Father Léon L. Dubois was a French Catholic priest who traveled with French tank soldiers during World War I, apparently as a chaplain. He appears to have been in correspondence with then Catholic University of America museum curator Rev. Dr. Romain François Butin, but very little information could be found on Dubois himself. Still, Dubois's collection offers insight into the lives of Catholics in wartime France, particularly Catholic priests who served the French military both officially and unofficially.

Priests in World War I era France worked in a precarious situation. The French government was aggressively secular and particularly at odds with the Catholic Church. In addition, nationalistic allegiances put the French ideal at odds with the Church, which took its direction from across national borders in Rome. Because secularism and nationalism had such a strong hold, the French government regarded all faiths and their rites as second to national law, especially those that answered to a foreign authority. When it came to compulsory military service, a young man was a Frenchman first and a priest or rabbi second.

As a result, France was one of the few nations involved in the Great War that offered little to no official status or supervision for military chaplains in its armed forces. They were, however, welcomed by individual military units, but their capacity within the unit as well as within their own religious organization varied. Because France required military service of even its clergy, some were just soldiers in the ranks who also happened to be ordained as priests, ministers, or rabbis.

Among the Catholic priests involved with the French military at this time, there seem to have been multiple types: the "priest-soldier," who was a member of the unit due to his own military obligation; appointed chaplains, who were comparatively few in number; and volunteer chaplains, who simply picked up and went to war without direction or supervision from either the Church or the military.

Dubois's own status is not clear from what we know. However, in the letter accompanying a dagger that Father Dubois sent to Butin, Dubois mentions that the only action the knife ever saw was opening sardine cans. Therefore, one could assume that Dubois did not go in as a priest-soldier since it is doubtful he could have opted out of direct combat.

At the start of French involvement, there were very few French chaplains, and those were confined to central offices or medical stations. Their ability to minister to wounded and dying soldiers was very limited. This seems to have been done more by the soldiers who also happened to be priests, although they had no official sanction to do so. As time progressed, more and more volunteer chaplains joined military units, again, with no real sanction or management. The units were just happy to welcome them in.

The Catholic Church tried to better organize these efforts, and ultimately the Church in Rome named two priests as chiefs of the military chaplains. These priests had some symbolic function, but in the long run, their authority was largely ignored by the French government because, as some have speculated, of fears of the church and Italy meddling in the political and military affairs of France. The chiefs were, thus, largely ineffective, and French chaplains went on without any real regulation. Nationalism amongst European priests also continued to be an added complication given the nature of the "Great War" and its allegiances.

This collection is the result of a correspondence between Dubois and fellow Frenchman Butin. Dubois's familiarity with Butin and the Butin family in the letters accompanying items donated to Butin's collection indicate that the two knew each other fairly well. Until we learn more about Dubois's own background, however, it is impossible to know how they met or even what became of Dubois after the war. We know only that Dubois mentions living in Lyon when mailing the items in 1920.

What we do have, though, tells us slightly more about the life of the French priest during that era. A 1962 reflection on the 25th anniversary of Butin's death tells us that Butin hoped to be a missionary in Oceania and that he came to the United States circa 1889 so that Third Republic-mandated military service would not interrupt completion of his priestly studies. It seems that this was still a worry for Butin decades later. Dubois warns Butin in a January 1920 letter accompanying the museum items that Butin should attend to his military business before visiting Dubois in France lest he risk getting arrested. Thus some priests avoided the wartime conflict between the church and the state altogether by being out of the country when it occurred.