sell, or distribute La Sentinelle. The group lost their suit under canon law and the excommunicated were given one year to recant their position or be deemed heretics. The movement officially ended on Easter Sunday in 1929, when the Sentinellists returned to their parish communities, knelt at the altar and read their signed recantation aloud in front of the entire congregation. The Sentinellist Movement was one of the most divisive periods in Woonsocket’s history and resentment on both sides carried on for decades.

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