Charles Paschal Telesphore Chiniquy

Born in Kamouraska, Quebec, in 1809, Charles Chiniquy was educated at the College of Nicolet and ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in 1833. He became widely known in Canada for his preaching and reform campaigns, especially his work promoting temperance.

After moving to Illinois in the 1850s, he entered into bitter disputes with Catholic church authorities and was eventually excommunicated. He later joined the Presbyterian Church and spent much of the rest of his life speaking and writing about his conversion and his criticisms of Roman Catholicism.

Chiniquy died in 1899. He remains a striking and controversial figure in North American religious history because of the intensity of his public break with the church in which he had first made his name.