Starting out as a team of

Diocesan missionaries . . .

As he pursued his painstaking investigation on the truth of La Salette, Bishop de Bruillard was nurturing a project dear to him:  the founding of a corps of diocesan missionaries. 

Before publicly recognizing the truth of La Salette, the Bishop had to provide pastoral services for the crowd of pilgrims who would come to the mountain.  As soon as the truth of the Apparition was well established, the decision was taken to build a new shrine to Mary.  The coincidence of pastoral needs with the La Salette Event was a happy one.  The priests would spend the pleasant months ministering to the pilgrims on the mountain, and the winter season preaching missions and retreats:  an ideal work schedule for the diocesan missionaries.  Their ministry would be oriented toward a specific goal:  continue the work initiated by Mary on September 19, 1846, becoming, in fact, missionaries of Our Lady of La Salette.  In the mind of the Bishop, the message of Mary and the needs of the Church were joined together and served.  True, the Virgin spoke to the 'whole world' but for the present time, the first missionaries would remain diocesan priests.