| Type: | Cardinal |
| Honorific-Prefix: | Servant of God |
| François-Marie-Benjamin Richard | |
| Cardinal Archbishop of Paris | |
| Church: | Roman Catholic Church |
| Archdiocese: | Paris |
| Metropolis: | Paris |
| See: | Paris |
| Term Start: | 8 July 1886 |
| Term End: | 28 January 1908 |
| Predecessor: | Joseph-Hippolyte Guibert |
| Successor: | Léon-Adolphe Amette |
| Other Post: | Cardinal-Priest of Santa Maria in Via (1889–1908) |
| Ordination: | 21 December 1844 |
| Ordained By: | Denis Auguste Affre |
| Consecration: | 11 February 1872 |
| Consecrated By: | Joseph-Hippolyte Guibert |
| Cardinal: | 24 May 1889 |
| Created Cardinal By: | Pope Leo XIII |
| Rank: | Cardinal-Priest |
| Birth Name: | François-Marie-Benjamin Richard |
| Birth Date: | 1 March 1819 |
| Birth Place: | Nantes, France |
| Death Place: | Paris, France |
| Buried: | Notre Dame de Paris |
| Partner: | --> |
| Motto: | Faites sur toutes choses que Dieu soyt le mieux aymé |
| Coat Of Arms: | Blason du cardinal Francois Richard de la Vergne.svg |
François-Marie-Benjamin Richard de la Vergne (in French pronounced as /fʁɑ̃swamaʁibɛ̃ʒamɛ̃ ʁiʃaʁ dəla vɛʁɲ/; 1 March 1819 – 27 January[1] 1908) was a French cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church and served as the Archbishop of Paris.
His cause of beatification has commenced and he has the title of Servant of God.
François-Marie-Benjamin Richard was born in 1819 in Nantes and was one of eleven children.
Richard was educated at the seminary of St Sulpice where he studied theology from October 1841. He was ordained to the priesthood on 21 December 1844 by the Archbishop of Paris Denis Auguste Affre. He served as a parish priest from 1845 to 1846 before he was sent to Rome for further studies that spanned from 1846 to 1849. He was later made the Vicar-General of Nantes on 1 August 1850 and occupied that post until 1869.
Pope Pius IX appointed Richard as the Bishop of Belley on 22 December 1871. He received episcopal consecration on 11 February 1872 in Paris. Later, in 1875, he was appointed Titular Archbishop of Larissa and Coadjutor of Paris. In 1886 the death of Cardinal Guibert was followed by Richard's succession to the see of Paris.
Pope Leo XIII elevated him into the cardinalate on 24 May 1889 as the Cardinal-Priest of Santa Maria in Via.
In January 1900 the trial of the Assumptionist Fathers resulted in the dissolution of their society as an illegal association. The next day an official visit of the archbishop to the fathers was noted by the government as an act of a political character and Richard was officially censured. His attitude was in general exceedingly moderate, he had no share in the extremist policy of the Ultramontanes, and throughout the struggle over the law of Associations and the law of Separations he maintained his reasonable temper.
Richard participated in the papal conclave of 1903 that saw the election of Pope Pius X.
He presided in September 1906 over an assembly of bishops and archbishops at his palace in the rue de Grenelle, a few days after the papal encyclical forbidding French Catholics to form associations for public worship, but it was then too late for conciliation. In December he gave up the archiepiscopal palace to the government authorities. He was then an old man of nearly ninety, and his eviction evoked great sympathy.
Richard died in 1908 of congestion of the lungs and was buried in the cathedral of Notre Dame.
A cause for Richard's beatification was opened, granting him the title of Servant of God. His spiritual writings were approved by theologians on 22 May 1935.[2]