As the Abbé refused to do this Cardinal Caverot, Archbishop of Lyons, approached him in person. Again there was a refusal. The Cardinal spoke of interdict and censures. The Abbé had to give in.
Towards 1880 the manuscript sermons were sent to Rome. As far back as the month of March, 1866, when appointing Cardinal Patrizzi as the Promoter of the Faith for the Cause of the Curé of Ars, Pius IX had authorized him to “designate the censors with a view to examining the writings of the pious Curé.” But in Rome the copyists of the Congregation of Rites were afraid of committing errors in deciphering wrongly certain words which were written too rapidly and too nervously. The unfortunate manuscripts were sent back again to the Bishop of Belley for transcription.
Msgr. Soubiranne entrusted them to the clergy in Lyons, notably to Canon Etienne Delaroche, friend, like his brother Augustin, of the Abbé Colomb. Canon Etienne Delaroche, a doctor of theology, was archpriest of the very old church at Ainay in Lyons, while his brother Augustin had become a disciple of Dom Gréa who, in 1866, had founded at Saint Claude (Jura) the Institute of the Canons Regular of the Immaculate Conception. The French copyists did not delay; thanks to them Rome soon had the authentic and complete text of the sermons of the Curé of Ars.
In France there was also no delay in their becoming widely known. As far back as November, 1882, Etienne and Augustin Delaroche had published at the house of Vitte and Perrussel in Lyons, four volumes entitled the Sermons of the Venerable Servant of God, Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney, Curé of Ars, republished by Librairie Beauchesne, and for a long time out of print.
With regard to the original manuscripts of St. Jean-Marie-Baptiste Vianney, they are kept in Rome in the Mother House of the Canons of the Immaculate Conception (via Federico Torre, 21, Monteverde). All that escaped destruction are there
