Mercier, Désiré Joseph

(November 21, 1851, Eigenbrakel [Braine-l’Alleud near Brussels] – January 23, 1926, Brussels), Belgian cardinal. Ordained as a priest in 1874, Mercier was a highly successful teacher of philosophy and theology at the Catholic University of Louvain from 1882. In 1906 he became archbishop of the largest Belgian diocese of Mechelen, and was made a cardinal in 1907. With the outbreak of war in 1914, after the occupation of the country and the flight of King Albert I and the Belgi…