Born on May 11, 1914, and baptized on the 13th in Sauveterre-la-Lémance (Lot-et-Garonne), Father Roger-Thomas Calmel, a priest of the Order of Preachers, died on May 3, 1975. He was buried on May 5, the feast of the Dominican pope Saint Pius V, in the garden of the Teaching Dominican Sisters of Saint-Pré of the Immaculate Heart, in Brignoles (Var), where one may go to venerate his tomb.
The twentieth century saw the emergence of an impressive number of priests distinguished by their silence, their prudence, and their love of God. For many, they were a light in the night, a strength amid the storm, and a consolation in trial. Father Roger-Thomas Calmel was one of them.
The life of this great Dominican leads us through the terrible tempests of his time: the aftermath of the Great War, the condemnation of Action française, the Spanish Civil War, the rise of neo-modernism, the tragedy of Algeria, the Second Vatican Council and the upheavals that followed it, the liturgical reform of 1969, and the painful yet necessary choices demanded by fidelity.
Father Calmel was a great soul, though in a frail and often ill body; a religious endowed with a genuine sacerdotal nobility, a wisdom profoundly Thomistic—that is to say, both realistic and mystical—and a prophetic clarity of vision. And he preserved until his death the joyful, mischievous spirit of a peasant from Lot-et-Garonne.
(Source: P. Calmel, O.P. — Salve Regina)