America
As was the custom among young aristocrats at the time, he then set out to complete his education by travel. As the French Revolution had made European tours unsafe, it was determined by his parents to send him to the newly founded United States. On October 28, 1792, he arrived in Baltimore, Maryland, bearing a letter of recommendation to Bishop John Carroll and several other prominent figures. To the shock and horror of his father, Prince Dimitri decided to enter the priesthood and voluntarily offered to forego his inheritance. The Ambassador subsequently got Catherine the Great to award his son a commission in one of the Palace Guards Regiments, and formally summoned him to active duty in St. Petersburg.
Father Demetrius Gallitzin was ordained in March 1795, becoming one of the first Catholic priests ordained in America. Gallitzin then was sent to work in a church mission at Port Tobacco, Maryland, whence he was soon transferred to the Conewago district where he served at Conewago Chapel until 1799. There, Gallitzin's impulsive objection to some of Bishop John Carroll's instructions was sharply rebuked, and he was recalled to Baltimore. But in 1796 he removed to Taneytown, Maryland, and in both Maryland and Pennsylvania worked with such misdirected zeal and aristocratic manners that he was again reproved by his bishop in 1798.
Read more about this topic: Demetrius Augustine Gallitzin
Famous quotes containing the word america:
“While the Republic has already acquired a history world-wide, America is still unsettled and unexplored. Like the English in New Holland, we live only on the shores of a continent even yet, and hardly know where the rivers come from which float our navy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The deliberate consciousness of America so fair and smooth-spoken, and the under-consciousness so devilish. Destroy! destroy! destroy! hums the under-consciousness. Love and produce! Love and produce! cackles the upper-consciousness.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“She will forever be your Miss America and she sort of becomes the embodiment of your dreams. But you also realize that it’s only her and not you. You feel a part of it—yet so far away at the same time.”
—Michele Passarelli (b. c. 1954)