Missionary
Father Boniface Wimmer and a band of 18 young aspirants to the Benedictine life left Rotterdam, Holland in July 1846. The passage across the Atlantic Ocean on the steamship, U.S. Iowa, was turbulent. Upon his arrival in New York City, Father Boniface was greeted with discouragement by several priests who tried to persuade him to abandon his plans.
Nevertheless, he went west to the newly organized Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, and accepted land which Father Peter Lemke, for years associated with the Rev. Prince Gallitzin, had offered. Conditions at this site in Carrolltown proved unfavorable. By late September, 1846, Father Boniface had received an invitation from Bishop Michael O'Connor, first Bishop of Pittsburgh, asking him to take the pastoral responsibility of a small parish named Saint Vincent, about 40 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. Wimmer and his companions arrived at Saint Vincent on October 19, 1846. There they found only a small school house, a barn, a log cabin, and a small brick church. It was here that on October 24, 1846, Father Boniface Wimmer, O.S.B., was installed as pastor of Saint Vincent Parish and founded the first Benedictine Monastery in the United States.
By 1851, there were 100 professed monks at Saint Vincent. On August 24, 1855, Pope Pius IX, in his Apostolic Brief, Inter Ceteras, elevated Saint Vincent to the status of Abbey. Within the nine years of his arrival in the United States, Wimmer had built up a strong monastic foundation with over 200 professed monks. Wimmer became Abbot in 1855, and in 1883, was granted the title, Archabbot, by Pope Leo XIII. Abbot Wimmer was an active monk, rather than a contemplative. In addition to building up Saint Vincent, he developed a self-sufficient community that ground its own flour, raised its own crops, mined its own coal, and brewed its own beer.
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Famous quotes containing the word missionary:
“We crossed a deep and wide bay which makes eastward north of Kineo, leaving an island on our left, and keeping to the eastern side of the lake. This way or that led to some Tomhegan or Socatarian stream, up which the Indian had hunted, and whither I longed to go. The last name, however, had a bogus sound, too much like sectarian for me, as if a missionary had tampered with it; but I knew that the Indians were very liberal. I think I should have inclined to the Tomhegan first.”
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