Jouin was born in 1844 in Angers in a family of Catholic artisans. His father died when he was four, and he was sent to a novitiate of the Dominican Order to be educated. From there, he moved to the seminary of Angers and was ordained as a priest in 1868.[2] From Angers, he moved to Paris in 1875, where he served as a parish priest until the end of his life.[3]
He strongly criticized the anti-clerical measures introduced by the government of Émile Combes, and was sentenced in 1907 to a fine for his writings regarded as subversive.[3] He attributed the incident to Freemasonry and joined several anti-Masonic organizations before founding his own.[2]
In 1912, Jouin founded the Ligue Franc-Catholique. The league's journal, the Revue internationale des sociétés secrètes, was one of the two main anti-Semitic tribunes of the interwar period (along with the paper of the Action Française). Revue often published right-wing antisemitic canards from Russian, such as hoaxes about blood libel, and claims that Bolshevism was a Judeo-Masonic plot.[1] Describing the Protocols, Jouin wrote: "From the triple viewpoint of race, of nationality, and of religion, the Jew has become the enemy of humanity."[4] Pope Benedict XV made Jouin an Honorary Prelate.[5] Pope Pius XI praised Jouin for "combating our mortal enemy", Freemasonry, and appointed him to high papal office as a protonotary apostolic.[1][4][6]
