 In 1767 he attended the Séminaire du Saint-Esprit in Paris, under the patronage of the Abbé de L’Isle-Dieu, the bishop of Quebec's vicar general in France.In 1770, he received minor orders in the parish church of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet in Paris.The following year he was sent to Quebec, where on 19 September 1772 he was ordained priest by Bishop Jean-Olivier Briand in the chapel of the Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal.