Priesthood
Messmer was ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Atanasio Zuber on July 23, 1871. A week later, he offered his first Mass in his native Goldach. He accepted an invitation from Bishop James Roosevelt Bayley, who had visited Innsbruck to recruit missionaries for the United States, to join the Diocese of Newark in New Jersey. After arriving in September 1871, he was appointed professor of theology at Seton Hall College in South Orange, where he remained until 1889. In addition to his academic duties, he served as one of the secretaries of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore (1884) and as pastor of St. Peter's Church in Newark (1885–86). He received a Doctor of Canon Law degree from the Apollinare University in 1890, and was professor of canon law at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., from 1890 to 1892.
Read more about this topic: Sebastian Gebhard Messmer
Famous quotes containing the word priesthood:
“The priesthood in many ways is the ultimate closet in Western civilization, where gay people particularly have hidden for the past two thousand years.”
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“The priesthood is a marriage. People often start by falling in love, and they go on for years without realizing that that love must change into some other love which is so unlike it that it can hardly be recognised as love at all.”
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