Louis-Édouard Cestac
French Catholic priest (1801–1868)
Feast: 27 March (not on the universal Roman calendar; kept in the Roman Martyrology or local calendars)
The Vatican record
- 12 June 2014 — Miracle through their intercession approved (decree list, 2014)
Who they were
Louis-Édouard Cestac was born in Bayonne, France, on 6 January 1801, and ordained on 17 December 1825. As a young curate in the poor outskirts of Bayonne, then a garrison and port town, he took in the city's many orphan girls, and gave women escaping prostitution not only a roof but work, at the Refuge he opened at Anglet.
From these beginnings grew the Servants of Mary. He died on the night of 27 March 1868, worn out by his work; his sisters were already in 14 dioceses with 165 houses.
The miracles
An 89-year-old man — Labenne, France — November 1939
While working in a wood near Labenne in November 1939, an 89-year-old man struck his leg on a pump and opened a deep wound made worse by a varicose vein. It turned gangrenous and he fell into a coma. His son, a priest whose aunt had been one of Father Cestac's first sisters, prayed for his father's healing through Cestac's intercession. In the night of 11 to 12 November the old man came out of the coma and joined in the prayers, the infection stopped, and the tissue began to heal, to the surprise of the medical staff.
Why that counted as sanctity
The case of an 89-year-old man was examined by the Church's doctors and theologians and approved as a miracle on 12 June 2014, opening the way to beatification.
The cause
The cause continues. No postulation address is published here yet. Favours received through this person’s intercession, and offers of help, are best sent to the religious order or congregation they belonged to, or to the diocese where the cause was opened; either will pass them to the postulation.
- Dicastery for the Causes of Saints - biography of Blessed Louis-Édouard Cestac, with the miracle
- Dicastery for the Causes of Saints — promulgated decrees (causesanti.va), summarised in our own words
- Wikidata Q3260924 — dates, feast day and identifiers (CC0)
- English Wikipedia — Louis-Édouard Cestac (CC BY-SA)
Checked against the sources listed on 21 September 2026. Corrections welcome.