Priest and Missionary
Libermann suffered from epileptic seizures, which prevented his ordination for nearly fifteen years. It was only when these seizures ceased in 1841 that he was able to become a priest. After his ordination, Libermann created a small religious order centered around missionary activity towards newly freed slaves in Réunion, Haiti, and Mauritius.
As this group attracted more members, the Holy See merged his society with the older Congregation of the Holy Ghost, otherwise known as "Spiritans". Due to this event, Libermann is often referred to as the "Second Founder" of the Holy Ghost Fathers.
Read more about this topic: Francis Libermann
Famous quotes containing the words priest and, priest and/or missionary:
“Freudianism is much more nearly a religion than a science, inasmuch as the relation between analyst and patient has a great deal in common with that between priest and communicant at confessional, and such ideas as the Oedipus complex, the superego, the libido, and the id exert an effect upon the converted which is almost identical with what flows to the devout Christian from godhead, trinity, grace, and immortality.”
—Robert Nisbet (b. 1913)
“Embraces are cominglings from the head even to the feet,
And not a pompous high priest entering by a secret place.”
—William Blake (1757–1827)
“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)