Missionary
In the Allegheny Mountains, in 1799, Gallitzin founded the settlement of Loretto, Pennsylvania in what is now Cambria County, Pennsylvania. Loretto in turn was an expansion upon a small clearing, "the McGuire Settlement", established by Captain Michael McGuire in 1788. McGuire, who died in 1793, bequeathed this clearing and its accompanying 1200 acres (5 km²) in trust to Bishop Carroll for the eventual establishment of a full Catholic community with resident clergy. With Gallitzin in the lead, Loretto became the first English-speaking Catholic settlement in the United States west of the Allegheny Front. (In addition to McGuire's patrimony, Gallitzin is believed to have spent $150,000 (USD) of his own funds later, to purchase some additional 20,000 acres (81 km²), which it is said he gave or sold at low prices to newly arriving Catholic settlers.) Gallitzin dedicated Loretto's parish church to the honor of St. Michael the Archangel, both as a nod to Gallitzin's Russian roots and, indirectly, to Michael McGuire. The church today is known as the Basilica of St. Michael the Archangel.
In 1802, Gallitzin became a naturalized citizen of the United States under the name Augustine Smith. After his father's death, he was disinherited by Czar Alexander I of Russia in 1808 because of his Catholic faith and priestly vocation. Subsequently his sister, Anne zu Salm-Krautheim, repeatedly promised him his half of the valuable estate and sent him money from time to time; after her death, Gallitzin received little or nothing more.
Gallitzin felt free to discard the name Augustine Smith in 1809. He also soon found himself deeply in debt. He obtained a loan from Charles Carroll. Later, when Gallitzin was suggested for the see of Philadelphia in 1814, Bishop Carroll objected. Bishop Carroll agreed that Gallitzin's debts had been contracted for excellent and charitable purposes, but it was not clear Gallitzin had the financial acumen to run a diocese as important as Philadelphia, Carroll believed. In 1815, Gallitzin was suggested for the bishopric of Bardstown, Kentucky, and in 1827 for the proposed see of Pittsburgh. Later, Gallitzin is said to have refused the bishopric of Cincinnati.
Read more about this topic: Demetrius Augustine Gallitzin
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.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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Simple self-sacrifice may be ruled out,
And missionary endeavour, nine times out of ten.”
—Robert Graves (1895–1985)
“The missionary is no longer a man, a conscience. He is a corpse, in the hands of a confraternity, without family, without love, without any of the sentiments that are dear to us.... Emasculated, in a sense, by his vow of chastity, he offers us the distressing spectacle of a man deformed and impotent or engaged in a stupid and useless struggle with the sacred needs of the flesh, a struggle which, seven times out of ten, leads him to sodomy, the gallows, or prison.”
—Paul Gauguin (1848–1903)