Death
With his death only 23 months after arrival in Natchez, Bishop Van de Velde had little time to make any lasting impact on his new diocese. At 7AM on November 15, 1855, after weeks of fever and five final hours of paroxysms and sliding in and out of consciousness, Van de Velde expired on the feast day of St. Stanislaus, to whom he had reportedly just completed a novena. He was sixty years old.
His body was placed on view in lavish vestments with his eyes still partially open and his casket displayed on a tilt, "so as to give the impression of being partially erect," according to a letter sent back to Europe by a Jesuit priest informing fellow Jesuits and other European Catholics of Van de Veldes' death. His wake lasted long into the night and he was buried the next day, November 14, after a funeral Mass sung at the St. Mary's Cathedral by the Archbishop of New Orleans, Anthony Blanc. .
Read more about this topic: James Oliver Van De Velde
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“And yet the sun pardons our voices still,
And berries in the hedge
Through all the nights of rain have come to the full,
And death seems like long hills, a range
We ride each day towards, and never reach.”
—Philip Larkin (19221986)
“You know, if this is Venus, or some other strange planet, were liable to run into some high-domed characters with green blood in their veins wholl blast at us with their atomic death rayguns, and there well be with thesethese poor old-fashioned shootin irons.”
—Edward L. Bernds (b. 1911)
“Do but consider this small dust, here running in the glass,
By atoms moved.
Could you believe that this the body was
Of one that loved?
And in his mistress flame playing like a fly,
Turned to cinders by her eye?
Yes, and in death as life unblest,
To havet expressed,
Even ashes of lovers find no rest.”
—Ben Jonson (15721637)