Désiré Félicien François Joseph Mercier (21 November 1851 – 23 January 1926) was a Belgian cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church and a noted scholar. A Thomist scholar, he had several of his works translated into other European languages. He was known for his book, Les origines de la psychologie contemporaine (1897). His scholarship gained him recognition from the Pope and he was appointed as Archbishop of Mechelen, serving from 1906 until his death, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1907. Mercier is noted for his staunch resistance to the German occupation of 1914–1918 during the Great War. After the invasion, he distributed a strong pastoral letter, Patriotism and Endurance, to be read in all his churches, urging the people to keep up their spirits. He served as a model of resistance. Biography Early life and ordination Désiré Mercier was born at the château du Castegier in Braine-l'Alleud, as the fifth of seven children of small business owners Paul-Léon Mercier and his wife Anne-Marie Barbe Croquet. Three of Mercier's sisters became religious sisters. His brother Léon became a physician. One of Mercier's maternal uncles was the Reverend Fr. Adrien Croquet. In the 1860s Fr. Croquet became a missionary to the Grand Ronde Indian Reservation in western Oregon near the Pacific coast, where his surname was anglicized to Crockett. In the 1870s, a Mercier cousin, Joseph Mercier, joined their uncle Fr. Croquet in Oregon. He married a woman of one of the Native American tribes resident there. Today, several thousand descendants of Joseph and his wife are members of the tribe. Mercier studied at the College Saint‑Rombaut of Malines (1863-1868), and entered the minor seminary at Mechelen in 1868 to prepare for the church. He attended Mechelen's grand seminary from 1870 to 1873. Mercier received the clerical tonsure in 1871, and was ordained to the priesthood by Archbishop Giacomo Cattani, the nuncio to Belgium, on 4 April 1874. Mercier continued with graduate studies, obtaining his licentiate in theology (1877) and doctorate in philosophy from the University of Louvain. Thomist scholarship He returned to Malines in 1877 and taught philosophy at the minor seminary and soon after was named spiritual director of the seminarians. His comprehensive knowledge of Saint Thomas Aquinas earned him the newly erected chair of Thomism at Louvain's Catholic university in 1882. It was in this post, which he retained until 1905, that he forged a lifelong friendship