A FAVORED PORTION OF THE VINEYARD

Transcription

1 KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT LEUVEN FACULTY OF THEOLOGY A FAVORED PORTION OF THE VINEYARD A Study of the American College Missionaries on the North Pacific Coast A Dissertation presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor s Degree in Theology Promoter Prof. Dr. Leo KENIS by Kevin A. CODD 2007

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3 CONTENTS Acknowledgements vii Select Bibliography. ix Chapter Introduction A Favorite Portion of the Vineyard?... The Louvain Mission to the North Pacific Coast.. Previous Historical Studies... The Present Study. Recovering Lives Part One: The North Pacific Coast and Louvain I. A Resume of the History of Catholicism in the North Pacific Coast Region to 1857 Prehistory and First Contact.. The Early Mission of F. N. Blanchet and Modeste Demers. The Rocky Mountain Mission of Peter John De Smet, S.J. Ecclesiastical Beginnings.. The Whitman Tragedy and its Aftermath. Clerical Poverty in the New Dioceses II. Missionary Belgium The Catholic Revival in Europe Missionary Europe iii

4 III. An American Missionary College in Belgium The Rapid Growth of Catholicism in America. First Steps towards Foundation of the American College. The Foundation of the American College in Louvain.. The New College Takes Shape. Life in the American College A New Rector: John De Neve... De Neve s American College The Sum of a New Seminary Part Two: From First Arrival to First Bishop IV. First Arrivals in a New World: Encountering a New World.. Adrien Croquet: The First Louvain Missionary on the North Pacific Coast.. John Fierens Follows Croquet to Oregon. Dieleman, Vermeersch, Junger and Mans Come West A Much Needed Shot in the Arm V. The Influx from Louvain Continues: Goens s and Seghers s Arrival and First Years De Ryckere and Brondel Add to the Louvain Presence Leonard Haupts: Louvain s First Missionary Failure... Thibau and Glorieux s Arrival and First Years in Oregon City Jonckau and Brabant Begin Long Lives on Vancouver Island De Craene and Gibney : An Historical Snapshot iv

5 Part Three: The Louvain Bishops VI. The Coast s First Louvain Bishop: Founding and Building. Hylebos and Heinrich Take Up Their Posts. Crisis in The American College Schram, Orth and Verhaag Take Up the Missionary Mantle.. Seghers Becomes Bishop of Vancouver Island John Leroy Comes to Vancouver Island.. Brabant Goes to the West Coast of Vancouver Island.. Missionary Hero or Destroyer of Native Civilization? Conrardy and Van Lin Join the Mission... Dols and Kauten Arrive Lemmens Begins His Mission on Vancouver Island Bronsgeest: Oregon s Fifteenth Louvanist Donkele, Althoff, Eussen and Cappelle Arrive. A Summary of the Decade VII. The Louvain Bishops: Seghers s Transfer to Oregon City Junger and Brondel Are Consecrated Bishops.. Seghers s First Oregon Pastoral Tour... Seghers Finally Takes the Reins from F. N. Blanchet.. De Neve s Return to The American College Seghers Looks to Montana Aegidius Junger Takes Control of Nesqually... John Baptiste Brondel Named Bishop of Vancouver Island John Jonckau Refuses the Episcopacy.. Abiit in Montana cum festinatione: Brondel Moves to Montana... Alphonse Glorieux Goes to Idaho. Five Years of Change and Development v

6 VIII. The Louvain Bishops: Seghers s Final Mission John Lemmens Succeeds Seghers. Bertrand Orth: The Last Louvain Bishop.. Back in the U.S.A.. The End of an Era Conclusion Your Favorite Portion of the Vineyard. Three Decisive Moments.. First: Adrien Croquet s Arrival in Second: The Second Provincial Council of Oregon Third: The Resignation of Bertrand Orth Taking the Measure of the Men Faithfulness.. Pastoral Dexterity Fraternity. Da Mihi Belgas! Appendices Epilogue. 425 I. American College Alumni by Diocese II. American College Alumni by Year of Departure III. Clergy Distribution among Dioceses of the North Pacific Coast Maps. 456 vi

7 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The completion of this dissertation would not have been possible without the generous assistance of many people. I express my thanks first of all, to my patient, encouraging and ever helpful promoter, Professor Dr. Leo Kenis. The Dean of the Faculty of Theology, Professor Dr. Mathijs Lamberigts, has been especially supportive of this work and, in fact, was the first to suggest I pursue this effort though it came rather late in my life. To the other members of the Faculty of Theology who have treated me with such great kindness and esteem over the past six years, I am very grateful. To the staff and students of The American College of the Immaculate Conception in Louvain, I owe a great debt of gratitude for their support as I have researched and written the text; more importantly, they have been gracious listeners to the stories I have told of alumni from another century. I can only hope some of these lives have inspired them to be better priests as they have inspired me to be a better rector. I am grateful as well to Most Reverend William S. Skylstad, Bishop of Spokane, for allowing me these years in Louvain, and to my brother priests and the faithful of the Diocese of Spokane for their fraternity and support. I am very appreciative of those who have helped me transcribe and translate the French, Dutch and Latin texts that form so much of the present work: Rev. P. Wallace Platt, CSB, John and Joske Dick, Rev. Aurelius Boberek, OSB, and Rev. Msgr. Denis Carlin: friends and family all of them. I express my gratitude as well to those who have welcomed me to their archives and assisted me so generously in accessing the treasures held within: Ms. Christine Taylor and Ms. Sara Nau, Archivists of the Archdiocese of Seattle Ms. Mary Doty Grant, former archivist of the Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon Mrs. Vera McIver, archivist of the Diocese of Victoria Sister Margaret Cantwell, SSA, Archivist of the Sisters of Saint Anne, Victoria, B.C. Sister Dorothy Brinkel, SCL, Archivist of the Diocese of Helena vii

8 Ms. Sharon Sumpter and the staff of the Archives of the University of Notre Dame, IN Mr. David Kingma, Archivist of the Jesuit Oregon Province Archives, Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA Mr. Jean Bosse, Association de Musée de Braine-l Alleud The staff of the Chancery of the Diocese of Boise The staff of the Chancery of the Archdiocese of Louisville Finally, I am grateful to those who welcomed me to their homes or offices and visited with me at length offering me helpful insight into various aspects of the history of the Catholic Church on the North Pacific Coast: Rev. Gerard G. Steckler, S.J., Waldport, OR Mrs. Patricia Brandt, Portland, OR Rev. Martinus Cawley, ocso, Guadalupe Abbey, Lafayette, OR Rev. Lawrence Nemer, SVD, The Missionary Institute of London viii

9 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources Unpublished American College, Louvain, Correspondence, Archives of the Archdiocese of Seattle, Seattle. Album Alumnorum Collegii Americani Immaculatae Conceptionis Lovanii, No 2. Vol. II, Archives of The American College. Louvain, "Catholic Sentinel, Microfilm", Jesuit Oregon Province Archive, Gonzaga University, Spokane. Album Alumnorum Collegii Americani Immaculatae Conceptionis B.M.V. Lovanii, Pars Tertia, quae incepta est A.D. 1877, Archives of The American College. Louvain, Album Alumnorum Collegii Americani Immaculatae Conceptionis B.M.V., Pars 4. Vol. IV, Archives of The American College. Louvain, Album Alumnorum, V, Archives of The American College. Louvain, Liber primitivus de initio Collegii Americani Immac. Concept. B. M. Virgini. Archives of The American College. Louvain, Liber Alumnorum Collegii Americani Immaculatae Conceptionis B.V.M. Vol. VI. Archives of The American College, Louvain The Missionary. Archives of The American College, Louvain, Brondel, J., Brownbook, Archives of the Diocese of Helena, Helena, MT. Brondel J., Correspondence, Archives of the Diocese of Helena, Helena, MT, Brondel, J., Notebook of Events in the Diocese of Helena, Archives of the Diocese of Helena, Helena, MT, Croquet, A., Personal Correspondence, Association du Musée de Braine-l Alleud, Braine-l Alleud, ix

10 De Becker, Jules, Collection of Correspondence and Related Materials, Archives of The American College, Louvain, Junger, A., Collection of Correspondence, Record Group 610, Archives of the Archdiocese of Seattle, Seattle, WA, Lefevre, Kindekens, De Neve, Collection of Correspondence, Detroit Boxes I IV, McMaster Collection Box I, CCAP Box I, CDBL. Archives of the University of Notre Dame, South Bend, IN, Lemmens, J., Collection of Personal Correspondence, Archives of the Diocese of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Mercier, Francis. Reminiscences of the Life of Father Croquet in Oregon, Archives of the Trappist Abbey of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Lafayette, OR. Rectors Correspondence and Student Files, Kindekens, De Neve, Dumont, Pulsers, De Neve II. Archives of The American College, Louvain, Russell, David. "Notes on the First Years of The American College", , Handwritten notes, authorship presumed. Archives of The American College, Louvain. Seghers, Charles J. Correspondence of Abp. Seghers, (Steckler Collection, Microfilm), Jesuit Oregon Province Archives, Gonzaga University, Spokane, Seghers, Charles J., Collection of Personal Correspondence and Related Materials, Archives of The American College, Louvain, Seghers, Charles J., Aegidius Junger, and John B. Brondel. "Litterae Pastorales: Archiepiscopi et Episcoporum, Provinciae Oregonensis ad Clerum Saecularum et Regularum, Ipsorum Curae Commissum", 1881, Pastoral Letter of the Second Provincial Council of Oregon. Archives of the Archdiocese of Portland, Portland. Van der Heyden, Joseph, Correspondence and Related Materials, Archives of The American College, Louvain, Published Baroux, Louis. An Early Indian Mission: Correspondence of Rev. Louis Baroux to Rev. M. J. DeNeve. Translated by Edward Kelley, D.D., Ph.D. Berrien Springs, MI: Hardscrabble Books, Blanchet, Francis Norbert. Historical Sketches of the Catholic Church in Oregon. Translated by Edward J. Kowrach. Fairfield, WA: Ye Galleon Press, x

11 Blanchet, Francis Xavier. Ten Years on the Pacific Coast, ed. Edward J. Kowrach. Fairfield, WA: Ye Galleon Press, Bolduc, Jean Baptiste Zacharie. Mission of the Columbia. Translated by Edward J. Kowrach. Fairfield, WA: Ye Galleon Press, Coppens, Joseph. "Les Résolutions spirituelles de Mgr Spalding, Evêque de Peoria." Annua Nuntia Lovaniensia 16 (1963): Demers, Modeste. "Notice sur l'établissement de la province ecclésiastique de l'oregon, précédée de quelques renseignements sur le Canada", 1867, Pamphlet. Archive of The American College, Louvain. De Smet, Pierre. Voyages aux Montagnes Rocheuses: Une année de séjour chez les tribus indiennes du vaste territoire de l'orégon, dépendant des Etats-Unis d'amérique. Malines: P. J. Hanique, De Smet, Pierre-Jean, S.J. New Indian Sketches. Translated by Edward J. Kowrach. Fairfield, WA: Ye Galleon Press, Desmarais, L.P. "Memoranda of the Jacksonville Mission." Reminscences and Current Topics of the Ecclesiastical Province of Oregon I, no. 3 (1897): Diomedi, Alexander, S.J. Sketches of Indian Life in the Pacific Northwest. Translated by Edward J. Kowrach. Fairfield, WA: Ye Galleon Press, Ellis, John Tracy, ed. Documents of American Catholic History. Vol. I. Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, Fierens, John F. "1e Brief van den Eerw. Heer J. F. Fierens, Belgische Missionaris in Amerika." De Katholyke Zondag: Godsdienst en Zedeleer, July , "2e Brief van den Eerw. Heer J. F. Fierens, Belgischen Missionaris in Amerika." De Katholyke Zondag: Godsdienst en Zedeleer, August , Leighton, Caroline C. Life at Puget Sound with Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon, and California: Boston: Lee and Shepard, Lempfrit, Honoré-Timothée, O.M.I. Honoré-Timothée Lempfrit, O.M.I.: His Oregon Trail Journal and Letters from the Pacific Northwest, Translated by Patricia Meyer and Catou Levesque. Fairfield, WA: Ye Galeon Press, Lillard, Charles. Mission to Nootka: ; Reminiscences of the West Coast of Vancouver Island. Sidney, BC: Gray's Publishing, xi

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27 Smith, Dorothy Blakey. James Douglas: Father of British Columbia. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Spalding, John Lancaster. The Life of the Most Rev. M. J. Spalding, D.D., Archbishop of Baltimore. New York and San Francisco: Christian Press Association Publishing Co., Spalding, Thomas W. Martin John Spalding: American Churchman. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, Stang, William. "The Unpublished Letters of Archbishop Seghers." American Ecclesiastical Review XV (1896): 21-31, , , , "The American College of the Immaculate Conception at Louvain, Belgium." American Ecclesiastical Review New Series VI (XVI), no. 3 (1897): Steckler, Gerard George, S.J. "Charles John Seghers, Missionary Bishop in the American Northwest: " Doctoral Dissertation, University of Washington, Charles John Seghers, Priest and Bishop in the Pacific Northwest, : A Biography. Fairfield, WA: Ye Galleon Press, Stone, William S. The Cross in the Middle of Nowhere: The History of the Catholic Church in Eastern Oregon. Bend, OR: Maverick Publications, Sweeney, David Francis, O.F.M. The Life of John Lancaster Spalding: First Bishop of Peoria, Vol. 1 Makers of American Catholicism, ed. John Tracy Ellis. New York: Herder and Herder, Taylor, Christine M. "Brouillet, Jean Baptiste ( )." In The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, ed. Michael Glazier and Thomas J. Shelley. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, Catholic Church in Washington." in The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, ed. Michael Glazier and Thomas J. Shelley (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1997).. "Pariseau, Esther ( )." In The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, ed. Michael Glazier and Thomas J. Shelley, Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, Thomas, Edward H. Chinook: A History and Dictionary. Hillsboro, OR: Binford & Mort Publishing, Thomas, George L. "Catholics and the Missions of the Pacific Northwest: " Doctoral Dissertation., University of Washington, xxvii

28 Towey, Martin G. "Kenrick, Peter Richard ( )." In The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, ed. Michael Glazier and Thomas J. Shelley, Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, Trafzer, Clifford E. Renegade Tribe: The Palouse Indians and the Invasion of the Inland Pacific Northwest, ed. Richard D. Scheuerman. Pullman, WA: Washington State University Press, Van der Heyden, Joseph. "The Rt. Rev. John Bapt. Brondel: First Bishop of Helena, Montana." The American College Bulletin II, no. 2 (1904): "Monsignor Adrian J. Croquet, Indian Missionary." The American College Bulletin III, no. 4 (1905): "Monsignor Adrian J. Croquet, Indian Missionary " Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia XVI XVI ( ).. "Monsignor Adrian J. Croquet, Indian Missionary." The American College Bulletin IV, no. 2 (1906): "Monsignor Adrian J. Croquet, Indian Missionary." The American College Bulletin IV, no. 3 (1906): "Monsignor Adrien J. Croquet, Indian Missionary." The American College Bulletin IV, no. 4 (1906).. "Monsignor Adrien J. Croquet, Indian Missionary." The American College Bulletin V, no. 3 (1907): "The Rt. Rev. Aegidius Junger, Second Bishop of Nesqually, Washington." The American College Bulletin VI, no. 1 (1908): "The American College: " The American College Bulletin IV, no. 2 (1909): The Louvain American College: Louvain: Fr. & R. Ceuterick, Life and Letters of Father Brabant: A Flemish Missionary Hero. Louvain: J. Wouters-Ickx, "The Louvain American College." Catholic Historical Review II (New Series), no. 2 (1922). Vanysacker, D. La missione belghe et olandesi nel XIXe nel XXe sec. In Storia religiosa di Belgio, Olanda e Lussemburgo. Milano: Centro Ambrosiano, xxviii

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30 INTRODUCTION A Favorite Portion of the Vineyard? On the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Louvain s 1 American College of the Immaculate Conception in 1882, one of its early missionary priests in North America, John Jonckau, Vicar General of the Diocese of Vancouver Island, wrote to the college s rector, John De Neve: The North-Pacific Coast is particularly indebted to you, dear Rector; it is your creation and your favorite portion of the Vineyard, for, with very few exceptions, the priests of these three dioceses were educated and ordained in the College, and you may rest assured that it is here that gratitude, respect and due appreciation of the rich apostolic qualities with which God has deigned to favor you, are greatest. 2 The encomium contained in Jonckau s anniversary message expressed the missionary priest s profound gratitude for his alma mater and its rector in words that stimulate the curiosity of today s historian in three significant ways. The first is Jonckau s use of the expression your favorite portion of the vineyard to characterize the attitude of the American College s second rector, John De Neve, towards the dioceses located along the North Pacific Coast of North America. 3 Jonckau took for 1 Concerning Belgian place names I will use the following conventions: (1) I will give priority to English names of places where those places have commonly used names in English, such as Brussels, Antwerp or, in this case, Louvain. (2) In other cases, I will use as much as possible the place name in the language of the region such as Liège instead of Luik or Kortrijk instead of Courtrai. (3) Non-standard spellings of place names in quoted material will be maintained as originally written. 2 Joseph Van der Heyden, The Louvain American College: (Louvain: Fr. & R. Ceuterick, 1909), The North Pacific Coast refers to the territory now comprised by the States of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, the western part of Montana, Alaska (USA), and the Provinces of Vancouver Island and the western part of British Columbia (Canada). I choose to use the

31 2 granted that these dioceses had received the particular and special pastoral attention of De Neve in his role as rector of the Louvain seminary for almost twenty-five years. That De Neve should be so particularly thanked for holding this region so solicitously in his heart manifests a relationship between the American College and the region that cannot help but catch one s attention. How is it that such a relationship was born and developed? How was it manifested in North America? Did the favored relationship endure beyond the first twenty-five years of the American College s existence? What effects, short or long term, did it have on the nascent church in the region? Such are the first questions that come to mind in reading Jonckau s phrase, your favorite portion of the vineyard. There are two further aspects of Jonckau s message that raise what could be interesting historical questions. Could it really be that the church in those dioceses was the creation of the Louvain College and its rector as Jonckau attests? If it is true that with very few exceptions the priests of these dioceses were formed in Louvain s American College, how many would that be and what percentage of the total did the Louvain priests represent while the church was in its first great phase of growth in the area? What was the character and quality of the formation provided by the American College that might make these missionaries service to the church something special? Was there a particular character to their ministry that sprung from their common formation in Louvain? Is it possible to speak of a Louvain mission in the region as distinct from that of religious congregations or other groups of ministers serving in these dioceses? The Louvain Mission to the North Pacific Coast The history of the American College of Louvain and that of the Catholic Church on the North Pacific Coast of North America are inextricably intertwined. As the present work will demonstrate, John Jonckau was not exaggerating the importance of the men from Louvain in the development of the Catholic Church in the region. It is not too much to claim that without the influx of clergy from Louvain in the latter half of the nomenclature for the area that was common from the mid-point to the end of the nineteenth century, prior to its formal division between Canada and the United States, because of its prenational inclusiveness. Today, the area is commonly referred to as The Pacific Northwest by Americans but this does not necessarily include the areas now located in Canada, eastern Montana or Alaska.

32 3 nineteenth century and the first years of the twentieth, 4 the Catholic Church could not have grown or thrived there as it did. Without the presence of the substantial number of priests sent into this mission field from Louvain s American College, the possibility of bringing the Catholic tradition of Christianity to the indigenous peoples of the area would have been severely hampered. Without the men from Louvain, the early trappers and settlers, not to mention the later waves of European and American immigrants into the area, would have had substantially less support for maintaining their faith and religious identity in largely Protestant or secular milieus. Without the men from Louvain, parishes could not have been erected, schools established and a host of new evangelical outreaches begun. It would have been far less likely that the Catholic Church would have successfully moved from its status as a pioneer church in 1860 when there were only twenty-eight priests serving the entire region 5 and almost no Catholic schools, parishes, hospitals or religious convents yet founded to the full and well-structured institution that it had become fifty years later with well over one hundred priest serving in the American segment of the region alone. 6 The statistics of American College clergy on the North Pacific Coast in themselves make a prima facie case for the above claim. According to the alumni list recorded in the Diamond Jubilee Number of The American College Bulletin 7 in 1932 and the more extensive list prepared by John D. Sauter, 8 between 1857 and 1907, 103 priests from the American College were sent into the area 9. These priests constituted the majority of clergy available to the nascent church during this fifty-year period; as Appendix III: Clergy Distribution among Dioceses of the North Pacific Coast: indicates, a sampling of the diocesan statistics throughout the period of this study 4 This study uses as its temporal starting point the foundation of The American College in Louvain in 1857 and continues across the ensuing fifty-one years to its termination with the resignation of the last Louvain priest to be appointed bishop, Archbishop Bertrand Orth of Vancouver Island in With that resignation, the "era" of the Louvain men's leadership of the church in the region diminished, though clearly the influence of many others as pastors continues even to the present. 5 "The Metropolitan Catholic Almanac and Laity's Directory for the United States, Canada and the British Provinces," (Baltimore: John Murphy & Co., 1857). 6 "Sadlier's Catholic Directory, Almanac and Ordo: 1890," (New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co., 1890). See Appendix III, Clergy Distribution among Dioceses of the North Pacific Coast: for a more detailed view of these figures. 7 Arthur M. Leary and Bernard L. Doheny, "Alumni of the College," The American College Bulletin XXV (1932): John D. Sauter, The American College of Louvain ( ), Recueil de Travaux d'histoire et de Philologie (Louvain: Publications Universitaires de Louvain, 1959),

33 4 clearly shows that at any one time at least one third of all the clergy in the North Pacific Coast hailed from Louvain s American College. 10 As the nineteenth century ended, six of the Louvain men had been raised to the episcopacy 11 and together with their Louvain confreres who served as vicar generals, pastors, missionaries, school principals and hospital chaplains, they were substantially responsible for building the Catholic Church into a significant social force for ministry to its faithful and service to society in general. Previous Historical Studies In light of the statistics mentioned above it comes as a surprise to discover in reviewing the various historical studies of Catholic Church history on the North Pacific Coast written over the past one hundred years that there are for the most part only brief mentions of the fact that so many of the region s clergy hailed from the same seminary or that this commonality might have had some bearing on the impact they had on the growth of the Church. The earliest published history of the Catholic presence in the region, Lawrence B. Palladino, S.J. s Indian and White in the Northwest, (1894), marks the arrival in the Montana Territory of the first Louvanist, Remigius De Ryckere, by noting, He made his theological studies at the American College in Louvain, that famed nursery of Levites that has given so many zealous and efficient missionary priests and such a galaxy of eminent Prelates to the church in the United States. 12 Similar but even less 9 See Appendix I: American College Alumni on the North Pacific Coast by Diocese and Appendix II: American College Alumni on the North Pacific Coast by Departure Date. 10 It should be noted that the statistics provided by the Catholic Directories of this era were selfreported and not always consistent even within the same report. They should therefore be seen as indicative of the historical reality rather than as completely accurate statements of the facts of the times. 11 Charles John Seghers: bishop of Vancouver Island, , archbishop of Oregon City, , reappointed to Vancouver Island, ; Aegidius Junger: bishop of Nesqually, ; John Baptist Brondel: bishop of Vancouver Island, , apostolic vicar of Montana, , bishop of Helena, ; John J. Lemmens: bishop of Vancouver, ; Alphonse J. Glorieux: apostolic vicar of Idaho, , bishop of Boise, ; Bertrand Orth: bishop, then Archbishop of Victoria, L. B. Palladino, S.J., Indian and White in the Northwest: A History of Catholicity in Montana (Baltimore: John Murphy & Co., 1894), 298. It is worth noting that a second, updated and expanded, edition of Palladino s book was published in 1922; I will use the earlier edition for most of this dissertation except where the later one has more complete information, usually in its brief biographies of the men from Louvain at work in Montana.

34 5 substantial notations are made by Palladino at the mention of others from Louvain as they are occur in his text. One of the earliest histories of the development of the church in Oregon, Edwin V. O Hara s 1911 Pioneer Catholic History of Oregon notes the arrival to Oregon City of Adrian Croquet, the contributions of John Fierens and Alphonse J. Glorieux, as well as that of the Archdiocese s second archbishop, Charles John Seghers, but outside of the briefest reference to their Belgian provenance, nothing is said of their common seminary in Louvain. 13 A reference to the substantial presence of American College clergy in the area is found in the 1936 unpublished text by W. J. Metz, History of the Catholic Church and Schools in Washington. There was everywhere a constant lack of self-sacrificing secular priests, and despite the assistance he [Junger] continued to receive from the Society of the Propagation of the Faith and other kindred associations, his means were absolutely inadequate to meet the most pressing needs. Progress was therefore made but slowly. Little by little, the large pastoral districts could be divided by the arrival of priests, mainly through the instrumentality of that great benefactor of the undeveloped Northwest, the American college at Louvain, Belgium, the bishop s own alma mater. 14 The 1939 work of Sister Mary Theodora, S.S.A. on the history of the church on Vancouver Island, Heralds of Christ the King, attributes the arrival of the missionaries trained in the American College of Louvain as the beginning of a new era which was to give the diocese such solidarity 15 Her introduction to the Louvain missionaries is elegiac: Naturally, Bishop Demers had been one of the first to endorse a foundation so favorable to the cause of the church in America. His cooperation was rewarded a hundredfold for the Louvain College gave the Victoria diocese the Most Reverend Charles John Seghers and the Most Reverend B. Orth, two archbishops; Most Reverend J. B. Brondel and Most Reverend J. N. Lemmons [sic], two bishops; besides sixteen priests. After their years of training in this school of strict Christian discipline, they came across sea and continent, with the 13 Edwin V. O'Hara, Pioneer Catholic History of Oregon (Portland: Glass & Prudhomme Company, 1911), W. J. Metz, "History of the Catholic Church and Schools in Washington," 1936, Unpublished Manuscript, Archives of the Diocese of Spokane, Spokane, WA. 15 Sister Mary Theodore, S.S.A., Heralds of Christ the King (New York: P.J. Kenedy & Sons, 1939), 233.

35 6 Spartan spirit, to give and not to take; to spend and to be spent in the cause of Christ. 16 Dominic O Connor and Patrick J. Gaire s 1930 history of the Diocese of Baker makes only the most fleeting of references to Louvain and the American College in its brief biographies of its priests. 17 Their commentary on the significant ministry of Louis-Lambert Conrardy makes no mention at all of his having come to the region through the agency of the American College. 18 The 1953 history of the Diocese of Boise by Cyprian Bradley, O.S.B. and Edward Kelly, offers sketches of the Louvain priests who served early on in the diocese and makes a point of identifying their Louvain connection upon commencing the telling of their stories but nothing more is said of this aspect of their lives nor is any connection made to other priests who came to serve there from the American College. In more recent works the record is equally mixed. Articles in The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History relating to the Church in both Oregon and Washington make no mention of the Louvain presence in these regions. 19 William S. Stone s history of the Diocese of Baker offers only the slightest of allusions to the inaccurately named American College and Louvain in a reference to the ministry of Bertram Orth, another alumnus of the American University in Louvain. 20 The detailed chronicle of Catholic Church history in the area by Wilfred P. Schoenberg, S.J. makes no mention of Louvain or the American College. 21 Schoenberg s later work, A History of the Catholic Church in the Pacific Northwest: , 22 recounts some of the activities of the men from Louvain makes only fleeting references to their common seminary in Belgium. Significantly, the 16 Ibid. 17 Cyprian Bradley, O.S.B. and Edward Kelley, D.D., Ph.D., History of the Diocese of Boise: , 1 vols., vol. I (Boise, ID: Roman Catholic Diocese of Boise, 1953), 159, 172, Dominic O'Connor and Patrick J. Gaire, A Brief History of the Diocese of Baker, 2 vols., vol. 1 & 2 (St. Benedict, OR: Benedictine Press, 1930), Christine M. Taylor, "Washington, Catholic Church In," in The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, ed. Michael Glazier and Thomas J. Shelley (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1997), Beatrice Weisner, "Oregon, Catholic Church In," in The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, ed. Michael Glazier and Thomas J. Shelley (Colllegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1997), William S. Stone, The Cross in the Middle of Nowhere: The History of the Catholic Church in Eastern Oregon (Bend, OR: Maverick Publications, 1993), Wilfred P. Schoenberg, S.J., A Chronicle of the Catholic History of the Pacific Northwest: (Portland, OR: Catholic Sentinel Printery, 1962). 22 Wilfred P. Schoenberg, A History of The Catholic Church in The Pacific Northwest: (Washington, D.C.: The Pastoral Press, 1987).

36 7 Schoenberg text once refers to the fact that the clergy from Louvain made up a sort of block in the history of this regional church: Now a profound change was taking place. The three bishops in their former sees were all Belgians. They had a different spirit that expressed itself in style. They were more American, in a sense, than the Irish bishops in the East. An entirely new era, indeed, had already begun. 23 A history of the Archdiocese of Seattle published in 2000 notes that the second bishop of the area, Aegidius Junger, had come from the American College at Louvain, Belgium, as a young priest 24 but that is the only mention of the American College in the text though thirty of that diocese s early priests were Louvanists. Returning to the history of Vancouver Island, the recently published history of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate and the Catholic Community in British Columbia by Vincent J. McNally makes substantial reference to such American College alumni as Charles John Seghers, August Joseph Brabant and John Nicholas Lemmens, but nowhere mentions their common provenance in Louvain. 25 The same author s unpublished The Diocese of Victoria: A Brief History notes that these priests came from Belgium, but adds nothing more. McNally s more substantial, though also unpublished, Surviving in Lotus Land: A History of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Victoria, , offers a brief character study of the young Belgian priests who began to arrive on Victoria Island in the 1860 s: In response to such liberalism the Belgian church became more ultramontane and reactionary, and this was certainly true of most of the younger clergy, such as those at the American College, Louvain. The College had been founded in 1857 by two American bishops in order to tap the local surplus of clerical vocations for their episcopal subscribers in North America. Demers had been one of the earliest subscribers, and for the remainder of the nineteenth century Belgium and the American College in Louvain supplied Victoria with four bishops and sixteen priests, 23 Ibid., 271. It should be noted that Schoenberg is only partly correct when he refers to the new bishops as all Belgians. In fact, Aegidius Junger was Prussian having been born and raised in Burtscheid, near Cologne. 24 Patricia O'Connell Killen and Christine M. Taylor, Abundance of Grace: The History of the Archdiocese of Seattle: (Strasbourg: Éditions du Signe, 2000), Vincent J. McNally, The Lord's Distant Vineyard: A History of the Oblates and the Catholic Community in British Columbia (Edmonton, Alberta: University of Alberta Press and Western Canadian Publishers, 2000),

37 8 or the majority of her clergy, most of whom, such as Seghers and Brabant, worked among the native people. 26 Patrick Jamieson s Victoria: Demers to De Roo makes mention of the fact that four of the diocese s bishops were Europeans, three of them having come from Louvain s American College, but draws no further conclusions about the significance of this fact. 27 Finally, as far as histories of Vancouver Island are concerned, an as yet incomplete study of the diocese being prepared by Philip M. Hanley, begins its fifth chapter with the title: Victoria s Debt to Louvain. Relying heavily on and largely echoing the work of Sister Theodora, Hanley reviews briefly the foundation of the American College and then prefaces his studies of a number of the Louvain missionaries to the diocese Bishop Demers letter to John DeNeve, the College s second rector: The reputation made by your priests who have been called by the Bishops Blanchet of Oregon City and Nesqually, and the general satisfaction they give by their sense of religion, their zeal and their devotion, make me turn to your charity in asking you to take an interest in the poor Diocese of Vancouver which has suffered and still suffers so much from the dearth of evangelical workers. 28 William Graytak s chapter in the book Religion in Montana: Pathways to the Present, makes mention of both Louvain and the American College in introducing the reader to the episcopal ministry of John Brondel, the first bishop of Helena. 29 By way of exception in more recent histories, Patricia Brandt and Lillian A. Pereyra s Adapting in Eden: Oregon s Catholic Minority, , is rather generous 26 Vincent J. McNally, "Surviving in Lotus Land: A History of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Victoria, , Unpublished manuscript, p. 57, Archives of the Diocese of Victoria, Victoria, BC. 27 Patrick Jamieson, Victoria, Demers to De Roo: 150 Years of Catholic History on Vancouver Island (Victoria, BC: Ekstasis Editions, Ltd, 1997), Philip M. Hanley, "History of the Diocese of Victoria, 2002," Unpublished Manuscript, p. 1, Chapter Five, Archives of the Diocese of Victoria, Vancouver, BC. Hanley's reference for this quotation is a letter contained from Demers to DeNeve held in the Archives of the American College. He has referenced it from the biography of Seghers prepared by Gerard Steckler, S.J. See: Gerard George Steckler, S.J., Charles John Seghers, Priest and Bishop in the Pacific Northwest, : A Biography (Fairfield, WA: Ye Galleon Press, 1986), William Greytak, "The Roman Catholic Dioceses of Montana: An Abbreviated History," in Religion in Montana: Pathways to the Present, ed. Lawrence F. Small (Guilford, CT: Globe Pequot Press, 1995), 41. William Graytak, it should be noted, served as rector of the American College from 1978 to 1983.

38 9 in acknowledging the importance of the arrival and presence of the American College clergy to Oregon: The American College at Louvain, Belgium, was the more important source of priests for Oregon. Started in 1858 [sic] by American churchmen, the college trained European priests and seminarians to serve as missionaries in the United States. About the time that All Hallows dropped Oregon, Blanchet began to support the American College, possibly because of his intense satisfaction with his first Belgian graduates, Adrien Croquet and John Fierens. From 1859 until the late nineteenth century, a steady stream of Belgian-trained priests came to Oregon. By 1875, two-thirds of the Oregon clergy were Belgian or Belgian-educated. 30 During a personal interview with this writer, Ms. Brandt passed on a typescript of a lecture she gave in 1992 to the Oregon Catholic Historical Society entitled The Belgian Bulge: The Oregon Priesthood from Even more than her Adapting in Eden this lecture acknowledges the contribution of the Belgian church to that of Oregon through the medium of Louvain s American College: The Archdiocese of Oregon City, surely one of the neediest in the United States, received its first American College graduate in the person of Fr. Adrian Croquet, who arrived late in In his letters of friends in Europe he urged them to join him. His first recruit was Fr. John Fierens, who came in 1860, followed by Leopold Dielman and Gustav Vermeersch in 1862, all from the American College. By 1860 even that notorious tightwad, Archbishop Blanchet, had recognized the worth of the school and parted with 5300 precious francs to support the American College. In the 20 years between 1860 and 1880 there was a virtual Belgian invasion of he Oregon clergy, resulting in what I call the Belgian Bulge. The priesthood in Oregon went form a French Canadian majority up to 1860 to Belgian or Belgian educated dominance from In 1875, for example, two-thirds of the priests in Oregon were born and/or trained in Belgium. 31 This review of the literature concerning the provenance of the men from Louvain raises questions about the fullness of the historical record as it stands at the moment in regards to the significance of these men s lives of ministry and the effect they had on a nascent church. With some notable exceptions what is largely missing in the historical studies surveyed here is an understanding of the expansiveness of the Louvain presence, the totality of the work they accomplished in the region, and a sense of the commonality 30 Patricia Brandt and Lillian A. Pereyra, Adapting in Eden: Oregon's Catholic Minority, (Pullman, WA: Washington State University Press, 2002), Patricia Brandt, "The Belgian Bulge: The Oregon Priesthood from , 1992," Photostatic copy of original typescript of the Laidlaw Lecture, p. 5, Oregon Catholic Historical Society, Portland, OR. The lecture was thereafter published in The Oregon Catholic Historical Society Newsletter 4, no. 4 (1992).

39 10 that was theirs, a commonality that if they had belonged to a religious order such as the Jesuits or the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, would simply be presumed. As will become evident the men from Louvain did in fact share much of what religious clergy share: a common formation, common formators, shared ideals and vision, a filial love for the mother seminary, and mutual relationships that endured through the decades. A further motivation for pursuing this work is that the history of the American College is an important aspect of the much larger history of the American Church. That story has been well documented and told in several studies: an 1897 article by William Stang in The American Ecclesiastical Review 32, an 1907 article by Jules de Becker in The Catholic Encyclopedia, 33 the already mentioned history by Joseph Van der Heyden, which first appeared serialized in The American College Bulletin then was subsequently published in Louvain in 1909 as a book; Van der Heyden also published a brief article in The Catholic Historical Review in 1922, 34 the excellent 1959 study by John D. Sauter; and more recently, a dissertation by Brian Dick, 35 an article on the American College by John A. Dick in The Encyclopedia of American Church History, 36 and most recently, this author s master s dissertation that served as a forerunner to the present work 37 and his recent article in The Catholic Historical Review. 38 With the exception of a general review on the influence of Louvain on the church in the United States by John Tracy Ellis, 39 there has not yet been an historical study of the American College done 32 William Stang, "The American College of the Immaculate Conception at Louvain, Belgium," American Ecclesiastical Review New Series VI (XVI), no. 3 (1897). 33 J. A. M. De Becker, "The American College," in The Catholic Encyclopedia, ed. Charles G. Herbermann et al. (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907). 34 Van der Heyden, American College. Joseph Van der Heyden, "The American College: ," The American College Bulletin IV, no. 2 (1909). Also see: Joseph Van der Heyden, "The Louvain American College," Catholic Historical Review II (New Series), no. 2 (1922). 35 Brian Dick, Het Amerikaans College in Leuven van 1898 tot 1951 (Licentiate in History, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 1998). 36 John A. Dick, "The American College of Louvain," in The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, ed. Michael Glazier and Thomas J. Shelley (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1997). 37 Kevin A. Codd, The American College of Louvain and the Catholic Church in the North Pacific Coast of North America: (Masters Degree in Theology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 2002). 38 Kevin A. Codd, "The American College of Louvain," The Catholic Historical Review XCIII, no. 1 (2007). 39 John Tracy Ellis, "The Influence of the Catholic University of Louvain on the Church in the United States," Louvain Studies IX, no. 3 (1983). The foundation of the college in Louvain also finds mention in John Tracy Ellis, "The Formation of the American Priest: An Historical Perspective," in The Catholic Priest in the United States: Historical Investigations, ed. John Tracy Ellis (Collegeville, MN: Saint John's University Press, 1971), 27.

40 11 from the side of the mission church that received its priests. 40 By focusing on one corner of that church this dissertation will seek to clarify what may be a generally unrecognized but significant factor in the formation of the church in North America. That factor, of course, consists in the men of the American College of Louvain who ministered across an expansive and often hostile continent from 1857 through The Present Study Part One of this study will present a brief history of the Catholic Church in the North Pacific Coastal region, a history that will set the stage for the influx of Louvain clergy beginning soon after the foundation of the American College in That will be followed by a similarly brief review of the cultural context of 19th century Catholic Belgium where the American College would be founded. A study of the early years of the American College will conclude Part One; this third chapter will document the particular ethos that was present in this institution and which deeply impacted the life of the seminarians who would be formed there and would later condition the manner in which pastoral care was to be exercised on the North Pacific Coast. Part Two will follow in some detail the early years of the Louvain men s ministry on the North Pacific Coast, paying special attention to their ongoing relationships with one another and with the priests and students of the American College still in Belgium. Part Three will deal with the transition in episcopal authority from that of the founding French Canadian bishops to those of Louvain. As control of the episcopacy in the province fell into the hands of several of their number, a new and more potent kind of influence in the church took shape. Details of the ministry of these Louvain bishops will be examined across several decades. Later arrivals to the region from Louvain will receive much briefer notice. As the fifty years of this study draw to a close, some reasons for the loss of a general sense of the historical importance of the Louvain mission will be suggested. 40 See also Joseph A. Griffin, The Contribution of Belgium to the Catholic Church in America ( ) (Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America, 1932). Joseph A. Griffin s study unfortunately stops just as the American College is founded. 41 It should be noted as well that preliminary to the present study, this writer prepared a much more limited Masters thesis on the same topic. See: Codd, American College and NPC. This writer s first Rector s Conference after being installed as the XV rector of the American College touches on some of these same themes. See Kevin A. Codd, ""Heralds and Apostles": The Mission of the American College of Louvain -- Past, Present and Future," Louvain Studies 27, no. 2 (2002).

41 12 Throughout the study, but especially in Parts Two and Three, ample reference to the extant correspondence of the men from Louvain will allow us to come to know them, their work and the concerns they faced in the region in an intimate way; their often unguarded reflections serving as pathways towards an understanding just how significant was the role they played in the development of the church in the region. A concluding chapter will underline the importance of the Louvain mission to the history of the church on the North Pacific Coast and will, of course, draw lessons from the research that will contribute to a richer and more complex understanding of the history of the church in the region. Recovering Lives The men of the American College who left homeland and family to begin new lives in a strange and, in some cases, still quite wild place, were remarkable men for their faith, dedication, and evangelical zeal. They were, however, not free from moral faults nor always blessed with an abundance of vision, wisdom and pastoral skill. Their extant letters allude to or actually reveal pettiness, discouragement, anger, racial prejudice, imprudence, alcoholism, problems with gambling and (possibly) infidelity to their priestly promises even as many of those same letters attest to lives of prayer, love of the church, and deep pastoral concern for the people they served. Most did their best to minister to the people entrusted to them as well as they possibly could given their talents and in spite of trying circumstances, most took strength in the support of one another, and most looked back on their youthful days together in Louvain s American College with great gratitude, as did John Jonckau, as noted at the beginning of this Introduction. Some rose to the level of sainthood. A very few others lived out the latter years of their lives in ecclesiastical disgrace. Whatever the case, church and society on the North Pacific Coast would not have become what it is today without them. Their lives are therefore worthy of recovery. To recover the life of someone already dead for years is to speak figuratively, of course. It means that we engage in an effort to search out the historical data and details of these people s lives, certainly, but also, it involves finding and rereading their words with the hope of coming to understand what they thought about the details of their lives, what they believed about themselves, how they were related to others and one another. It is an effort to see their times and their world through their eyes. In a way, through this work so many years after their deaths, they come alive again and regain the capacity to touch us, teach us, and inspire us.

42 13 In commencing the work of recovery, it is worth noting that these men, as with most men, lived their lives with little sense that they were in any way making history. They, like most of us, had, at best, only a very inchoate sense that the complex of small decisions, the string of activities that marked their lives day in and day out, the comments written in a letter to a friend or a passing notice in a soon-to-be-forgotten newspaper were threads being woven into a cloth so that those who would later follow them might look back upon the details of their lives as forming something foundational for the present generation and its society. The men in this history, generally speaking, did not deliberately leave behind records that they presumed would some day help form a historical record of their times. 42 They, like us, lived, worked, struggled through each day s challenges and as the years passed simply presumed that soon enough they would be dead and their work, for the most part, forgotten. Few wrote anything for posterity. Today s historian should not expect to find grand, apologias or vitas from these mostly humble men to assist him in his work; he will instead have to search for the bits and pieces of their lives that fell out of their pockets along the way, small stones along the path that might lead the historian back to them, letters, journals, reports, newspaper items, testimony from contemporaries, even, in the end, obituaries. These stones, when collected together, allow us to see the larger pattern of their concerns, personalities, relationships and activities, great and small, and these, in turn, come to form the ground we now recognize as that upon which we presently walk. If we do not track down these men, we lose them, thereby losing the opportunity to know ourselves more deeply. If we do not recover what we can of their times we lose the capacity to know our own times in greater fullness. By following the stones and threads haphazardly left behind by these men from Louvain in the course of their lives on the North Pacific Coast, I trust that this dissertation might recover the life and times of the men themselves even as it assists our own generation of Catholics and citizens of the North Pacific Coast to know itself better. 42 Charles John Seghers, perhaps, being the notable exception. His recording of his own life s work once he became a bishop was prodigious.

43 14

44 PART ONE THE NORTH PACIFIC COAST AND LOUVAIN

45 16 CHAPTER I A RESUME OF THE HISTORY OF CATHOLICISM IN THE NORTH PACIFIC COASTAL REGION TO 1857 Prehistory and First Contact The story of the planting of the Catholic Church in the North Pacific Coastal area of North America commences only after some ten thousand years of occupation by native populations that prior to the arrival of Europeans were primarily tribal and nomadic. Their unique cultures were highly adapted to their environments. They inhabited areas that today are defined as the Northwest Coast, the Western Plateau and the Sub-arctic, each of which is determined by unique landforms, which in turn influenced the character of the native cultures that inhabited them. 1 The Sub-arctic includes the areas of today s Alaska and parts of British Columbia, the Northwest Coast is bounded on the east by the Cascade Mountains and the Pacific Ocean to the west, while the Western Plateau is bounded on the west by the Cascade range, the east by the Rocky Mountains and stretches from British Columbia on the north to Oregon on the south and includes present day Idaho, Eastern Washington, Eastern Oregon and Western Montana. 2 A Catholic presence in the area commenced concomitant to the arrival of the very first Europeans. In 1742, Canada s Father Claude Coquard, S.J. was assigned the task of visiting the western trading posts and so accompanied the expedition of Pierre and Francois La Verendrye from Quebec into the continent s interior. Father Coquard soon 1 Margaret Bunson and Stephen Bunson, Faith in the Wilderness: The Story of the Catholic Indian Missions (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor Publishing, 2000), Ibid.,

46 17 abandoned the expedition while the two brothers, both Catholics, continued on to the Rocky Mountains and then into the Mission Valley (in present-day Montana), the gathering place of the plateau tribes. The two brothers are credited with discovery of the Rocky Mountains and as Wilfred Schoenberg notes, Though their stay was brief, it is not unlikely that the sons of La Verendrye and their two French companions left traces of their religion in Montana. 3 Some three decades later, Spanish explorers began sailing northward along the Pacific Coast, claiming the coastal areas they encountered for the Spanish crown. The first bishop of the area, F. N. Blanchet 4 relates the early history thus: In 1774, the Spanish frigate Santiago under the command of Juan Perez, was ordered to proceed on an exploring expedition as far north as was practicable. Two fathers accompanied the expedition. They set sail in June, and proceeded as far north at the 55 th degree of north latitude (about Queen Charlotte s Island), where they put into a bay and anchored there As their object was not the establishment of missions, they did not land at any part of the coast 5 F. N. Blanchet s history relates a second voyage taken up in 1775 that eventually took the Spanish explorers to the 47 th parallel, where, again as F. N. Blanchet records, they found a place well-suited for a missionary establishment. 6 They took possession of it on April 17 th by erecting a cross, a Missa cantata, a sermon, and the solemn chanting of the Te Deum. The same expedition continued northward to what is now Vancouver Island and later to Nootka Sound. 3 Wilfred P. Schoenberg, S.J., A History of the Catholic Church in the Pacific Northwest; (Washington D.C.: The Pastoral Press, 1987), 2. 4 Blanchet, Francis Norbert, ( ), born in St. Pierre, Rivière du Sud, Quebec, was ordained a priest of Montreal in In 1836 he was appointed vicar general of the Columbia mission and arrived in Fort Vancouver in He played a key role in the eventual erection of the Archdiocese of Oregon City and its suffragen dioceses, Walla Walla, Vancouver Island and later Nesqually. He was appointed vicar apostolic of Oregon City in 1843 and was consecrated archbishop in He led the Archdiocese until his death in See Letitia Mary Lyons, M.A., Francis Norbert Blanchet and the Founding of the Oregon Province (Doctoral Dissertation, Catholic University of America, 1940). Also see Patricia Brandt, "Blanchet, Francis Norbert ( )," in The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, ed. Michael Glazier and Thomas J. Shelley (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1997), Francis Norbert Blanchet, Historical Sketches of the Catholic Church in Oregon, trans. Edward J. Kowrach (Fairfield, WA: Ye Galleon Press, 1983). Francis Norbert Blanchet is to be distinguished from his brother, Augustine Magloire Alexander Blanchet and their cousin, Francis X. Blanchet, all of whom ministered in the area. Hereafter, if the full name is not cited, the initials will be used to make clear to which Blanchet we refer: F. N. Blanchet, A. M. A. Blanchet, F. X. Blanchet. 5 Blanchet, Sketches, Ibid.

47 18 The Spanish sailings continued through the 1790 s but by then the territory was also being explored by others, most notably the American, Captain Robert Gray, 7 who in 1792 was the first to sail into what is now the Columbia River (named by Gray after his ship, Columbia ). 8 In 1805, Captain Meriwether Lewis 9 and Lieutenant William Clark 10 began their momentous over-land exploration from St. Louis to the Oregon Coast at the behest of President Jefferson. 11 began in earnest. Palladino writes: The American penetration of the continent from east to west thus Of Lewis and Clark s movement into the region of this study, While La Verendrye and his companions were the first pale-faces ever seen by the Flat-Heads, the first whites to pass through their land were Lewis and Clark and their followers, who reached the Bitter Root Valley in the month of September, There is still living at St. Ignatius an old Indian woman named Eugenie, who distinctly remembers and speaks of the arrival of these explorers, and vividly describes the surprise which their advent created. Eugenie was then in her 14 th or 16 th year, and in her present venerable old age she is still well preserved, her mental faculties are unimpaired and she can tell with accuracy of camp scenes and events which Lewis and Clark describe in their travels Gray, Robert ( ), born in Rhode Island. He served in the navy during the Revolutionary War. Later, he was commissioned by Boston merchants to trade for furs along the North Pacific Coast and then to China to trade the furs for exotic goods to be brought back to Boston. His journeys led him to Nootka Sound in 1789 and to Vancouver Island and the mouth of the Columbia River in He was the first American to circumnavigate the globe. 8 Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, Lewis, Meriwether ( ), was born in Albermale County, VA. He enlisted in the Volunteer Corps in 1794 and a year later he joined the regular army. In 1801 President Jefferson invited him to be his personal secretary and it was Jefferson who in 1803 enlisted him to lead the Corps of Discovery into the western reaches of North America. After returning to Washington, D.C., he was appointed governor of the Louisiana Territory. See: Stephen E. Ambrose, Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West, (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1996). 10 Clark, William ( ), born in Caroline County, VA, moved to Kentucky with his family and joined the militia at the age of 19. He served in the regular army from 1791 until 1796, whence he returned to Kentucky. In 1803, Meriwether Lewis invited him to co-lead the Corps of Discovery, an expedition designed to explore the far western reaches of America. After a long life of service to his country he died in St. Louis. See: William E. Foley, Wilderness Journey: The Life of William Clark, (Columbia, MO, University of Missouri Press, 2004). 11 Earl Pomeroy, The Pacific Slope: A History of California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah, and Nevada (Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1965), L. B. Palladino, S.J., Indian and White in the Northwest: A History of Catholicity in Montana (Baltimore: John Murphy & Co., 1894), 3 4.

48 19 More significant for the beginnings of an enduring Catholic presence in the area was the developing fur trade in Western Canada and Alaska. As Schoenberg notes, the largest and most powerful of the fur trading organizations were based in Canada: the Hudson Bay Company and the Northwest Company. 13 Though the upper ranks of these companies organizations were predominantly occupied by Scottish Presbyterians, it was a different story at the lower ranks. Schoenberg writes: At the bottom of the corporate ladder were the gutsy boatmen, the voyageurs, who transported the furs overland in large canoes. Most of these men were Canadian Catholics, some of part Indian descent. Others were full-blooded Indians of the Iroquois tribe. 14 These Catholic voyageurs assisted Lewis and Clark in their 1805 expedition as well as that of the wealthy John Jacob Astor 15 in F. N. Blanchet notes:... many of these pioneers afterwards settled in the Willamette Valley [present day Oregon]. Captain Hunt s expedition having encountered great hardship on the route across the plains, many of the members deserted from its ranks and remained among the Indians, and this fact will also serve to account for the presence of a number of Iroquois Indians who were found among the Flatheads in The Early Mission of F. N. Blanchet and Modeste Demers In 1835 the aforementioned French Canadian settlers in the Willamette Valley (numbering about a dozen families) sent two letters to Joseph Norbert Provencher, 17 the 13 Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, Ibid. 15 Astor, John Jacob ( ), born in Waldorf, Germany, immigrated to the United States at the age of twenty, becoming a clerk to a fur trader in New York. He prospered in the trade and began investing his profits in New York real estate. In 1808 he established the American Fur Trading Company so as to exploit the resources of the newly opened American west. By the end of the 1820 s he dominated the American fur trade, then in 1834 sold it all to concentrate in real estate speculation. See Axel Madsen, John Jacob Astor: America's First Multimillionaire (Indianapolis: Wiley, 2001). 16 Blanchet, Sketches, Provencher, Joseph Norbert ( ), born in Nicolet, Quebec, he was ordained a priest n After serving in a number of parishes including the cathedral in Quebec, he was sent in 1819 to the Red River colony in Manitoba with the commission to establish the Roman Catholic church there. He was named titular bishop of Juliopolis in 1820 and served as the coadjutor of Quebec since there was as yet no diocese in the Red River region of Canada. In 1844 Rome

49 20 bishop of Red River (Canada), as well as an 1837 letter to Joseph Signay, 18 the Archbishop of Quebec, appealing to the hierarchs that priests be sent to them. The settlers primary concern was the maintenance of their Catholic faith in the difficult wilderness conditions within which they and their families found themselves; they needed the ministry of a priest if they were going to persevere in their religion. Bishop Provencher responded to the first letter by writing to Dr. John McLoughlin, 19 the Chief Factor of the Hudson Bay Company in Oregon: My intention is to do all I can to grant them their request as soon as possible, I have no priest disposable at Red River, but I am going this year to Europe, and I will endeavor to procure those free people and the Indians afterward the means of knowing God. 20 By the time a third letter was sent from the settlers to the as yet unknown priest who would, they believed, soon be coming to their aid, their developing concern for their religious life reflected the reality that Protestant missionaries had been working in the area already for some time; "... they were now surrounded by almost Every religion but oure owne Religion Wen There s [sic] so many others around them 21 established the vicariate apostolic of Hudson Bay and James Bay (North-West Canada) at Provencher s recommendation of which he was made the apostolic vicar. He served as bishop of St. Boniface from 1847 until his death in See Lucien Lemieux, Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, accessed July 18, Also see accesses July 16, Signay, Joseph ( ), born in Quebec, he was ordained a priest in After serving in a number of parishes, he was made coadjutor bishop of Quebec in In 1833 he was appointed the third archbishop of Quebec. He served until his resignation in 1849, only a few months ahead of his death. See Sonia Chase, Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, accessed July 16, McLoughlin, John ( ), was born in Rivière du Loup, Quebec. In 1824 he was appointed by the Hudson s Bay Company as Chief Factor of the Columbia District. He provided for both the natives and the white pioneers and built Fort Vancouver into a major trading center in the region. See Alberta B. Fogdall, Royal Family of the Columbia, Fairfield, WA, Ye Galion Press, Also see: Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest. Edwin V. O'Hara, Pioneer Catholic History of Oregon (Portland: Glass & Prudhomme Company, 1911). Pioneer Catholic History of Oregon, (Portland: Glass & Prudhomme Company, 1911). Joseph A. Schiwek, "McLoughlin, John ( )," in The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, ed. Michael Glazier and Thomas J. Shelley (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1997), Blanchet, Sketches, George L. Thomas, Catholics and the Missions of the Pacific Northwest: (Ph. D., University of Washington, 1986), 97. Thomas s source: Petition of Willamette Settlers to

50 21 The settlers appeals resulted in the eventual commissioning of two young Quebec priests, Francis Norbert Blanchet and Modeste Demers 22 to travel via the northern waterway routes of the Hudson Bay Company into the Oregon territory to begin the Catholic mission there. 23 The arrival of F. N. Blanchet and Demers in the region came only after a long and arduous journey that included the drowning death of twelve of their Hudson Bay Company traveling companions in the rapids of the Columbia River. Their landing at Fort Vancouver, the Hudson Bay Company s major center on the North Pacific Coast, on November 4, 1838, was accompanied by great fanfare. After being warmly welcomed to the Fort by the acting Chief Factor, James Douglas, 24 a Catholic, the two priests were given generous access to the substantial assets of the Fort and the Hudson Bay Company. Demers later described his first impressions of their new mission: Having left Saint Boniface on the eleventh of July, the two missionaries, passing through a thousand dangers, arrived at their destination on the twenty-fourth of November. They had been sent to bring the succor of religion to a number of French Canadians, employees of the English company which carried on a trade in furs with the natives of that area, who numbered about two hundred, and, including a number of Americans, formed a population of about three hundred; but at the same time the Indians claimed a large part of their ministry, and which the future would show fruitful.... But what an immense task before them! Seventy-eight Indian tribes, the Bishop of Juliopolis, March 8, 1837, copy in Manuscripts Division, Oregon State Historical Society. 22 Demers, Modeste ( ), was born at St. Nicholas, Quebec. Ordained in 1836, he left for the Columbia mission in 1838 together with F. N. Blanchet. He was appointed the first bishop of Vancouver Island in 1847 over which he served until his death. See Vincent J. McNally, "Surviving in Lotus Land: A History of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Victoria, , Unpublished manuscript, Archives of the Diocese of Victoria, Victoria, BC. Philip M. Hanley, "History of the Diocese of Victoria, 2002," Unpublished Manuscript, Archives of the Diocese of Victoria, Vancouver, BC. See also: Patricia Brandt, "Demers, Modeste ( )," in The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, ed. Michael Glazier and Thomas J. Shelley (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1997), Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest. 23 Thomas, Catholics and Missions, Douglas, James ( ), was born in Demerara, British Guiana. He was assigned by the Hudson s Bay Company to Fort Vancouver under John McLoughlin in 1830, where he became Chief Factor in He established Fort Victoria on Vancouver Island in In 1851 he was appointed Governor of Vancouver Island and in 1858 as Governor of British Columbia. He was knighted in 1863 and lived in Victoria until his death. See Dorothy Blakey Smith, James Douglas: Father of British Columbia, (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1971). Alison F. Gardner The Canadians: James Douglas, (Ontario, Fitzhenry & Whiteshide Limited Don Mills, 1976). Derek Pethick, James Douglas: Servant of Two Empires, (Vancouver, Mitchell Press, 1969).

51 22 almost all speaking different languages, and spread over an area extending from California to Russian America; such was their flock and the theatre of their endeavor! 25 Recognizing that many of their new flock had been recipients already of the ministrations of the Protestant missionaries working in the area for some years ahead of them, it was not long before the two priests took up the challenge of renewing the faithful of the area in their Catholic religion. Allowing themselves just two days of rest after their journey to Fort Vancouver, they began their ministry by offering to the residents of the fort a mission that lasted four months and twenty days without interruption. 26 This first of many missions concentrated in the teaching of catechism, instruction in prayers and the singing of French Canadian hymns. These intensive efforts occupied the better part of each day of the mission, but were rewarded by consistently high participation by the locals, including the Indians. Meanwhile, in just three or four weeks Demers became adept in the Chinook jargon, 27 allowing him to begin the process of teaching the faith to the natives of the area. 28 In January of 1839, F. N. Blanchet left the Vancouver mission in Demers s hands while he offered a similar mission for thirty days to the faithful families of the Willamette Valley. Those stalwart families had already built a church for the priests even before either of them had arrived. The fruit of this mission was measured by F. N. Blanchet in simple statistics: Indian women were baptized in excellent dispositions, and their unions were blessed by the church; 47 other baptisms of children were made; to which, if we add those two of an old Indian man and a young Indian girl, both sick, who soon died, and 25 Partis de S t -Boniface le 11 Juillet, les deux missionnaires, à travers mille dangers, arrivèrent à leur destination le 24 Novembre. Ils étaient envoyés pour porter les secures de la Religion à un certain nombre de Canadiens, serviteurs de la Compagnie anglaise faisant la traite de pelleteries avec les naturels du pays, et au nombre d environ 200, y compris un petit nombre d Américains formant une population totale d environ 300; mais en même temps les Indiens devaient réclamer une large part dans l exercise de leur ministère, et la suite fera voir qu il ne fut pas infractueux.... Mais quelle tâche immense devant eux! Soixante-dix-huit tribus Indiennes, parlant prèsque toutes des idioms differénts, et répandues sur un territoire s étendant depuis la Californie jusqu à l Amérique Russe; tels devaient être leur troupeau et le théâtre de leurs travaux! Modeste Demers, "Notice sur l'établissement de la province ecclésiastique de l'oregon, précédée de quelques renseignements sur le Canada, 1867," Pamphlet, Archive of The American College, Louvain. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, C.S.B. 26 Blanchet, Sketches, Chinook was a simplified and fairly common form of oral speech that allowed Native Americans of one language group to communicate with those of another. See Edward H. Thomas, Chinook: A History and Dictionary (Hillsboro, OR: Binford & Mort Publishing, 1970). 28 Blanchet, Sketches, 74.

52 23 were the first buried in the new cemetery, we will have 74 baptisms and 25 marriages; the 26 th couple, being that of a Canadian, married in the valley by the Rev. D. Leslie, without the certificate of death of his wife he had left in Canada, the Vicar General [F. N. Blanchet s usual reference to himself before his ordination to the episcopacy] ordered and obtained a separation. Hence only 25 marriages instead of In the midst of this energetic pastoral outreach, F. N. Blanchet found himself faced with a particularly difficult catechetical problem when attempting to teach the faith to the Indians. In perhaps one of the most ingenious and successful catechetical inspirations in missionary history, F. N. Blanchet invented The Sahale Stick or as it was also called, The Catholic Ladder. Of the catechetical tool he wrote: But the great difficulty was how to give them an idea of religion so plain and simple as to command their attention, and which they could retain in their minds and carry back with hem to their tribe. In looking for a plan the Vicar General imagined that by representing on a square stick, the forty centuries before Christ by 40 marks; the thirty-three years of our Lord by 33 points, followed by a cross; and the eighteen centuries and thirty-nine years since, by 18 marks and 39 points, would pretty well answer his design, in giving him a chance to show the beginning of the world, the creation, the fall of angels, of Adam, the promise of a savior, the time of his birth, and his death upon the cross, as well as the mission of the Apostles. The plan was a great success. After eight days explanation, the chief and his companions became masters of the subject; and having learned to make the sign of the cross and to sing one or two canticles in Chinook jargon, they started for home well satisfied, with a square rule thus marked, which they called: Sahale stick (Bois d en haut). That plan was afterwards changed from a rule to a large chart containing the great epochs of the world, such as the Deluge, the Tower of Babel, the ten commandments of God, the 12 apostles, the seven sacraments and precepts of the Church; these being very useful to enable the missionary the teaching of the Indians and whites. It was called, The Catholic Ladder. 30 The greatest challenge to the Catholic mission in the vast area for which F. N. Blanchet and Modeste Demers were responsible was not just catechetical. Neither the zealousness of their missions nor the improvisation of the Catholic Ladder would fundamentally change the serious deficiency of personnel necessary to extend the mission beyond the efforts of these lone two men on the coast and De Smet in the northeastern interior of the territory. F. N. Blanchet was clever enough to understand that continued reliance for leadership in the mission on either American or Canadian hierarchies located thousands of miles to the east would not be plausible for the long term or even, really the short term. Though some relief as regards personnel had come their way with the arrival in autumn of 1842 of the Canadian priests, A. Langlois and J. 29 Ibid., 81.

53 24 B. Bolduc, the mission needed additional priests and it needed a bishop or bishops located in the area itself so that decisions could be made knowledgeably and without the extraordinary delays involved in getting mail back and forth between the Oregon wilderness and Quebec or St. Louis. 31 The Rocky Mountain Mission of Peter John De Smet, S.J. Among the Iroquois who settled among the Flathead tribe in what is now southwestern Montana there lived a man named Ignace La Mousse, often referred to simply as Old Ignace. 32 In 1812 Old Ignace arrived in Flathead territory. He was a devoted Catholic and became the chief catechist of the Flathead peoples, teaching them prayers, leading services and encouraging the Flatheads to send out their own expeditions to St. Louis, Missouri to plead for Blackrobes to come to their land. 33 The appeals made by both these groups for Catholic clergy to meet their spiritual needs served as the dual base of the Catholic Church s mission to the North Pacific Coastal area. In 1831, at Old Ignace s insistence, the Flathead tribal council commissioned four braves to travel to St. Louis, Missouri to ask the church authorities there to send to their people the Blackrobes of whom Old Ignace had often spoken. Unfortunately the difficult journey left the four emissaries weakened and terribly sick so that two of the natives died after their arrival in St. Louis (but not before their baptism into the Catholic Church); the other two, after leaving St. Louis to return to their tribal lands, were never heard from again. 34 A second delegation of Flathead braves was sent to St. Louis in 1836, and a third including Old Ignace himself, was sent in Like the first, this 30 Ibid., Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., 19. This story is also told in much briefer form but from the point of view of the Protestant mission to Oregon by Earl Pomeroy. See Pomeroy, Pacific Slope, The standard Catholic understanding of the Flathead missions to St. Louis has in recent years been questioned by some historians. In particular, Alvin M. Josephy, Jr. offers the explanation that the motivation of the Indians trips to St. Louis had more to do with competing with the increasing temporal power of their neighbors, the Spokanes, who had already been evangelized by the Anglicans which had increased their influence with the whites. He also argues that they had no intention of abandoning their own religion as much as gaining further power through the Christian religion. See: Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., Nez Perce Indians and the Opening of the North West (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972), 93-98,

54 25 third expedition ended in disaster when all were murdered by Sioux Indians after being betrayed by an American associated with the Protestant missionary, Marcus Whitman. 36 The various expeditions of the Indians to St. Louis had a double effect on the ensuing history of the area: first, the first delegation to St. Louis spurred the Protestant churches to increase their mission efforts in Oregon thereby gaining a substantial temporal advantage over the Catholics in their efforts to bring their version of the gospel to the natives of the area. Secondly, in 1839, Bishop Rosati 37 of St. Louis wrote to the Superior General of the Society of Jesus in Rome requesting the order s assistance in providing missionaries to the Flatheads, the text of which is recorded by Palladino: At last... a third expedition... arrived at St. Louis after a voyage of three months. It was composed of two Christian Iroquois. Those Indians, who talk French, have edified us by their truly exemplary conduct and interested us by their discourses. The Fathers of the College have heard their confessions and to-day they approached the holy table at high mass in the Cathedral church. Afterwards I administered to them the sacrament of Confirmation and in an address delivered after the ceremony I rejoiced with them at their happiness and gave them the hope to have soon a priest. They will depart to-morrow: one of the men will carry the good news promptly to the Flat-Heads; the other will spend the winter at the mouth of the Bear river, and in the spring he will continue his journey with the missionary whom we will send them. 38 Bishop Rosati ended his letter with the words: For the love of God, my Very Reverend Father, do not abandon these souls! 39 The bishop eventually received the Superior General s permission to proceed and so Rosati sought out a volunteer for the 36 Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, Whitman, Marcus ( ), was born in Rushville NY, studied medicine in Pittsfield, MA. In 1834, he was commissioned as a missionary to the Indians of the Oregon Territory but did not arrive in the Territory until 1836, with his new wife, Narcissa. He established their Protestant mission near present day Walla Walla, WA, but found little success in their missionary efforts. In 1847, the Indians attacked the mission killing Whitman, his wife and twelve others. See Edwin V. O Hara, Pioneer Catholic History of Oregon (Portland, Glass & Prudhomme Co., 1911). Also see Clifford Merrill Drury, Marcus and Narcissa Whitman and the Opening of Old Oregon (Seattle, WA.: Pacific Northwest National Parks and Forest Association, 1986). 37 Rosati, Joseph ( ), born in Sora, Naples, he was ordained a priest of the Cogregation of the Mission in 1811, immigrated to the United States in 1816 and was appointed the first bishop of St. Louis in He initiated and supervised the American church s missionary outreach into the western reaches of the continent. See Frederick J. Easterly, The Life of Rt. Rev. Joseph Rosati, C. M. First Bishop of St. Louis, , A Dissertation, The Catholic University of America Studies in American Church History, vol. 33 (Washington, D. C.: Catholic University of America, 1942). 38 Palladino, Indian and White, 1st ed., Ibid., 23.

55 26 new missionary enterprise. The young Belgian-born Jesuit, Peter John De Smet, S.J. 40 volunteered himself for the mission. De Smet was born in 1801 in Dendermonde, Belgium. As a young Jesuit scholastic, De Smet had met the missionary priest, Charles Nerinckx, 41 who was visiting his homeland in The youthful De Smet listened attentively to Nerinckx s lively and colorful speech about the needs of the Catholic faithful in Kentucky and was so moved by the presentation that he offered to accompany Nerinckx to America. 42 Still a scholastic, he journeyed to the Untied States, arriving in St. Louis in He was ordained a priest there in With Rosati s commission, De Smet undertook his first missionary journey to the Rocky Mountains in the spring of De Smet wrote of what lay before him in a letter to his brother, François De Smet on March 16, It is a journey fraught with many dangers, but God, in whom I put my trust will, I hope, guide me, for it is for His greater glory that I undertake it De Smet, Peter John ( ), born in Dendermonde, Belgium. From his first voyage into the Rocky Mountains in 1840 De Smet developed an enduring relationship with the Flathead and related tribes of the region. He became well known both in North American and Europe as the premier Catholic missionary in America. Biographies of De Smet are manifold; among them, see E. Laveille, S.J., Le P. De Smet: Apôtre des Peaux-Rouges, (Brussels: Librairie Albert Dewit, 1922). Robert C. Carriker, Father Peter John De Smet: Jesuit in the West, ed. Richard Etulain, The Oklahoma Western Biographies (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995). Jacqueline Peterson and Laura Peers, Sacred Encounters: Father De Smet and the Indians of the Rocky Mountain West (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993). John J. Killoren, S.J., Come Blackrobe : De Smet and the Indian Tragedy (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994). David M. Brumbach, Peter John De Smet, S.J.: Fundraiser and promoter of missions (Doctoral Dissertation., Washington State University, 1992). Palladino, Indian and White. 41 Nerinckx, Charles ( ), was born in Herfelingen, he was educated in Louvain and ordained a priest in He immigrated to Kentucky in 1805 and served as a missionary priest and pastor there until shortly before his death, spending his last months in Missouri. See: Robert Houthaeve, Karel Nerinckx ( ): Zoon van Herfelingen (Pajottenland), Apostel van Kentucky (VS) (Moorslede, Belgium: t Kluisenaartje, 2002). Camillus P. Maes, The Life of Rev. Charles Nerinckx: with a chapter on the Early Catholic Missions of Kentucky; copious notes on the progress of Catholicity in the United States of America from 1800 to 1825 (Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co., 1880). W.J. Howlett, The Life of Charles Nerinckx (Techny, Ill., 1915). Joseph A. Griffin, The Contribution of Belgium to the Catholic Church in America ( ), Studies in American Church History, vol. 13 (Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America, 1932). Ben. J. Webb, The Centenary of Catholicity in Kentucky (Louisville, KY: Charles A. Rogers, 1884). Clyde F. Crews, "Nerinckx, Charles ( )," in The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, ed. Michael Glazier and Thomas J. Shelley (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1997), Laveille, Le P. De Smet, Laveille, Le P. De Smet, E. Laveille, S.J., The Life of Father De Smet, S.J., Apostle of the Rocky Mountains, , trans. Marian Lindsey (New York: J. P. Kenedy & Sons, 1915; reprint, Tan Books and

56 27 De Smet communicated almost immediately with the region s other missionaries; in a letter to F. N. Blanchet, who was himself already at work in Oregon, De Smet shared the good news of his first Rocky Mountain missionary journey: Your Reverence will be glad to learn that Mgr. Rosati, Bishop of St. Louis, in concert with my provincial Superior of the Society of Jesus in Missouri and in compliance with the desires often repeated, of the Flat-Heads, Pend d Oreilles and a great number of the Nez Perces, has sent me to the Rocky Mountains to visit these missions. I have found the two first in the best desirable disposition, well resolved to stand by the true children of Jesus Christ. The few weeks I had the happiness to pass among them have been the happiest of my life and give me the firm hope, with the grace of God, to see soon in this country, so long forsaken, the fervor of the first Christians. 44 In his own history of the church in Oregon, F. N. Blanchet summarizes the effect of De Smet s first excursion into the Rocky Mountains: His mission lasted two months and resulted in the conversion of six hundred Flatheads, and finding the Indians so well disposed to receive the Word of Life, he returned to St. Louis for the purpose of securing additional Fathers, as he saw the work before them was one of great magnitude. 45 It is important to note that De Smet s mission to the Rocky Mountains involved much more than just this first and ensuing journeys into the region. Just as important to the history of the church in this era was his role as a promoter, propagandist and fundraiser for the mission both in North America and in Europe. As David Brumbach explains, after returning to St. Louis following his first foray into the Rocky Mountains and filled with enthusiasm for the potential of a mission among the Flatheads, De Smet was nevertheless faced with the financial limitations of the Society of Jesus in supporting the work: The Missouri Jesuits, however, could not afford another missionary undertaking, an in a way their lack of financial resources determined De Smet s subsequent career. The establishment of Catholic missions in the Oregon Country required him to continue to develop his talents as a publicist and fundraiser, and in subsequent years the growth and survival of these missions depended largely upon his salesmanship. 46 Publishers, INC, Rockford, IL, 2000), 103. The original in French: C'est une voyage plein de dangers, mais j'espère que le Seigneur, en qui je mets toute ma confiance, me guidera. C'est pour sa plus grande gloire que je l'entreprends. Laveille, Le P. De Smet, Palladino, Indian and White, 1st ed., Francis Norbert Blanchet, Historical Sketches of The Catholic Church in Oregon, ed. Edward J. Kowrach (Fairfield, WA: Ye Galleon Press, 1878; reprint, 1983), Brumbach, De Smet: Fundraiser, 59.

57 28 He followed his first missionary voyage into the Rockies with trips to Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Kentucky, St. Louis and New Orleans and thereby raised over $3000, enough to get the mission to the Flatheads firmly established. Likewise he authorized that letters to his brother, Francois, whenever there might be something interesting in them, be immediately published, in The Annals of the Propagation of the Faith, through the agency of De Smet s friend, Charles De La Croix. 47 reminiscences of his mission journeys were widely published thereafter in his native Belgium. The texts were collected together in book form in his 1844 Voyages aux Montagnes Rocheuses. His brother, François, was explicit in seeing the book as an effective fundraising tool. 48 De Smet did not stop with visits within the United States. In 1843, he returned to Europe where his travels took him to Ireland, England, Rome, and of course, his native Belgium. He successfully raised funds from his bevy of benefactors, as Schoenberg comments, In effect he was holding up Europe without a gun. His weapon, tears for the Indians, was much more effective. 49 Just as important as his fundraising was his recruitment of new volunteers for the missions from among his Jesuit confreres. In this he must surely have learned both the importance of such recruitment and the how to of it from his mentor, the early Flemish émigré to the Kentucky mission, Charles Nerinckx. His Through Belgian periodicals like the Précis Historique, edited by his friend Edward Terwecoren, or the Journal de Bruxelles, he explicitly pleaded for vocations to the North American missions and appealed to the fascination of Europeans with the Indians, their customs and their lands. As a small sample of his appeal, in 1853 De Smet wrote in the Journal de Bruxelles: This will show what civilized Europeans are too apt to forget, that Catholicity, by the very force of her missions, contributes to the civilization of nations and the 47 Ibid., 44. De La Croix, Charles ( ), was born in Sint-Cornelis Horebeke, Belgium, and educated at the seminary in Ghent. He was ordained and then immigrated as a missionary to Missouri in He is credited with preparing the way for other Belgian missionary priests including De Smet. He labored in Louisiana for many years then returned to Belgium in 1832, where he served the remainder of his life as a canon of the Ghent cathedral. See Griffin, Contribution. Also see Antoine De Smet, Voyageurs Belges aux États-Unis du XVII siècle à 1900: Notices Bio-bibliographiques (Brussels: le Patrimoine de la Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, 1959). 48 Brumbach, De Smet: Fundraiser, Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, 81.

58 29 development of science. The government of the United States knows it, and encourages our labors. The good to be accomplished is in every respect immense. The Catholics and recent converts need priests to preserve the faith, the pagans to learn the good tidings of the gospel. The small number of ministers of the Lord there does not suffice for the four millions of Catholics, and for all the Indians who desire ardently the visit of a Black-gown, to instruct and baptize them. I have come to Europe to appeal to generous hearts. 50 De Smet operated in this vein throughout the remainder of his life; besides raising substantial amounts of money and sailing back to North America with additional priests or nuns in tow, (he made the trip to Europe and back to North America nineteen times over the course of his adult life), his efforts also served to raise his stature as a missionary hero in his homeland and in effect, further romanticize if not glorify the challenging work of the missionary to North America in general. Clearly, the extraordinarily effective propagandic efforts of De Smet in Europe and particularly in his native Belgium were a major contributor to the interest and enthusiasm of the European church in supporting missions like his. That interest and enthusiasm would certainly have been in the air being breathed by priests, seminarians and young boys considering the religious life for themselves, the very young men who would soon be knocking on the doors of the new American College in Louvain looking for their chance to join men like De Smet in this exotic missionary adventure in a faraway land. 51 Ecclesiastical Beginnings With F. N. Blanchet and Demers on the North Pacific Coast by 1838 and De Smet in the Rocky Mountain interior by 1840, a two-pronged Catholic mission in the North Pacific area had begun in earnest. It was not long before the three missionaries would make common cause in their efforts to develop the Catholic situation in the vast region. De Smet traveled to Fort Vancouver in the spring of 1842 and met with F. N. Blanchet and Demers for the first time. While together, the three clerics took time to deliberate on the interests of the great mission of the Pacific Coast. 52 The men decided 50 Brumbach, De Smet: Fundraiser, American College missionary priest to Vancouver Island, Augustine Brabant was among those who acknowledged the influence of De Smet on their missionary vocations. Joseph Van der Heyden, Life and Letters of Father Brabant: A Flemish Missionary Hero (Louvain: J. Wouters-Ickx, 1920), Blanchet, Sketches, 109.

59 30 that Demers should develop a new mission station in New Caledonia (present day British Columbia), while De Smet agreed to return to St. Louis and then to his native Belgium in search of funding and personnel. They further agreed that they should seek the establishment of a vicariate apostolic or diocese for the region so that it might have its own bishop, freeing it from the control of hierarchs thousands of miles away in Quebec and St. Louis. 53 By December 1, 1843, one key element of the three priest s pastoral plan for Oregon had been secured: Pope Gregory XVI erected the territory of Oregon into a vicariate apostolic which included all territory from California on the south to Russian- America on the north, from the Pacific Ocean on the west to the Rocky Mountains on the east. Not surprisingly, the pope also named Francis Norbert Blanchet as the new apostolic vicar of this vast territory. 54 Of this result, F. N. Blanchet perhaps somewhat disingenuously wrote some years later: The Vicar General was far from expecting such a result so soon, the notice of which reached him on Nov. 4., to his great surprise and sorrow. 55 A second piece of the plan fell at least partially into place when De Smet returned to Fort Vancouver on August 6, 1844 having completing his assignment in Europe to raise funds and clergy for the mission. He brought back with him four new Jesuit priests and six sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. In November of 1844, the briefs from Rome had arrived announcing the establishment of the Vicariate Apostolic of Oregon City and naming F. N. Blanchet as the Vicar. By December of that same year F. N. Blanchet was on his way to Liverpool, England where he spent ten days, using the time to compose a letter to the Superior General of the Society of Jesus, Philip Roothaan, 56 requesting at least twelve more Jesuit priests for his Vicariate. 57 He returned to Montreal for his episcopal consecration, then after several months in Canada turned back to Europe once again so as to follow De Smet s successful example in raising funds, recruiting clergy and something more: paying an important visit to Rome. 53 Thomas, Catholics and Missions, Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, Blanchet, Sketches, Roothaan, Jan Philip ( ), was born in Amsterdam and ordained as a Jesuit priest in In 1829 he was chosen as General of the Society of Jesus from which office he led the order to substantial growth and renewal. See Roger Aubert and others, The Church in the Age of Liberalism, ed. Hubert Jedin and John Dolan, trans. Peter Becker, History of the Church, vol. VIII (London: Burns & Oates, 1981). 57 Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest,

60 31 During his four-month stay in Rome, this previously retiring, unambitious and naïve cleric was seemingly transformed into a political dynamo, accomplishing in the Vatican s halls of power in the briefest time an extraordinary feat: the prompt transformation of his humble vicariate apostolic into the second archdiocese of America. As Patricia Brandt has demonstrated, he did not accomplish this deed on his own; while in Rome, he was taken in by two influential churchmen who made use of Blanchet and his vicariate for their own ends. Bishop Jean Luquet, 58 of the Paris Mission Society was a staunch opponent of the Jesuit missions 59 favoring instead the approach of mission societies like his own in which the necessity of developing indigenous clergy in missionary regions was emphasized. The second man was the Oratorian priest, Augustine Theiner, 60 who was widely influential in the Vatican under Gregory XVI; under Pius IX he became Prefect of the Vatican Archives. Brandt argues that F. N. Blanchet s successful appeal for the erection of an archdiocese was primarily their work and that the better part of the sixty page document Blanchet presented to the Holy See, his Mémoire, shows the hand of Jean Luquet and perhaps Theiner as well. Under their influence Blanchet expressed in his Mémoire a missionary vision that stressed the importance of the local episcopacy, the development of an indigenous clergy, and the consequent abandonment of any dependence on religious orders such as the Society of Jesus. 61 In particular F. N. Blanchet asked that he and the other bishops of the province be given full authority over the exercise of all temporal goods in the diocese, including those of the religious orders; he argued as well that the bishops should likewise have full authority to suspend the formation of religious novitiate until the time when there will be formed the nucleus of a native secular clergy sufficient to support and sustain 58 Luquet, Jean ( ), born in Langres, was ordained in A proponent of the development of indigenous clergy in mission lands became influential. He was appointed coadjutor of Pondichery, India in 1845 but his election was not accepted in India and he never served there. He lived the remainder of his life in Rome. See R. Roussel, Un précurseur: Monseignor Luquet, (Langres 1960). See also Biographisch-bibliographisches Kirchenlexicon, s.v. Luquet, Jean, Patricia Brandt, "'A Character of Extravagance': Establishment of the Second Archdiocese in the United States," The Catholic Historical Review LXXXIX, no. 4 (2003). 59 For a detailed presentation on Jesuit methodology in the Rocky Mountain missions see Gerald McKevitt, S.J., "Northwest Indian Evangelization by European Jesuits, ," The Catholic Historical Review XCI, no. 4 (2005). 60 Theiner, Augustine ( ), born in Breslau was noted as a church historian, canonist and prefect of the Vatican Archives. See Biographisch-bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon, s.v. Theiner, Augustin, Also see Brandt, "Extravagance."

61 32 the action of the bishop. 62 Blanchet thus set himself up for a lifetime of prickly and contentious relations with his Jesuit and Oblate co-workers in the region. Both orders pulled their priests from the area in the early 1850 s. Those troubled relationships would give F. N. Blanchet all the more motivation to search out priests of his own, priests he could more directly control, his supposed indigenous clergy. That of course was not even a remote possibility in a region so sparsely populated and with so few resources, so when the American College was established in Louvain eleven years later he would see in its new priests a reasonable facsimile of the indigenous clergy he idealized. At least these secular priests would be his own and thereby be better able to control them. It is no surprise then that F. N. Blanchet became one of the very first bishops in America to begin adopting secular priests from this new missionary seminary in Belgium. 63 Surprisingly, on July 24, 1846, Pope Gregory XVI approved F. N. Blanchet s proposal by raising the Oregon vicariate apostolic to an archepiscopal see. He created two suffragan sees, that of Walla Walla and Vancouver Island. And finally, the pope named as bishops of these sees, F. N. Blanchet as archbishop of Oregon City, Modeste Demers as bishop of Vancouver Island, and finally, F. N. Blanchet s younger brother, Augustine Magloire Alexander Blanchet 64 as bishop of Walla Walla. 65 All of this was 61 Ibid. 62 Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, The text of F. N. Blanchet s letter requesting students for his diocese is recorded in the Liber Primitivus of the American College; it is dated 7 November It is the third such letter in the collection, preceded by those of Louisville and Detroit. Liber primitivus de initio Collegii Americani Immac. Concept. B. M. Virgini, Archives of The American College (Louvain: 1857). 64 Blanchet, Augustine Magloire Alexander ( ), was born in St. Pierre, Rivièr-du-Sud, Quebec, the younger brother of Francis Norbert Blanchet. He was ordained a priest in 1821, served as a missionary to the Madeleine Islands and Cape Breton Island and then as a parish priest in Montreal. In 1846, he was appointed the first bishop of Walla Walla. In 1850 he was named first bishop of Nesqually, his see city being Fort Vancouver, where he served until his death. See Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest. A History of the Catholic Church in the Pacific Northwest; , (Washington D.C.: The Pastoral Press, 1987). George Brown, "Blanchet, Augustin Magloire ( )," in The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, ed. Michael Glazier and Thomas J. Shelley (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1997), F. N. Blanchet had actually asked for the erection of seven suffragan sees within the new province, Nesqually, Walla Walla, Fort Hall, Colville, Vancouver, Princess Charlotte s Island and New Caledonia. Some early authors mistakenly wrote that the sees beyond Walla Walla, Nesqually and Vancouver Island were in fact erected. See John Gilmary Shea, History of the Catholic Church in the United States: From the Fifth Provincial Council of Baltimore, 1843, to the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore, 1866, vol. 4 (New York: John G. Shea, 1892), 319.

62 33 mostly as F. N. Blanchet had proposed to the Roman authorities in his Mémoire. 66 The church did not grant him however the authority over the religious orders that he sought. His later activity in their regard would demonstrate that he felt he had such authority anyway. 67 With the erection of the three dioceses and appointment of the new bishops, the history of the church on the North Pacific Coast had made a substantial leap forward; unfortunately, even as F. N. Blanchet was returning victorious to Oregon in August 1847 and his brother, A. M. A. Blanchet was preparing himself to take possession of his new see, serious storm clouds loomed over the young church. The Whitman Tragedy and its Aftermath The arrival of Catholic priests to the region in 1838 had not gone unnoticed among the already established Protestant missionaries in the area. As George L. Thomas makes clear, the competition between the two forces for the souls of both the settlers and the Indians was intense and most often characterized by mutual disdain. 68 The rivalry would result soon enough in most unhappy recriminations when disaster struck the Presbyterian mission in the Oregon interior at Waiilatpu, near present-day Walla Walla, Washington. A. M. A. Blanchet had hardly arrived in the territories of his new diocese with a few newly recruited Canadian and Oblate of Mary Immaculate priests accompanying him, when on November 30, 1847 Dr. Marcus Whitman and his wife, Narcissa, along with eight others were brutally slaughtered by Cayuse Indians. The gruesome end to the Presbyterian mission was the result of growing discontent among the Cayuse. The Indians were rapidly succumbing to a variety of new diseases brought into the area by white immigrants from across the Rockies; the survivors became suspicious that the doctor-minister was poisoning them with the intention of taking over their tribal lands for the newcomers. The bloodshed resulted in the Protestants wildly accusing the newly arrived Catholic clergy, and in particular, A. M. A. Blanchet, of complicity in the horror. 69 The charges were credibly denied, but the ensuing bitterness and suspicions between the two religious camps would endure for decades to come. A second effect of 66 Thomas, Catholics and Missions, Brandt, "Extravagance." 68 Thomas, Catholics and Missions, , , Blanchet, Sketches,

63 34 the Whitman tragedy was that it led to war between the army of the United States and the Cayuse tribes, a development that in turn would force A. M. A. Blanchet and his priests from the interior and thereby stop almost all missionary activity in the region for two full years. 70 That would not be the only problem A. M. A. Blanchet had to face. As it turned out, the provincial structure proposed by F. N. Blanchet and approved by the pope had one important flaw that needed correction. The interior diocese of Walla Walla proved to be unsupportable because of the ongoing difficulties with the Indian missions, the paucity of white Catholics in the area and the consequent lack of economic support for the church there. A. M. A. Blanchet had relied heavily on the Society for the Propagation of the Faith to fund his cash-strapped diocese but in 1849, the Society withdrew its funding of the Walla Walla diocese. Convinced that the Bishop and his missionaries had won too few converts to warrant further funding, the Society transferred its resources to more profitable branches of the mission Church. Their action was the coup de grace for the Diocese of Walla Walla. 71 There was only one solution: to abandon the Walla Walla see and establish a new one more propitiously located closer to the faithful and their funds. At A. M. A. Blanchet s urgent request, Pope Pius IX created the new diocese of Nesqually on May 31, 1850 and made the younger Blanchet its first bishop, transferring him from Walla Walla. F. N. Blanchet was made administrator of Walla Walla until its suppression shortly thereafter. As foreseen, the new see provided A. M. A. Blanchet with a base of operations closer to transportation, commerce and white Catholics. Though the see city was Nesqually, it was not long before the growing town of Vancouver 72 with its access to the Columbia River and the sea beyond became the center of the new diocese. 70 George F. Weibel, "The History of the Catholic Church in the Diocese of Spokane, Unpublished Manuscript, Undated, p , Archives of the Diocese of Spokane, Spokane, WA. 71 Thomas, Catholics and Missions, The town of Vancouver located in present-day Washington State is not to be confused with Vancouver Island, located off the Canadian coast and the first see of Modeste Demers nor with the city of Vancouver located in present-day British Columbia.

64 35 Clerical Poverty in the New Dioceses The three bishops of the new ecclesial province erected on the North Pacific Coast faced one daunting obstacle that would limit in the most severe fashion their ministerial progress; it was a severe lack of clergy to support the development of the church in the vast region. Thomas writes, Planning to depart for Walla Walla in March of 1847, A. M. A. Blanchet lamented that even days before the day fixed for my departure, I didn t have a priest to accompany me. 73 The bishops of the North Pacific Coast, at least in the early years of their ministries, looked to distant lands for their new clergy. Only shortly after complaining of having no priest to accompany him to Walla Walla, A. M. A. Blanchet learned that the Order of Mary Immaculate, based in Marseille, had agreed to send him four priests and one brother and that the Archdiocese of Montreal was giving him one priest, J. B. Brouillet, 74 and two seminarians to serve with him in Walla Walla. Though better than having no one to assist him, the numbers were still not enough to meet the missionary needs of the area. The same of course was true for his brother in Oregon City and even more so for Demers in Vancouver Island, who had no one to assist him. By the time F. N. Blanchet had returned from Europe to take up his new role as archbishop of Oregon City:... the ecclesiastical Province of Oregon City possessed in the Fall of Bishops, 14 Jesuit Fathers, 4 Oblate Fathers of O.M.I., 13 Secular priests, T. Mesplie, ordained in May 1850, 13 Sisters and two houses of education. The Archbishop started with 10 priests including T. Mesplie, two Jesuit Fathers at St. Ignaces residence, 13 Sisters and two educational houses. The Bishop of Walla Walla was starting with 3 Secular priests including a Deacon, 4 Oblate Fathers of O.M.I., and 12 Jesuit Fathers at the Rocky Mountains. The Bishop of Vancouver Island had not even one priest to accompany him to Victoria Thomas, Catholics and Missions, 157. Thomas cites here: Correspondence of A. M. A. Blanchet, November 10, 1847, Register of Walla Walla Diocese. 74 Brouillet, Jean Baptiste ( ), was born at St. Jean Baptiste de Rouville, Quebec. He was ordained a priest in Montreal in In 1847, he was granted permission to join Bishop A. M. A. Blanchet in the new diocese of Walla Walla. He was very involved in the Catholic self-defense after the Whitman tragedy. He served as vicar general of the diocese of Nesqually and in 1874 he established the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions in Washington, D.C. See O'Hara, Pioneer Catholic History of Oregon. Christine M. Taylor, "Brouillet, Jean Baptiste ( )," in The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, ed. Michael Glazier and Thomas J. Shelley (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1997). 75 Blanchet, Sketches, 130.

65 36 On the other side of the ledger, the area was experiencing a substantial increase in immigration from the east. Thomas writes: In 1849, Marshall Joe Meek reported only 304 inhabitants living in counties north of the Columbia River. The 1850 census showed a population of Three years later an estimated 4000 persons were scattered in small villages in the eastern and southern shores and over the prairies of the Cowlitz. According to the church census of 1851, four hundred baptized Catholics resided in the Diocese of Nisqually at the time of tis [sic] establishment. Another one hundred persons were added to its ranks in the census of By 1855, Blanchet counted 3,500 Catholics living in the Diocese of Nisqually. 76 Father Louis Rossi who worked in the area from 1856 to 1862 reveals the desperate character of the poverty of religious ministers in the region: The bishops of that ecclesiastical province, and especially the Archbishop of Oregon, found themselves in the same circumstances. I am going to relate the sad events which certainly must have caused them a lot of suffering; however, I am not claiming to point out the causes behind these events. The Sisters of Providence, whom the Bishop of Walla Walla had brought from Montreal at great expense, stayed in the region only a few days. They left for San Francisco in order to return to Canada by going around Cape Horn. Since their vessel had to stop at Valparaiso, the Bishop of Chile entreated them earnestly to settle in his diocese where, since that time, they have enjoyed really remarkable success. A short time afterward the Jesuits abandoned their Saint Paul settlement on the Willamette, leaving only a deputy to administer their affairs. Some of them settled down among the Indians in the Rocky Mountains and others withdrew to California.... The Notre Dame de Namur nuns followed the priests to California and settled in San José, a big market town only a league from Santa Clara.... Three Belgian priests, brought from Belgium by Monsignor Demers, and several other Canadian priests left the region. That was the state of affairs when I arrived in those parts. While visiting the different settlements on the Willamette formerly occupied by the priests and nuns, I experienced a feeling of deep regret on seeing so many thousands of francs thrown down the drain, and the hope of a bright future dimmed forever. It was certainly Monsignor N. Blanchet, Archbishop in Oregon City, who suffered most. Besides the voyages he undertook to Europe to collect the funds necessary to set up all his projects, he had to go to Chile in 1858 with some Canadian nuns and secular priests. However, his debts still aren t cleared up, and I greatly fear that they won t be in his lifetime. A great number of the old buildings have fallen into ruin and have been sold for a trifling sum, and they are obliged to keep up the others with almost daily 76 Thomas, Catholics and Missions, 229.

66 37 expenditures. On my departure from the [West] Coast the Oregon missions were staffed as follows: Oregon Washington Vancouver Territory Island Regular Priests 9 4 Secular Priests Convents (Nuns) As an example of the enduring nature of the shortage of clergy, W. J. Metz reports that in 1857 the Diocese of Nesqually could boast eighteen missionaries in its expansive territory, 78 but by 1869 that number dropped to eleven and even as late as 1878 there would be just fifteen. 79 At the midpoint of the nineteenth century, De Smet, Demers and the Blanchet brothers, the founders 80 of the church on the North Pacific Coast, faced a tripleproblem: First, despite the desires of one like F. N. Blanchet, their church s condition as a wilderness church made it impossible for them to develop an indigenous clergy. Second, the more established churches of the East Coast including those of French 77 Louis Rossi, Six Years on the West Coast of America: , trans. W. Victor Wortley (Fairfield, WA: Ye Galleon Press, 1983), The differential between Rossi s numbers and those mentioned by Blanchet on the previous page can be explained by the passage of time between the two reports, (Blanchet, 1847; Rossi, 1862). 78 Unfortunately for the Blanchet brothers, (and because of them) after ten years of work and extraordinary difficulties the Oblates of Mary Immaculate would choose to leave the area and reestablish themselves in Canada in See Vincent J. McNally, The Lord's Distant Vineyard: A History of the Oblates and the Catholic Community in British Columbia (Edmonton, Alberta: University of Alberta Press and Western Canadian Publishers, 2000), W. J. Metz, "History of the Catholic Church and Schools in Washington, 1936," Unpublished Manuscript, p. 165, Archives of the Diocese of Spokane, Spokane, WA. 80 The word founders is used with hesitation, for as George L. Thomas points out in his doctoral dissertation it must be remembered that neither the work of the Canadians on the coast under the direction of F. N. Blanchet and Demers nor that of the Jesuits in the Rocky Mountains under De Smet could the Catholic missions have met with any substantial success without the preparatory labors of the lay Catholics who preceded them in the region and who held onto their faith in most difficult circumstances; they are the ones who prepared the way for the church s formal missionaries by their own catechetical and evangelical efforts in the wilderness. Old Ignace might just as truly be considered the Apostle of the Rockies as Peter John De Smet, S.J. and that the Hudson Bay Company s Chief Factor in Oregon, John McLoughlin, his assistant James Douglas, not to mention the twelve French Canadian families which had settled in the Willamette Valley, might equally be considered the forbearers of the Catholic religion on

67 38 Canada, had barely enough clergy to meet their own exploding needs due to immigration of Catholics from Europe, so they were not in a position to sacrifice more than a few to the mission dioceses of the West. 81 And third, religious orders like the Society of Jesus 82 and the Oblates of Mary Immaculate 83 were able to supply only a very few of their own clergy to these new mission fields; their mission priorities were in many cases elsewhere, and furthermore, the Blanchet brothers did not offer a hospitable environment for them to work in. In the end, there was only one deep pocket that they could consistently dip into in their efforts to supply new clergy to the sprawling region: the church in Europe where priests were plentiful and interest in the missionary outreach of the church was increasing dramatically. 84 As noted previously, already in their first meeting in 1842, F. N. Blanchet, Modeste Demers and Peter John De Smet had agreed that De Smet should travel to Belgium to recruit additional missionaries and raise funds for the mission. In 1845 F. N. Blanchet followed in De Smet s footsteps sailing to Europe twice before returning to Oregon in February of 1847 with his own crew of new laborers: seven Sisters of Notre Dame, three Jesuit fathers and an equal number of brothers and five secular priests. When the three bishops met in their first provincial council in late February of 1848 their thirst for even more missionaries was far from quenched and so they reaffirmed their common need to recruit secular priests from Europe. Immediately the North Pacific Coast, years ahead of the arrival of the Quebec priests, F. N. Blanchet and Demers. 81 As we have seen, the French Canadian church had already given to the Oregon mission Modeste Demers and F. N. Blanchet who arrived in Besides these, the Canadian church also gave to the area Antoine Langlois and John Baptiste Zacharie Bolduc, who arrived in Oregon in September of A. M. A. Blanchet arrived in 1847 together with John Baptist Abraham Brouillet. 82 In 1841, De Smet first arrived in the area with fellow Jesuit priests Nicholas Point and Gregory Mengarini and Jesuit brothers, Joseph Specht, William Claessens, and Charles Huet. In 1843, De Smet also recruited fellow Jesuit priests John Nobili, Michael Accolti, Anthony Ravalli, Louis Vercruysse and one brother, Francis Huysbrecht for the mission. In 1844, three more Jesuits arrived: Joseph Joset, Vincent Magri and Peter Zerbinatti (who died only a year later). 83 Arriving with A. M. A.. Blanchet in 1847 were the Oblates: Casimir Charouse, Eugene Pandosy and George Blanchet. See Edward J. Kowrach, Mie. Charles Pandosy, O.M.I.: A Missionary of the Northwest (Fairfield, WA: Ye Galleon Press, 1992), Ronald Wayne Young, The Mission of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate to the Oregon Territory ( ) (Facultas Missiologiae, Pontificia Universitas Gregoriana, 2000). 84 Stephen Neill, A History of Christian Missions, trans. Owen Chadwick, Second ed. (London: Penguin Books, 1990),

68 39 thereafter, Modeste Demers traveled to Canada and Europe to raise funds and find missionaries for his diocese. 85 Though these voyages from the North Pacific Coast to Europe were expensive and time-consuming they were undertaken because the bishops and De Smet were well aware that the situation of the Catholic Church in Europe had in the previous halfcentury taken a dramatic turn for the better making it a most fertile field for religious vocations and in particular for missionary religious vocations. 85 Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, 99,

69 CHAPTER II MISSIONARY BELGIUM The Catholic Revival in Europe The Catholic Church ended the eighteenth century in Western Europe as one that had been seriously pummeled in the social and political order by the French Revolution; the ancien régime was long gone and the church was seriously weakened as it faced the challenges of the new century opening before it. It was an era in which parish clergy were poorly educated and spiritually formed, in which some orders found themselves suppressed even while those that survived suffered from a lack of zeal in fulfilling their missions and observing their ancient rules. And at the most important level of ecclesial life, the century began with the faithful living their daily lives in a manner that was far from faithful to traditional religious exercises like weekly mass and communion. 1 Napoleon initiated a sea change in the church s fortunes by restoring many of its rights and privileges in France, formalized in the Concordat of July 1801; this was done not so much as a gift to the church as it was a stratagem by Napoleon to enhance his own political and national interests. Nevertheless, the newfound stability of churchstate relations that was the result of the concordat also set the stage for a dramatic revival of Catholicism that was a complex and remarkable response to the challenges faced by the church as the new century unfolded. 2 The Catholic response was characterized in a global sense by the rise of ultramontanism and an increasing centralization of authority in Rome. These movements within the church were accompanied by a newfound energy in defending the church at home and an expansive 1 Hugh McLeod, Religion and the People of Western Europe: (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), Alec R. Vidler, The Church in the Age of Revolution: 1789 to the Present Day, 1974 ed. (London: Penguin Books, 1974), ,

70 41 urge to bring the true faith to the world. As Stephen Neill writes of the church in the early 19th century: The opening of the century saw the Roman Catholic Church in a sad state of disarray. But, in point of fact, the phoenix was just about to rise from its ashes. The sufferings of the Pope at the hands of Napoleon won both sympathy and respect for the institution which he represented. A series of outstanding popes succeeded in effecting that centralization of the life of the Church in Rome after which earlier pontiffs had striven in vain. Currents of new life and thought flowed in many countries, and, as always happens, new life in the Church found its outlet in renewed missionary activity. 3 Simply put, by the mid-point of the 19 th century the church in Europe was primed for mission. As Roger Aubert points out: The late eighteenth century had been a time of stagnation, but the early nineteenth, thanks to the revival of the religious life, the birth of organizations in support of missions, and the influence of Gregory XVI, had helped to prepare the bases for a fresh advance, which was about to attain its full dimensions. 4 More particularly, in Belgium, the eventual home of The American College, the revolution of against the reign of the Netherlands William I and the ensuing establishment of the Belgian state and ratification of its new Constitution enshrined personal rights and liberties in a new and unique way even as it set the scene for a unique though complex and evolving response from the new nation s Catholic clergy, nobility, politicians and intellectuals. Thomas J. Shelley summarizes the benefits of the new constitution in Belgium for the church in these words: In the early nineteenth century Belgian Catholics developed a unique form of churchstate relations, an arrangement which gave them the best of both worlds. On the one hand, the Catholic Church secured full freedom from government control, but at the same time, it continued to enjoy many of the advantages that it had possessed from association with the state under the ancient regime. While church and state were clearly separated on the institutional level, religion occupied an officially favored position at many levels of Belgian society.... The Belgian Catholics called this system mutual independence. To many outside observers and especially to alarmed officials in the Roman curia it looked 3 Stephen Neill, A History of Christian Missions, trans. Owen Chadwick, Second ed. (London: Penguin Books, 1990), Roger Aubert and others, The Church in a Secularised Society, ed. Louis J. Rogier et al., trans. Janet Sondheimer, 1 ed., The Christian Centuries, vol. V (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1978), 385.

71 42 suspiciously like separation of church and state. Whatever the label, it was a bold experiment on the part of the Belgian Catholics at a time when state churches were the norm everywhere in Europe and the Holy See was determined to preserve the system in Catholic countries. 5 To the church s benefit, for example, the new constitution provided for state supported salaries for parish priests while at the same time ridding the church of... vexatious rulings, which regulated such matters as the residence of bishops and pastors, the ringing of church bells, public prayers for civil officials, proper clerical attire, and the number of priests who could be ordained each year. 6 This constitutionally mandated mutual independence would provide the Catholic Church in Belgium with a unique opportunity to respond to the complex social situation it confronted as the century developed. This response in its spiritual, political and ecclesial dimensions would provide the mid-century context for the nascent American College s foundation and early development. 7 Vincent Viaene s extensive analysis of the genealogy of political Catholicism in Belgium describes the Catholic intellectual and political landscape that led to a unique church-state relationship and then took advantage of it in the following decades. In particular, he makes the point that in Belgium s case the distinction between liberalism on the one hand and ultramontanism on the other is oversimplified. In the Catholic response to the Belgian political situation he identifies instead four strands of thought, each with its own defining characteristics: intransigent ultramontanism, intransigent liberal-catholicism, transigent liberal-catholicism and transigent ultramontanism. 8 Intransigent ultramontanism was the more radical form of fidelity to the papacy as a reaction to the French revolution and the Napoleonic era. Intransigent in this case implies for Viaene a more pronounced hostility against the modern state and its prerogatives. 9 Transigent ultramontanism was nurtured in the Ghent seminary 5 Thomas J. Shelley, "Mutual Independence: Church and State in Belgium: ," Journal of Church and State 32 (1990): 49. Shelley notes in a separate article that the constitution escaped papal condemnation partly because Cardinal Sterckx, assisted by Pierre- François-Xavier de Ram and Liège s bishop, Cornelius van Bommel, skillfully defended the Belgian constitution to the Holy See and because the papacy happened to be vacant during the debates leading up to the constitution s adoption. See Thomas J. Shelley, "Belgian Bishops and Papal Diplomats, ," The American Benedictine Review 43, no. 1 (1992): Shelley, "Mutual Independence," Vincent Viaene, Belgium and the Holy See from Gregory XVI to Pius IX ( ): Catholic Revival, Society and Politics in 19th Century Europe, KADOC Studies, vol. 26 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2001), Ibid., Ibid., 38.

72 43 of the1820s and 1830s; Viaene describes it as a pragmatic and minimalist version of ultramontanism, one held by Catholic insiders of society whose beginning point was a belief in a God-given inequality in humanity and that expressed itself in its support of a king as the center of society and a disgust of popular sovereignty. 10 Intransigent liberal Catholicism was marked by a belief that the new social liberties offered the best seedbed and greatest hope for religion to flourish by allowing it to grow in a milieu characterized by the adulthood of humanity; they gathered under the banner: Dieu et la liberté. 11 Finally, transigent liberal Catholicsim, as Viaene describes it, was a more conservative development from its intransigent version. Its adherents found some of the new social liberties to be anarchic and in need of moderation; they felt that too much ground had been granted to liberty and democracy too little to the givens of history. 12 The newly reestablished Catholic University of Louvain was the chief ideological supply station of transigent liberal-catholicism during the 1840s. 13 Importantly, Viaene notes that all of these Catholic responses, even with their differences, remained something of a conservative whole and were as a body, still and all distinct from liberalism with its more radical understanding of individual rights and the preeminence of the state in guiding social progress. 14 Unifying political Catholicism of whichever strand was the belief that post-revolutionary society could be redeemed by the Church. 15 This belief was at the root of the Catholic revival in Belgium that Viaene proposes was one of the most important cultural phenomena of the first half of the 19th century. 16 Both intransigent ultramontanism, which was experiencing a renewed ascendancy in the 1850 s and transigent liberal-catholicism, (at the same time in decline 17 ), would have had their influence on the attitudes of the College s first rectors and professors and on the students themselves, at least the large number of Belgian seminarians who came to Louvain from places like Ghent, Mechlin or Bruges. For just one sign of the complex field upon which the College was about to be founded, Cardinal Engelbert Stercxk 18 of 10 Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., 112, Ibid., Ibid. 17 Ibid., Sterckx, Engelbert ( ), was born in Ophem, studied in Vilvorde then Louvain and completed his seminary formation in Mechlin. He was ordained a priest of the Mechlin

73 44 Mechlin, Bishop Louis-Joseph Delebecque 19 of Ghent and Bishop Jean-Baptiste Malou 20 of Bruges were consulted about the possibility of the foundation of the missionary college in Louvain. 21 All gave their approval (see below), but Sterckx is identified by Viaene as being very close to the intransigent liberal-catholic camp 22 while Delebecque and Malou were firmly in that of the transigent ultramontanists. 23 Moreover, important personages in the University of Louvain like Charles Périn 24 and the university s first rector, Pierre François Xavier de Ram, 25 were defining the character of the newly refounded university, both being transigent liberal-catholics. 26 Archdiocese in 1815 and was appointed and consecrated as archbishop of Mechlin in He was made a cardinal in See A. Simon, Le Cardinal Sterckx et son temps ( ) (Wetteren: Éditions Scaldis, 1950). Also see The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church: Sterckx, 28 December Delebecque, Louis Joseph ( ), was a teacher at the St. Barbara College and dogma professor at the seminary in Ghent becoming its president in He was named the 21st bishop of Ghent, serving there from 1838 until his death. He combated the doctrines of Lammenais and was known for his closeness to the Holy See. See: Biographie Nationale 80 (1959), Paul Legrain, ed., Le Dictionnaire des Belges (Brussels: Paul Legrain, 1981), Malou, Jean-Baptiste ( ), was born in Ypres, West Flanders. After having studied at the Jesuit college of Saint-Anheul, and thereafter in the German college of Rome he entered the seminary of Bruges. He was a professor of dogmatic theology at the theology faculty of the University of Louvain from 1837 until In 1848, he was named coadjutor bishop of Bruges. He succeeded to the episcopal throne the following year. See: Dr. Hoeffler, ed., Nouvelle Biographie Générale depuis le temps plus reculés jusqu'a nous jours, vol. 33 (Paris: Mm. Firmín Didot Frères, 1861), John D. Sauter, The American College of Louvain ( ), Recueil de Travaux d'histoire et de Philologie (Louvain: Publications Universitaires de Louvain, 1959), Viaene, Belgium and the Holy See, Ibid., Périn, Henri Charles Xavier ( ), studied law and political economics at the Univeristy of Louvain. In 1844 he was given the Chair of Public Law at the university by the Belgian episcopacy which he later combined with that of political economics. He resigned in He authored such tomes as: Les Economistes, les socialistes et la christianism, (Paris, 1849), Du Progrès material ed du renoncement chrétien, (1850), and De la Richessed dans les societés chrétiennes, (Parish 1861). See Biographie Nationale 80 (1959), de Ram, Pierre François Xavier ( ), was born in Louvain and orphaned as a child. He completed his study of the humanities at the age of sixteen in the seminary of Mechlin. He was ordained a priest in He served as keeper of the diocesan records and professor at the seminary. He wrote extensively of the history of Catholicism in the Low Countries. He was appointed first rector of the restored University of Louvain in 1834, in which position he served for the next thirty years, dedicating himself to the university s progress and development. See Biographie Nationale publiée par L'Académie Royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux- Arts de Belgique, vol. 5 (Bruxelles: Bruylant-Christophe & Cie., 1876). See also Thomas Brechenmacher, Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchlexicon, 31 December Viaene, Belgium and the Holy See,

74 45 And finally, the supposed financier of the College s foundation, Count Felix de Mérode, was also very much a transigent liberal-catholic. 27 More important to the present study than the political-religious discussions among archbishops, noblemen and politicians of Belgium are the actual manifestations of Catholic revival among the various classes of society during the first half of the nineteenth century. Viaene s offers this general description: After a long warming up period, there was therefore a sudden explosion of religious energy in the wake of the Belgian Revolution, which peaked in the early 1840 s. Whereas the country counted 4791 regulars in 1829, their numbers had more than trebled by 1856, surpassing those from the last years of the ancien régime. Old religious institutions were reinvigorated, and a spate of new Catholic organizations came into being around 1840 in order to meet the needs of a modern society. Protestant visitors from Germany and England marveled at this vitality, as they did at the piety of the people. Religious practice rose significantly, both in the countryside and in the city. 28 More specifically, Viaene notes that among the clergy, regulars (those belonging to religious congregations), served as the vanguard of the revival, but also as its officer corps and its baggage train, outnumbering as they did the secular (diocesan) clergy by 2,5 to 1 in The priests of the religious congregations were:... wholly indispensable to Catholic primary and secondary education, to preaching (very important in a society where more than half of the adult population was illiterate) and to charity; they were important auxiliaries for the parish work of the secular clergy and the oeuvres of the laity Mérode, Philipp Felix Balthazar Othan Ghislain (Count of), ( ), was born in Maastricht to one of Belgium s premier noble families having its ancestral roots in the 12th century s King of Aragon and Count of Barcelona, Raimon Béringer. While Belgium was under the control of the Dutch government in the early decades of the 19th century, Felix de Mérode manifested his sympathies with the Belgian national cause and was a signatory to the Petición pour le redressence de griefs. From September 1830, he served in the provisional government of the new nation and due to his influence as head of the Catholic party was a principal in the development of the Belgian constitution. He supported the establishment of the constitutional monarchy. Once the provisional government ceased to function, he served the new government in a variety of positions, including Minister of State without Portfolio (1831), Interim Minster of War (1832) and Minister of Foreign Affairs ( ). See Dr. Hoeffler, ed., Nouvelle Biographie Générale depuis les temps le plus reculés jusqu'a a nous jours, vol. 35 (Paris: Mm. Firmín Didot Frères, 1861), 110. Also see Viaene, Belgium and the Holy See, Viaene, Belgium and the Holy See, Ibid., Ibid.

75 46 Further, Viaene notes: They acted as a kind of clergy of the clergy, leading retreats for secular priests. They were the driving fore behind the domestic missions, which were among the most typical expressions of revival Catholicism in France, the Low Countries and the Rhineland. 31 The number of women belonging to active religious congregations dramatically increased as well. 32 More than half worked in the schools their congregations controlled, giving them a strong hand in formation of the young, both girls and boys. 33 From these positions they had a critical role in fostering vocations to priesthood and religious life among their young charges. The sisters joined their counterparts in the men s congregations in also caring for the sick, the mentally ill, foundlings and orphans and young women working as prostitutes. 34 The work of both men and women religious with the poor was characterized not just by efforts to offer the dole to the poor but to give them new trades and inculcate in them the values of hard work and selfdiscipline necessary to make them productive citizens. 35 And finally, Viaene adds, the regulars took upon themselves much (though far from all) of the responsibility for staffing Belgium s foreign missions, particularly in North America. 36 The secular clergy who manned Belgium s parishes, though... not the main protagonist of the revival, 37 were nevertheless not insignificant in the Catholic revival if for no other reason than that they comprised almost a third of the country s religious personnel. 38 In general, they were described by others as:... pig headed, narrow-minded, and too jealous of their authority; they lacked a solid education and good manners; they indulged in a petty bourgeois lifestyle, in which the card table and the wine cellar figured far too prominently.... But in the eyes of the great majority of his flock, the priest s defects enhanced his moral prestige and made him a more easily approachable figure Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., 178. Viaene notes that the secular presence in the North American missions would grow in importance... after 1857 when Belgian and American bishops created the American College in Louvain for training Belgian, Dutch and German seculars to serve the spiritual needs of new wave of European immigrants. 37 Ibid., Ibid., Ibid.,

76 47 Nevertheless, some secular priests served as leading lights in the revival, most notable among them, Guido Gezelle, 40 the movement s poet laureate, and the already-mentioned Flemish missionary to Kentucky, Charles Nerinckx. 41 The revival was moved along by a third important force: the Catholic laity themselves. Viaene states: Lay apostolate was an invention of the 19th century. For the first time in history, eminent Catholics felt they could do more for the church as laymen than as priests. 42 The rise of organized lay ministry was the laity s own response to the absence of the clergy in some of the most depressed areas of society:... the clerical deficit among the proletariat of the sprawling great cities and industrial centres, the stepchildren of the Catholic revival.... Clergymen eschewed the squalid jungle of back-alleys and beluiken, and this naturally bred resentment against a religious apparatus allied with the establishment. 43 Chief among the new lay-organizations was the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul that was particularly dedicated to ministry among the poor of the cities. 44 Though imported from France, the Society took on a particular character in Ghent, where it developed... an encompassing system of charity to guide the Catholic worker from cradle to grave. 45 Belgium. The Ghent model was thereafter adopted throughout much of Viaene warns that it must not be presumed that such social activity as a key element of the Catholic revival was limited to the ultramontanes alone for the liberal Catholics spiritually shared with the ultramontanes a fundamental... desire to install 40 Gezelle, Guido ( ), was born in Bruges. He studied for the priesthood in the major seminary of Bruges and was ordained in He taught classes at the minor seminary of Roeselare, then served for one year as assistant director of the English College ( ) followed by service as a professor in the Belgian-Anglo Seminary ( ). In 1865, he was named pastor of Sint-Walburgis parish. Throughout his adult life, he produced poetry composed in his native Flemish language (which he saw as distinct from Dutch) and was a forerunner of the Flemish literary revival. He died in Bruges in See M. Van Der Plas, Mijnheer Gezelle, biografie van een priester-dichter ( ), (Tielt Lannoo, 1998). Lieve Gevers, Bewogen Jeugd (Leuven: Davidsfonds, 1987), , Also see Guido Gezelle: Korte Biografie, 41 Viaene, Belgium and the Holy See, Ibid., Ibid. 44 Ibid., Ibid.

77 48 the social kingdom of Christ. The revival was therefore a force of attraction welding political Catholicism together, not a factor of division. 46 The shared spirituality of the revival was focused not just on renewal of the Catholic Church, but upon making... society whole again in word as in deed. 47 A further element in the makeup of the Catholic revival that formed the spiritual context of mid-century Belgian Catholicism was what Viaene describes as its romantic sensibility. 48 More specifically, revivalist piety was dominated by the notion of the expiation of social sin through self-sacrifice. 49 Joseph De Maistre was the most influential exponent of this dark romantic pathos 50 in which the individual sufferings of the pious person were seen as redressing the communal sin of all society. This spirituality was essential to the heroic self-understanding of the ecclesia militans of the 19th century. 51 developed in Belgium. It also formed the spiritual basis of the missionary movement as it Calling for the expiation of the sins of a post-revolutionary present, the revival offered a sense of reconciliation with the past, betrayed in a thousand minute ways by Catholic no less than liberal elites. Often, it did not just profess submission to the teachings of the Church, but claimed fidelity to the memory of mankind, to a universal ancestral wisdom passed on from generation to generation, not as a subject of dispute, but as a living tradition. With a relatively open attitude of mind, Catholics sought for echoes of a primitive revelation and prophecies of Christianity in the creeds of antiquity and of the East.... The search for the primitive traditions of humankind stimulated interest in non- European cultures and enhanced the appeal of overseas missions. 52 Viaene cites the missiology of Charles Nerinckx as an example of the expiatory theology played out on a more global stage: Like others around him, Nerinckx called for a Roman Catholic riposte to the desolate spectacle of Napoleon s wars of conquest, and believed the Low Countries had a special role to play in this spiritual reconquista after having been in the vanguard of the struggle against Jansenism, Enlightenment and Revolution. But spreading the faith was a universal affair. Overseas missions had to be an integral part of the 46 Ibid., Ibid., Ibid. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid., Ibid., 191.

78 49 reaffirmation of religion in Europe, and the Low Countries owed it to themselves to compensate in the New World for the humiliations suffered by religion in the Old. 53 The Catholic revival provoked reaction from the liberal or leftist side of society wherein anticlericalism became more militant 54 and the case for positivism and the civilizing mission of the State 55 made more aggressively. Part and parcel of this reaction was a disdain for Catholic schools in favor of the morally and civilly superior 56 public schools which served to propagate the ideas which are the lifeblood of the modern world, to unite all classes of citizens by regenerating them at the source of science In the mindset of the Belgian liberals, Catholic schools were for cretins. 58 To this, Bishop Delebeque in Ghent, followed by Malou in Bruges, wrote controversial pastoral letters against the public school system. 59 Added to the socio-religious mix was the spice of apocalyptic sensibilities; at the midpoint of the century increasingly ultramontane Catholicism in Belgium was feeling, in Viaene s words, beleaguered by a partly elusive rationalist campaign which was jeopardizing the gains of previous decades Into this defensive attitude towards the rationalists came a felt need for the church to do more than spread the faith and perform good works; it also had to fight unbelief. 61 And in this fight, Viaene adds: The Devil became quite fashionable again in Catholic circles, the apocalyptic scenario self-evident. The final battle had started, between Christ and Antichrist, between the Church and all heresies confounded in indifference. 62 Henri de Mérode 63 saw the French Revolution as having broken the sixth seal, inaugurating a series of final divine lessons which would close the circle of time Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid. 57 Ibid. 58 Ibid. 59 Ibid., 582. These bishops ideological influence would be felt in the later ministry of Charles John Seghers in the Vancouver Island and Oregon City dioceses. Seghers often railed against public schools just as they did decades before him. 60 Ibid., Ibid. 62 Ibid. 63 Mérode, Henri Marie Ghislain, (Count of), ( ), another member of the noble Mérode family, Henri was known more for his predilection for a life of peaceable study of philosophy and history rather than the agitations of politics. After the revolution of 1830, he

79 50 Viaene also points to the writings of the future cardinal archbishop of Mechlin, Victor Dechamps, 65 as typical of this apocalyptic preoccupation. 66 Viaene offers the following summation of the significance of the Catholic revival in Belgian society: Despite fairly wide cracks behind its spotless neogothic façade, the Catholic revival remains an impressive edifice. I would not hesitate to call it the most important socio-cultural fact of Belgian history during the first half of the 19th century. As such it was the hidden protagonist of the turn taken by political developments in the 1840s. It welded together the different segments of the upper classes who found each other in political Catholicism; the patriciate, the aristocracy and the clergy. All of these experienced the great changes wrought by the French and Industrial Revolutions as a setback, a problem or a challenge rather than an opportunity, even if they often adapted with brio. The revival provided them with a common cultural idiom, structures of sociability and solid building blocks for their ideology. Of even greater importance was that it effectively linked theses notables to the peasants and to the artisans of Belgium s many small cities, for whom the process of modernization was often a much more vital threat. 67 It was precisely into this religious, social and political milieu that the American College was about to be founded and within which most of its students would have been formed. was a member of the Belgian senate and was reelected in See Hoeffler, ed., Nouvelle Biographie, 35, Viaene, Belgium and the Holy See, Dechamps, C.SS.R, Victor Auguste Isidore ( ), born in Melle, he studied at the seminary of Tournai and the University of Mechlin (later at Louvain). He was ordained a priest in 1834 and entered the Congregation of the Most Holy Redemptor in Consecrated bishop of Namur in 1865, then appointed as Archbishop of Mechlin in He was created a cardinal in See Maurice Becqué, Le Cardinal Dechamps, 2 vols. (Louvain: Bibliotheca Alphonsiana, 1956). Also see The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church, Dechamps, 28 December Viaene, Belgium and the Holy See, 573. See: Victor Dechamps, Le Christ et les Antechrists dans les écritures, l'histoire et la conscience (Tournai: H. Casterman, 1858). It is an aspect of the Catholic revival that would play a particularly significant role in explaining the missionary zeal of at least one Flemish missionary from The American College in the North Pacific Coastal region, Charles John Seghers, as will be discussed in a further chapter. Likewise, the Catholic ill will towards public schools propagated in Ghent and Bruges would be one of the enduring characteristics of his episcopal ministry in North America. 67 Viaene, Belgium and the Holy See, 200.

80 51 Missionary Europe The complexity of Catholic self-understanding in Belgium after independence and well into the middle of the nineteenth century is just one indicator that there, as elsewhere in Europe, the challenges of the modern world were being met by the church at every level of its life. As part of this response to a new age, the impulse not only to defend but also to extend the true faith, as noted earlier by Stephen Neill and Roger Aubert, found extraordinary new energy. As to the specific factors at work in this missionary renewal, Aubert offers the following survey and points first to factors extraneous to the Church itself: Europe in fact was in the grip of an exploration fever which was gradually rekindling the interest of Europeans in distant lands 68 Further, the new availability of oversees transport benefited the foreign missions, the opening of previously closed nations to Christian missionaries, Europe s increasing colonialization of distant lands which brought with it new stability, order and ease of communication all helped set the stage for renewing Europe s missionary outreach. 69 Aubert points as well to others within the Church itself as having even more significance than the extraneous ones just mentioned: Here the most decisive factor was the remarkable growth in the manpower available for missionary work. The revival of religious life which had been a phenomenon of the early nineteenth century was now bearing fruit. Year by year the orders and congregations were able to assign more and more their members to missionary duties, bringing old fields back into cultivation and exploiting new ones. More significant still, the years following 1850 saw the foundation of a whole series of institutes expressly designated for missionary work. 70 Aubert notes the following as well: Also being tapped, with very important consequences for the future, were sources of manpower which reinforced Catholic missions not only in quantity but also in quality. Missionary work in the past had been almost exclusively in the hands of priests. But missions were now being joined, in ever increasing numbers, by religious who were not priests, member of institutes of Teaching Brothers, Brothers Hospitalliers and the like. More novel still, women religious were making their appearance, enlarging the trails so courageously blazed by the celebrated Mother Javaouhey around Aubert and others, The Church in a Secularised Society, Ibid., Ibid., 387.

81 52 Aubert adds to his survey one further development that enabled the missionary expansion of the second half of the 19 th century: The missionary drive of the nineteenth century derived its strength from the fact that it involved the whole Christian people. Communities attuned to the challenges of a world awaiting evangelism were apt to produce vocations in plenty. Missionary foundations could multiply, secure in the knowledge that the dedication of the missionaries was supported, spiritually and materially, by the Christian people at large. Charities in aid of missions, the most important of which date back to the early years of the century, set up branches in one Christian country after another and were joined by new ones but still more to be stressed is their influence in creating a genuine interest in missions among Christians at large. In this connection the countless magazines and journals put out by the charitable and missionary organizations played at the time an important role. They could be accused, it is true, on tingeing the interest in the missions with too great a dash of exoticism and still more of helping to disseminate a pessimistic picture of native peoples and their non-christian religious beliefs. Yet many of them were still the prime means of widening the horizons of Christian Europe. It was through their agency that adults and children, laymen and priests, the learned and the unlearned, were made aware of their missionary responsibility in respect of that other world with which the West was now making contact. 72 More specifically, in Belgium, the attitude of diocesan bishops towards missionary vocations from among their own presbyterates significantly improved due to the support of Pius IX for missionary activity combined with an ample number of young seminarians and priests at these bishops disposal. As Viaene writes: If Gregory s policy ensured a considerable, sustained and centrally coordinated financial effort by Belgian Catholics for the universal mission, it was only under Pius IX that this came to be matched by a more numerous and better focused involvement of Belgian missionaries as such. In part this was of course the fruit of the activity of the Oeuvre de la Propagation de la Foi, and of what one might call the De Smeteffect ; but the relative surplus of clergymen after the massive expansion of the1830s and 1840s was another crucial factor. Whereas missionary vocations had to overcome the resistance of bishops and provincial superiors before 1850, they were now more often welcomed and even encouraged. 73 That De Smet-effect was not insignificant. As has already been discussed in some length, in the particular case of the native peoples of North America, there was no greater promoter of interest in and concern among Europeans, and particularly Belgians, 71 Ibid., Ibid., Viaene, Belgium and the Holy See, 565.

82 53 in the mid nineteenth century than Peter John De Smet whose numerous writings 74 and personal presentations in Europe fired Catholic imagination and fueled the Church s popular sense of mission. The visits to Europe of pioneering bishops like F. N. Blanchet further stoked the missionary fire. They all, of course, made a point during their travels of visiting seminaries to tell their tales to the young men studying there and hopefully recruit at least some of them for their missions in the North America. It was, then, into a profoundly mission oriented Catholic culture that an American missionary seminary was soon to be planted Antoine De Smet s bio-bibliographic citation for Jean Pierre De Smet runs to over four pages. See Antoine De Smet, Voyageurs belges aux États-Unis du XVII e siècle à 1900: Notices biobibliographiques (Brussels: Patrimoine de la Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, 1959), Viaene, Belgium and the Holy See, 178, 566.

83 CHAPTER III AN AMERICAN MISSIONARY COLLEGE IN BELGIUM The Rapid Growth of Catholicism in America As the early decades of the 19th century unfolded the need for European missionaries in North America became increasingly critical not only in wilderness regions like the North Pacific Coast, but throughout the continent. The extraordinary social change taking place was obvious even to those living within the century; in 1877, John O Kane Murray recorded the following: But it was especially from 1840 to 1850 that the American Church received an astonishing increase in numbers. During that decade the immigration to our country was composed annually [emphasis in original] of about two hundred thousand Irish and eighty thousand Germans. The great majority of the former nationality were Catholics; while we may count, perhaps, one-half of the latter as belonging to the true faith. 1 words: With greater hindsight, Jay Dolan characterizes the general situation in these During the nineteenth century, the United States exerted a powerful influence on the peoples of Europe. As historian Philip Taylor put it, it acted like a distant magnet, and in the course of a hundred years, , the United States attracted 33.6 million immigrants to its shores.... Walking through city neighborhoods, nineteenth-century visitors marveled at the number of languages spoken and in some mining and mill towns one might find a dozen ethnic groups inter-mixed in more or less the same neighborhood. Such diversity of peoples was unparalleled, and it has contributed to the well-founded legend that America is indeed a nation of 1 John O'Kane Murray, A Popular History of the Catholic Church in the United States, Fourth, Revised and Enlarged ed. (New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Company, 1877), 260.

84 55 immigrants. A stunning example of such diversity of people was the American Catholic Church.... Immigration brought millions of people from diverse cultures and backgrounds to these shores, and this posed a mighty challenge to both nation and church. People of different nationalities were mixed together, and somehow they and to adjust to the American way of life while preserving their own unique heritages. Unity had to be achieved in the midst of diversity. For the Catholic Church, this would prove to be a delicate balancing act, but its continued existence in the United States meant accomplishing this feat. 2 More specifically, James T. Fisher reports that...in 1826 there were approximately 250,000 Roman Catholics in the United States out of a total population of 11 million ; but over the next three decades, however, the Catholic population would skyrocket to over 3 million. 3 As those Catholic immigrant communities expanded, so too did need for clergy, but the number of priests to support these Catholic communities remained dangerously low; according to Patrick W. Carey, in 1830 there were 232 priests in the United States and by 1866, the number was ten times greater but still only 2,770 to serve the entire Catholic population of the country, by then in the millions. 4 European Catholics would have been aware that large numbers of their family members, neighbors and parishioners had left or were intending to leave for North America. And they would have known from published reports, speeches given by visiting hierarchs and missionaries, and perhaps most poignantly from family correspondence of the difficult religious situation being faced by the immigrant there. At mid-century not only did the immigrants to North America find themselves on the bottom socio-economic rung of their new homeland, they found themselves the objects of severe anti-papist prejudice and nativist violence. 5 Concern for their religious wellbeing would have been high, both among the hierarchy in the United States who had to care for them as best they could and among their co-religionists in Europe. It is in this wider context of the rapid expansion of the North American church that the notion of 2 Jay P. Dolan, The American Catholic Experience: A History from Colonial Times to the Present (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992), James T. Fisher, Communion of Immigrants: A History of Catholics in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), Patrick W. Carey, The Roman Catholics in America (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1993), James Hennesey, S.J., American Catholics: A History of the Roman Catholic Community in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981),

85 56 establishing an American missionary seminary in Europe found fertile ground to grow into a concrete reality. First Steps towards Foundation of The American College For some time bishops from throughout North America had been trekking back to Europe in search of clergy to serve in their dioceses because that is where young seminarians and priests, not to mention religious women, ready and willing to serve the Catholics in America, were to be found. This was certainly the case for the dioceses of Detroit and Louisville. Both dioceses had benefited from the service of Belgian clergymen among their presbyterate since virtually the beginning of the nineteenth century, among them, of course, Charles Nerinckx, who had been laboring in Kentucky since In 1850, the diocese of Louisville was given a new bishop, Martin J. Spalding, 6 a native of Kentucky and himself baptized by Charles Nerinckx. Immediately feeling the pinch of insufficient clergy in his new see and having a strong bias against the French Sulpicians who had been serving the seminaries in Baltimore 7 M. J. Spalding soon decided to follow the example of many other American bishops and travel to Europe in 6 Martin John Spalding ( ), was born in Washington County, Kentucky of a Catholic family having its origins in Maryland. He was ordained a priest by Bishop Flaget of Bardstown in 1834 and appointed vicar general in In 1848 he was named Flaget s coadjutor upon Flaget s death in 1850 was named bishop of (by then) the diocese of Louisville. In 1864 he was appointed archbishop of Baltimore where he served until his death. See: John Lancaster Spalding, The Life of the Most Rev. M. J. Spalding, D.D., Archbishop of Baltimore (New York and San Francisco: Christian Press Association Publishing Co., 1873). Thomas W. Spalding, Martin John Spalding: American Churchman, Washington, D.C., Catholic University of America Press, 1973). Martin John Spalding is to be distinguished from his nephew, John Lancaster Spalding, one of the first students from America to study at the American College and later named bishop of the Diocese of Peoria. Hereafter, if the full name is not used, the initials of each will be indicated to distinguish the two Bishop Spaldings. 7 Joseph M. White, in his history of American seminaries, writes of Spalding s attitude towards the Sulpicians once he was made archbishop of Baltimore in 1864: Spalding, a Kentucky native, was a frequent critic of foreign clergy and religious orders who clung to European ways in their work in the United States. He regarded the French Sulpicians as old fogies and sought to change their foreign ways. James M. White, The Diocesan Seminary in the United States: A History from the 1780s to the Present (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), 40. It may be fair to presume that this propensity to disapprove of the Sulpicians manner of seminary formation was a factor in Spalding s enthusiasm for establishing an American seminary in Belgium.

86 57 search of priests. After a less than favorable impression of the French church, he moved on to Belgium, the land of his mentor, Charles Nerinckx. Belgium impressed him much more favorably than had France. From Mechlin on January 7, 1852 he wrote to Archbishop Francis Patrick Kenrick: 8 I have visited several of the Belgian dioceses, and I have seen much in this truly Catholic country to console and edify me. I have every prospect of success in the principal object of my journey; and, should my anticipations be realized, I hope, with the divine blessing, to be able to place my diocese on a new footing. 9 That new footing of course meant new priests, brothers and nuns; he went to Belgium from France... with the hope that the country which had given Father Nerinckx to Kentucky, would be willing to send other apostles to continue the noble work which he had begun. 10 It seems that in going there he had something new in mind, a proposal that would greatly assist him and other bishops in recruiting their European clergy. While in Belgium he came to know the professors of the University of Louvain, whom he admired for their faith, humility and learning 11 as well as the primate of Belgium, Cardinal Sterckx of Mechlin. 12 In the same letter to Kenrick noted above, M. J. Spalding writes of his conversation with Sterckx proposing to him the idea of a missionary college for America in Louvain. The notion met with the cardinal s approval: I dined to-day with Cardinal Sterckx, a most holy and learned prelate. Conversing with his eminence on the utility of establishing here a Missionary College, he entered warmly into the project, and promised to second it with all his influence, which is very great, apart from his high position. He suggested the following plan, of the 8 Kenrick, Francis Patrick ( ), born in Dublin and ordained in 1821, he immigrated to Bardstown KY in response to an appeal by Bishop Flaget. He was named coadjutor bishop of Philadelphia in 1830 and archbishop of Baltimore in See Hugh J. Nolan, Francis Patrick Kenrick, First Coadjutorbishop, The History of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, ed. James F. Connelly, (Philadelphia, 1976), Thomas W. Spalding, The Premier See: A History of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, , (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989). See also Thomas R. Greene, "Kenrick, Francis Patrick ( )," in The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, ed. Michael and Shelley Glazier, Thomas J. (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1997), Spalding, Life of M. J. Spalding, 162. Also quoted in John D. Sauter, The American College of Louvain ( ), Recueil de Travaux d'histoire et de Philologie (Louvain: Publications Universitaires de Louvain, 1959), Spalding, Life of M. J. Spalding, Sauter, American College, Spalding s meeting with Sterckx is briefly noted in A. Simon s biography of Sterckx: A. Simon, Le Cardinal Sterckx et son temps ( ) (Wetteren: Éditions Scaldis, 1950), 402.

87 58 success of which he entertains no doubt. I lay it before you for your opinion and advice: The college is to be for the education of young men for the American Mission, and is to be established in connection with the University of Louvain, which is in the Archdiocese of Mechlin. The students in the beginning will occupy a rented house, and will have the privilege of attending the courses of study at the university free of charge. The discipline of the college will be under the direction of an American missionary, who will teach English, and exert himself to procure the necessary funds for keeping up the establishment, which, the Cardinal thinks, can be easily realized in Belgium; and this is the opinion of all those clergymen with whom I have conversed on the subject. Students will not be wanting, for in this diocese particularly the number of candidates for the ministry far exceeds the demand for clergymen. Such are the outlines of the plan, which if carried out, will be of great utility to our missions. The studies at Louvain are of a high order; and, perhaps, some of our bishops may send students of talent to perfect their education in this renowned university. The ecclesiastical spirit here is admirable, and the simple piety of the people contrasts strongly with the comparative coldness of Catholics in Protestant countries. A hundred young men educated at Louvain for the American missions! Is not the thought enlivening? And yet, it is very far from impossible; and, if the Cardinal s anticipations be well grounded it may be done with little or no expense to the American prelates. 13 Unfortunately, Archbishop F. P. Kenrick was not so enlivened or convinced of the value of M. L. Spalding s plan or the support of the Belgian primate. Sauter proposes that Kenrick s opposition to the plan was founded on his belief that newly established American seminaries including his own in Baltimore were sufficient to meet the needs of the day. His own preference for American clergy in turn was strongly influenced by his previous unhappy experience with American nativists who strongly opposed the increasing presence in the country of foreigners, and particularly Catholic foreigners. These same nativists had rioted and burned Catholic churches in Kenrick s previous diocese of Philadelphia. 14 Kenrick s brother, Peter R. Kenrick 15, the Archbishop of St. 13 Spalding, Life of M. J. Spalding, 162. See also: Sauter, American College, Sauter, American College, Kenrick, Peter Richard ( ), was born in Dublin and ordained a priest of Dublin in At the request of his brother, Francis Patrick, he came to Philadelphia in 1833 where he served as cathedral rector and vicar general. In 1841, he was named coadjutor bishop of St. Louis becoming bishop in He was a vocal opponent of the definition of papal infallibility at the First Vatican Council. See S. J. Miller, Peter Richard Kenrick, Bishop and Archbishop of St. Louis, , Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia, 84 (1973), Also see Martin G. Towey, "Kenrick, Peter Richard ( )," in The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, ed. Michael Glazier and Thomas J. Shelley (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1997),

88 59 Louis, concurred with his older sibling in Baltimore and joined him in opposing the idea of an American missionary college in Louvain. By 1854, pressure was building for the establishment of an American College in Rome and the two projects found themselves in competition for episcopal attention; the strong support of Pope Pius IX for a Roman Americanum left the Louvain proposal losing even further support in the United States. Nevertheless, the plan to establish the Roman college failed to come to fruition due to lack of support from the American bishops. 16 An exception to the apathy towards both colleges was Bishop Michael O Connor 17 of Pittsburg, who supported both projects; just prior to traveling himself to Europe managed to pry out of Archbishop F. P. Kenrick a letter of support addressed to Cardinal Sterckx which Bishop O Connor planned to present to the Cardinal in Mechlin. 18 The letter of course would be used to communicate to Cardinal Sterckx a sense of support for the project from the American hierarchy. Kenrick later disavowed O Connor s interpretation of his letter and maintained his opposition to the Louvain college by writing to M. L. Spalding that he had only been gratifying a friend without any likelihood of his being able to accomplish what interested him so deeply. 19 The Louvain project received a breath of new life with the entrance into the story of the Belgian émigré, Peter Paul Lefevere. 20 Lefevere was appointed apostolic administrator of Detroit in 1841; the 37-year old found himself leader of an undeveloped diocese that was already experiencing substantial waves of immigration from Europe. 16 Sauter, American College, O Connor, Michael ( ), was born in Queenstown, Ireland and ordained a priest in In 1838 he moved to Philadelphia where he was assigned to the seminary and later served as pastor and vicar general. In 1843 he was named first bishop of Pittsburgh until his resignation due to failing health in Following his resignation he entered the Society of Jesus. See Henry A. Szarmicki, The Episcopate of Michael O Connor, First Bishop of Pittsburgh, , Doctoral Dissertation, Catholic University of America, William Stang, "The American College of the Immaculate Conception at Louvain, Belgium," American Ecclesiastical Review New Series VI (XVI), no. 3 (1897): 257. Stang makes no mention of Kenrick s later retraction of his change of heart regarding the Louvain college. 19 Sauter, American College, 35. Sauter gives the source of the quotation from Kenrick as a letter written by F. P. Kenrick to M. J. Spalding, Baltimore, February 28, Lefevere, Peter ( ), was born in Roeselare, immigrated to the United States in 1828 and was ordained a priest in He was named bishop of Zela and appointed administrator of the diocese of Detroit in See Joseph A. Griffin, The Contribution of Belgium to the Catholic Church in America ( ), Studies in American Church History, vol. 13 (Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America, 1932), Also see Antoine De Smet, Voyageurs Belges aux États-Unis du XVII siècle à 1900: Notices Biobibliographiques (Brussels: le Patrimoine de la Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, 1959).

89 60 Since the Diocese of Detroit had been erected only nine years previously, it was the apostolic task of Bishop Lefevere to transform a wilderness into a flourishing diocese at a time when waves of immigration were rapidly swelling the population and for this he needed missionaries. 21 It was not long before he managed to recruit a number of fellow Belgians to service in Detroit, among them Peter Kindekens. Kindekens was made pastor of the cathedral parish and was responsible for designing and laying the cornerstone of the new cathedral in Detroit in 1845; he also served as the founding rector of the diocesan seminary, St. Thomas, in Kindekens was the next to travel to Belgium on behalf of his bishop looking for priests. In 1851 he returned with Father James Pulsers in tow. 23 He subsequently served as Vicar General in the diocese. In , Lefevere himself traveled to Belgium and returned to Detroit with two new priests, one of whom was John De Neve. 24 In April 1856, Peter Kindekens was sent back to Europe, this time to Rome, in an effort on the part of Bishop Lefevere to resolve a dispute with the Redemptorists within his diocese. Added to his mission by Archbishop F. P. Kenrick was the task of finding a suitable building for the proposed Roman American College. Kindekens found that the occupation of Rome by the French army made the acquisition of a building very unlikely and so the possibility of establishing an American seminary there impossible for the time being. Before finally returning to Detroit Kindekens left Rome for Belgium in search of more priests for his diocese. Upon his return to Detroit, he sent out a circular letter to the bishops of the United States. In it he reported to the bishops: I found that not only is it impossible at present, but that it will probably remain impossible for some time to come, to establish such an institution in the Holy City. In point of fact, the Holy Father assured me that, under present circumstances (the occupation of Rome by the French, etc.) he could not say when it would be in his power to assign a suitable building for the purpose Sauter, American College, Griffin, Contribution, Sauter, American College, Griffin, Contribution, 170. Little did Kindekens, De Neve or Pulsers know that one day, sooner than later, each would return to Louvain in service to the as yet unfounded American College. 25 Kindekens to A. Blanc, November 7, 1856, University of Notre Dame Archives, VI-1-K-6, New Orleans. The same text is found in handwritten form in: Liber primitivus de initio Collegii Americani Immac. Concept. B. M. Virgini, Archives of The American College (Louvain: 1857), 1. See also: J. Van der Heyden, The Louvain American College: (Louvain: Fr. & R. Ceuterick, 1909), Stang, "American College," 256. This document is reprinted in full

90 61 Kindekens s report then takes a sharp turn in a new direction: On my return passage through Belgium, I learned that an earnest wish prevailed with persons of distinction to establish there a College for the foreign Missions. I determined at once to secure the fruits of their happy dispositions for the missions of the United States with the following success: 1. I obtained a promise from the Count Felix de Mérode of the sum of between 50,000 and 60,000 francs towards founding a College for the Missions in the United States, in any city of Belgium of my choice. 2. His Eminence the Cardinal Archbishop of Malines, and several other Prelates with whom I had the honor to speak on the subject, assured me of their warmest sympathies and promised their cooperation. 3. A subscription in aid of the foundation of the establishment will be opened in the columns of the Catholic Journals of Belgium, as soon as I can assure them that the Right Rev. Bishops of the United States (or some of them) are earnestly engaged in promoting the good work. 4. The Rector of the University of Louvain (the city selected for the College) has promised his aid, and is prepared to grant all we may reasonably require of the University, to secure the success and prosperity of the contemplated institution. From the above, Your Lordship will easily perceive that the object of the institution in Belgium would be, 1st, to serve as a nursery of properly educated and tried clergymen for our Missions; and 2nd, to provide the American Bishops with a College to which some at least of their students might be sent to acquire a superior ecclesiastical instruction and a solid clerical training, without much expense, as the College will require no other Professors than those for the English and German language. 26 Response to Kindekens s circular from the episcopacy was not heartening. There are eight responses held in the archives of the American College, that of Mathias Loras, 27 bishop of Dubuque, is typical: in: John Tracy Ellis, ed., Documents of American Catholic History, 2 vols., vol. I (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1987), Also see the full text in: John A. Dick, "The American College of Louvain," in The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, ed. Michael Glazier and Thomas J. Shelley (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1997), Ibid. 27 Loras, Mathias ( ), was born in Lyons, France and ordained a priest a priest in Lyon in His family was a wealthy one belonging to the French bourgeois; his father was executed during the French Revolution when he was just ten weeks old. He was a close friend of Jean Vianney. He led the French seminary at Merimieux and later that of l Argentière. In 1828, he left France for the United States where he served in the Diocese of Mobile until he was named the first bishop of Dubuque in He began the diocese with just four priests and three churches but by the time he died in 1858, he had fifty churches, forty-seven missions and thirty-eight priests in the diocese. See William E. Wilkie, "Loras, Mathias ( )," in The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, ed. Michael Glazier and Thomas J. Shelley (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1997).

91 62 In answer to your circular I cannot say much about the erection of a new college in Belgium for the U.S. I leave the decision to wiser men. I say only that I cannot provide much help from poor Iowa. 28 M. L. Spalding continued his efforts to win over Archbishop F. P. Kenrick of Baltimore, writing to him in February 1857, I cannot see why Belgium should not have a missionary college, like Ireland, France and Italy, or why we should not profit by the abundant missionary zeal of her clergy. 29 On February 4, 1857, Spalding and Lefevere addressed their own circular letter to the archbishops and bishops of the country presenting to them a lengthy prospectus for the Louvain college and petitioning them for support for the project. We take the liberty to request that if you should approve the general objects and regulations of the College, and desire to become one of its Patrons, you should have the kindness to signify the same to the Bishop of Detroit, at as early a date as possible as the Rector proposes to leave for Europe early in March, and it will be highly important to his success that he should have the donation of as many American prelates as possible. Should you feel inclined to contribute towards the foundation of the College, you will please to specify the amount, that the Rector may be able to calculate his resources. The eight articles of the Prospectus will indicate the benefits accruing to contributors. We also beg to mention, as an evidence of our own confidence in the advantages likely to result from the proposed College, that we have each agreed to contribute one thousand dollars toward its establishment. Should you desire to adopt any student according to the ninth article, you will please instruct the Rector accordingly. 30 The bishop of Albany, John McCloskey, 31 had responded to Kindekens s November 1856 circular with a request for more detailed information about the proposed college; encouraged by M. J. Spalding and Lefevere s further letter, McCloskey wrote to Kindekens on February 18, 1857, I beg to have my name enrolled 28 Mathias Loras (Dubuque) to Peter Kindekens (Detroit), November 11, 1856, Archives of The American College. 29 J. L. Spalding, The Life of the Most Rev. M. J. Spalding, D.D., Archbishop of Baltimore (New York: The Catholic Publication Society, 1873), Circular letter of Martin J. Spalding and Peter Paul Lefevere to the Archbishops and Bishops of the United States, February 4, 1857, Liber Primitivus, Also see: Spalding, Life of M. J. Spalding, McCloskey, John ( ), was born in Brooklyn, NY and was ordained a priest in In 1844, he was appointed coadjutor bishop of New York and in 1847 he was named as bishop of Albany. In 1864, he was installed as the second archbishop of New York and in 1875 Pope Pius IX made him the first American cardinal. He served in New York until his death. See Thomas J. Shelley, "McCloskey, John Cardinal ( )," in The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, ed. Michael Glazier and Thomas J. Shelley (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1997),

92 63 among the Patrons of The American College at Louvain for which purpose I subscribe one thousand dollars. 32 Despite M. J. Spalding and Lefevere s words and promise of their own support in the amount of one thousand dollars each no other bishops or archbishops in the country joined them in their initiative. Bishops Spalding and Lefevere proceeded without regard for the measly support they had earned and with the assurance of the financial assistance of the Count Félix de Mérode, Lefevere empowered Father Kindekens to proceed to Belgium and open a house for the reception of students, even though he should find it necessary to begin the work in a rented building. 33 It is clear from the enthusiastic letters and circulars of Spalding, Lefevere and Kindekens that the vision behind their proposed missionary college was inspired by a crying need in their respective dioceses for a substantial increase in clergy. Beyond that basic need, it is important to note that their insistence that it should be located in Belgium revealed a desire that the priests they wanted for their dioceses should be of the most solid Catholic stock: deeply faithful, robustly pious and uncompromising zealous in their sense of mission. These were the qualities that they had experienced in the first Belgian priests to come their way and they wanted more of it. As M. J. Spalding wrote to Archbishop Kenrick in the February 1857 letter: Belgians have been among the very best missionaries we have had in Kentucky, as you know. 34 Lefevere and Spalding were unstinting in their complements towards the church of Belgium and its commonality to that of the United States, writing in their Prospectus: The advantages of such a College are manifold. Belgium is eminently a Catholic Country. The true Ecclesiastical spirit is formed to a high degree of perfection in the Ecclesiastical Seminaries, which there abound. The climate is healthy and similar to our own, while the people are robust in body and mind, industrious and practical in 32 John McCloskey (Albany) to Peter Kindekens (Detroit), February 18, 1857, Archives of The American College. Stang seemed unaware of McClosky s subscription for he wrote, Not a single American prelate, beside the two mentioned, seemed disposed to second the efforts of the noble founders; Stang, "American College," 258. The impression is given in Van der Heyden s history that Kindekens had the financial support of only Lefevere and Spalding; perhaps Kindekens was not aware of Bishop McClosky s offer before departing for Louvain in February 1857; Joseph Van der Heyden, The Louvain American College: (Louvain: Fr. & R. Ceuterick, 1909), 20. Sauter acknowledges McClosky s response and notes that by mid-april Kindekens was counting on $1000 from each of the three bishops; Sauter, American College, 46, Spalding, Life of M. J. Spalding, Ibid., 163.

93 64 their character. These qualities render them most efficient missionaries and suit them particularly to the habits and wants of our people, as experience has proved. 35 Concerning another possible obstacle in the minds of their fellow bishops, Spalding and Lefevere went to great effort in the Prospectus to mollify any sentiments that the Louvain college might be in competition with other American seminaries or that proposed for Rome. In doing so they made a case for the distinctiveness of the Louvain seminary as an institution that would perform a unique service for the American church: The founding of this College will not, it is believed, interfere in the least either with the establishment of a college or colleges for higher Ecclesiastical Studies in the United States or with the proposed American College at Rome. Many of the young men educated at Louvain may hereafter be very usefully employed as Professors in our own Seminaries and thus they will rather aid than impede the early development of a taste for such studied in our own country where it is highly important that the standard of Ecclesiastical education should be elevated as speedily as possible. Should the Roman College be established, in accordance with the recommendation of the Holy Father, and the consequent wish of the American Prelates, there would be no clashing between it and the College at Louvain, for the obvious reason that the former would be chiefly for young men sent from America whereas the latter at least in the beginning, would be principally filled with students from Belgium, Holland, France and Germany. 36 The Foundation of the American College in Louvain Kindekens arrived in Belgium sometime in early March of 1857 with the intention of proceeding with the foundation of the American College in Louvain. His travel was hastened by tragic news: his financial patron, Count Félix de Mérode, had suddenly died. The news came to him in a letter from one of Kindekens s other Belgian collaborators in the project, Charles de Stas. Without the usual formalities Stas begins his letter simply: I announce to you very sad news: Monsieur le Compte Félix de Mérode has died Since the funding of the project was now in question, Stas urged Kindekens to proceed to Belgium as soon as he should receive his letter. 38 Upon 35 Liber Primitivus, Ibid., Je vous annonce une bien triste nouvelle: Monsieur le Compte Félix de Mérode est décédé.... De Stas (Brussels) to Kindekens (Denderwindeke), 8 February 1857, University of Notre Dame Archives. 38 Ibid.

94 65 his arrival Kindekens found that the proposed donation to the American College was not in de Merode s will. He thereafter wrote to Bishop McCloskey: The unexpected loss of the kind and generous Count de Merode is no doubt a very serious one to our important undertaking; however, we have as yet some hope that his promise to donate 60,000 frs to the contemplated American College at Louvain will not be repudiated by his children. But should it be we feel confident that there remain enough of generous and charitable persons in Belgium to supply this deficiency. 39 This grave disappointment was not the end of Kindekens s problems; in the same letter, Kindekens noted that he had been informed that Bishop O Connor had sent from Rome word back to the archbishop of Baltimore that the Holy See was not looking favorably upon Kindekens s project and equally bothersome, that some Belgian and French Catholic newspapers were also writing unkindly of the Louvain seminary: As to what Bp. O Connor writes from Europe to the Archbishop of Baltimore I can only say that if such sentiments are held at Rome, they are most probably imported there from the United States. Last year whilst I was in Rome the Holy Father & Cardinal Barnabo conversed with me on the project and they approved highly of it; if they have changed their opinion on the subject it is undoubtedly because the matter has been misrepresented to them.... Some days ago L Emancipation Belge published an extract from the Univers of Paris which was evidently suggested (at least to some extent) by a gentleman from the States, intended to put a damper [emphasis in original] on our undertaking. I had already written a castigating answer to it, but some of our Belgian Bishops and other friends of the institution advised me not to notice it at this moment but to rent at once [emphasis in original] a house at Louvain and make a commencement, not on the 1st October, as at first intended; but immediately, or as soon as possible. To be sure, My Lord, this is a bold step under the present circumstances, especially as I commence to find out that in certain quarters where I expected to meet with help and encouragement I find nothing but indifference, hesitation or even intrigue and opposition! But I am on the field of battle & must die or conquer. 40 Undaunted by these unhappy developments and with only the promise of three thousand dollars from McCloskey, Spalding and Lefevere available to him, Kindekens nevertheless pushed ahead to make the projected college a fact on the ground. The April dates of these letters make it clear that the traditional foundation date of 19 March, 39 Kindekens (Denderwindeke) to McCloskey (Albany), April 20, University of Notre Dame Archives. Virtually the same letter written in French had been sent to Bishop Lefevere a few days earlier. Kindekens s subsequent efforts to gain access to the promised 60,000 franks from the Count s relatives came to naught. 40 Ibid.

95 , the feast of St. Joseph, is a pious fiction. 41 By the end of the century, the fiction had become a historical fact as witnessed by Bishop William Stang s colorful retelling of Kindekens s founding of the college: Half discouraged, the poor priest walked through the winding streets of old Louvain for several days, in search of a suitable place to begin the College, when, one afternoon, as he was passing through the Rue des Moutons, a genial old Flemish pastor accosted him, and after learning the secret of the lonely wanderer, offered his services. Both walked up the Montagne des Carmélites; at the corner of the Rue de Namur they saw in the window of a vacated butcher-shop a printed notice in Flemish: Te Huren (to let). The old clergyman persuaded Father Kindekens to engage the place as the future home of the candidates for the American missions. The house was part of the old Collège d Aulne, founded by the Benedictines in On the feast of St. Joseph, March 19, 1857, the American College of the Immaculate Conception was opened. 42 The New College Takes Shape Declaring a college open and actually getting the institution established, in the case of Kindekens s new American College, were not the same thing. Helpful in understanding the difficulties Kindekens was facing in 1857 is a handwritten document held in the Archives of The American College. Though unsigned, the document is attributed by Van der Heyden to one of the first American students to live at the American College, David Russell of Louisville, an attribution that is almost certainly correct based on the handwriting. Though the first eight pages are missing, the document offers the earliest available narrative of the College s foundation. Of the College s first days and the struggles Kindekens faced, Russell writes: The building purchased had been last used as a tavern. It was an old monastery built, as well as we can ascertain, in the 15th century. It was in a most wretched condition, and had to be repaired immediately. By hard work means enough were collected to place it in a condition to keep out the rain, but there was nothing left to buy a bed, or to provide for the kitchen. Even if eatables could have been bought, the college was yet too poor to afford a servant to prepare them. 41 The foundation of the American College is noted in: Owen Chadwick, A History of the Popes: (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 110. Jean Marie Mayeur, Jacques Gadille, and Christian Chanel, Libéralisme, Industrialisation, Expansion Européene: , ed. Jean Marie Mayeur et al., Histoire du christianisme des origines à nos jours, vol. 11 (Paris: Desclée, 1995), Stang, "American College,"

96 67 Tradition tells us that the indefatigable and undaunted Rector had to avail himself of the charity of a good priest in the city, to whose house he went to sleep and to take his meals, together with the two or three who had devoted themselves to the noble cause and resolved to share his lot. Even a year later, in the autumn of 1858, the college might most aptly have been called a rat-hole [emphasis in the original]. Those who came to visit it, led by curiosity to see such a thing as an American College in Belgium, were frequently moved to tears at the sight of the privations of these worthy men, true imitators of the infant God-man in the stable at Bethlehem. 43 Russsell s notes mention that the building was officially purchased in September 1857, though Kindekens must have taken possession of it in June or July of that year. 44 Sauter identifies the gracious priest mentioned by Russell as Father Van Staelen, the assistant at Saint Quentin s parish, just a few blocks down the Rue de Namur. 45 Kindekens and his companions did not return to their own quarters until October of Sauter documents that the college s first students, priests only, did not arrive before April 16th and perhaps not before July 1st. Seminarians would not arrive before the first of October with the beginning of the new academic year. 47 Even with that delay, the American College, such as it was, had been founded and opened in Louvain two years before its sister college in Rome would finally come into existence. Father Kindekens took up then the task of recruiting students to his college and finding the financial support to maintain the project. The efforts to develop firm 43 David Russell, "Notes on the First Years of The American College, ," Handwritten notes, authorship presumed, p , Archives of The American College, Louvain. The dating of the text is problematic since its opening pages are lost, however on page 39, the beginning of Chapter V, the author indicates that the material up to that point had been written prior to April 1862 and that he was taking up his pen again on July 2, The Russell file in the archdiocesan archives of Louisville was examined by this writer for any similar material, or perhaps the missing pages themselves, but unfortunately, the file held nothing of relevance. Van der Heyden s reliance on this text is evident; see Van der Heyden, American College, 23. Sauter uses the material as well, even though he earlier discounted its value; see Sauter, American College, Russell, "Notes on the First Years of The American College, p It is perhaps a small point, but it should be noted that the name of the street in Louvain where the American College was founded and is yet located is known in Dutch as Naamsestraat and in French as Rue de Namur; there has never been an English equivalent (such as Namur Street ) in common use. The French Rue de Namur was commonly used by the Americans until the late 1960 s and is still current among the college s older alumni. In deference to the majority of 19th and early 20th century sources that make reference to the Rue de Namur I will use the same in the present work though the street since the late-1960 s has been almost exclusively referred to as the Naamsestraat. 46 Sauter, American College, Ibid.,

97 68 financial footings for the college were complex and took much of his time and energy in the ensuing two and a half years as documented in considerable detail by Sauter. 48 Of more importance to the present study are his efforts to find students for the American College. Russell s notes go on to describe the fruit of Kindekens s first efforts: It was in 1857, soon after the purchase of the buildings, that the Rector published the first circular prospectus for Belgium. In this circular he exposed the end for which the college was founded, showed the immense importance of such an institution, and laid down the terms and conditions on which candidates were to be received. 49 This printed circular survives in the University of Notre Dame Archives while a handwritten version is also found in the Liber Primitivus of the American College. In the circular letter Kindekens spelled out for his Belgian readers the need for such an institution and his intentions for meeting that need: These young men will follow the courses at the famous Catholic University of Louvain, and at the same time they will be taught English and German in the College; they will be given a course in practical theology suitable for missionaries, as well as other special matters necessary to make them equal to their holy mission and to the needs of the countries which they will evangelize. The missionaries to be formed will remain secular priests and will be placed by the Bishops in the parishes, in the same manner as in Belgium. We are aware of the great number of European emigrants, who, with the purpose of bettering their material situation, go to the New World; but what is not known sufficiently is that annually several thousands of these emigrants and their children lose the treasure of their faith there. The do not have the only means of preservation against Protestant proselytism and the contagion of infidelity, that is, a sufficient number of priests to administer the aid and consolations of the true religion. The harvest is great, but the laborers are few. To be admitted to The American College, one must have the permission of one s Bishop, and present a certificate of good conduct and of aptitude in studies in theology or philosophy. Those who enter as priests will be sent to America and attached to a diocese as soon as they are judged capable of being put to work. The price of room and board of a year is 500 francs. Each person must provide his own sheets. After six months or a year they can be given back a part of this according to their need and merit, and depending on the resources of the house. Payment of the room and board brings the right to choose a diocese from among those whose Bishops are patrons of The College. One who has received aid will 48 Ibid., Russell, "Notes on the First Years of The American College, p. 12.

98 69 remain at the disposition of the Bishop who has paid for him, or has procured payment for him from a benefactor. 50 Kindekens found some measure of success in his recruitment efforts by personally visiting the local seminaries, such as the one in the Diocese of Ghent from where his first students would hail. As Sauter notes, by way of such personal visits to the seminaries of Belgium, he was best able to interest young men in the missions of America and counter lingering prejudices that priests there faced special moral dangers that should make the young Belgian volunteer think twice before joining the American College and finding themselves soon on their way to this foreign land. 51 with modest success, as David Russell s notes make clear: His efforts met There were eight candidates received the first years, from the 1 st of July 1857 to the 10 th Nov. of he same years. Their names in the order of their entry are John Baptiste Van Der Mergel, Augustus Joseph Lambert, Charles Ryckaert, priests; William Schupmann, a German student of theology; Rev. Peter De Fraine, Rev. John Ghislain 50 Ces jeunes gens suivront les leçons de la célèbre Université catholique de Louvain, et en même temps on leur enseignera dans l établissement les langues anglaise et allemande; on leur donnera un cours de théologie pratique propre aux missionnaires, ainsi que les autres connaissances spéciales, nécessaires pour les mettre à la hauteur de leur sainte mission et des besoins des pays qu ils auront à évangéliser. Les missionnaires, qu il s agit de former, resteront prêtres séculiers, et seront placés par les Évêques dans les paroisses, à l instar de ce qui se fait en Belgique. On connait le nombre immense des émigrants européens qui, dans le but d améliorer leur sort matériel, se rendent au Nouveau-Monde; mais on ne sait pas assez qu annuellement plusieurs milliers de ces émigrants et de leurs enfants y perdent le trésor de la foi. Il leur manque le seul moyen efficace de préservation contre le prosélytisme protestant et la contagion de l infidélité: des prêtres en nombre suffisant pour leur administrer les secours et les consolations de la vraie religion. La moisson y est grande, mais il y a peu d ouvriers. Pour être admis au Collége américain, il faudra avoir obtenu la permission de son Évêque, et fournir des certificats de bonne conducite et d aptitude à l étude de la théologie ou de la philosophie. Ceux qui y entreront après avoir reçu la prêtrise, seront envoyés en Amérique, et agrégés à un diocèse aussitôt qu on les jugera propres à être mis à l oeuvre. Le prix de la pension annuelle es de 500 francs. Chaque pensionnaire doit fournir sa literie. Au bout de six mois ou d un on pourra accorder des remises selon le besoin et le mérite des sujets, et d après les resources de la maison. Le payement de la pension emporte le droit de faire le choix d un diocèse parmi ceux dont les Évêques sont patrons de l établissement. Celui qui aura obtenu des secours, restera à la disposition de l Évêque qui aura payé pour lui, ou fait payer par quelque bienfaiteur. Collège Americain, Circular Letter, University of Notre Dame Archives. Also: Liber Primitivus, 11. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB 51 Sauter, American College,

99 70 Cappon, William Joseph Wiseman of the city of Cork, Ireland, who had already received tonsure in the college of All Hallows and Rev. Francis DeMeulder. 52 By April of 1858, four of these men had already been sent on to North America as missionaries: Van de Mergel and De Fraine were assigned to Detroit and Lambert and Ryckaert went to Louisville. Thus the two sponsoring bishops, Spalding and Lefevere were also the first to receive of the fruits of the college they had been supporting almost by themselves. 53 Louisville. Five months later, Cappon went to Detroit and De Meulder to The college was then left with only two students, Schupman and Wiseman, as the summer vacation period began, not a propitious beginning for the fragile institution. David Russell writes: The Rector had still to rely on such small gifts as he could collect by going from door to door. He was relieved by the summer vacations, at which time all the candidates except Messrs. Weisemann and Schupmann began to prepare for setting out to America. Messrs. Mulder and Cappone set out last of all, on the 14th of September. There now remained but two. One would think this a most favorable opportunity to abandon what seemed a hopeless enterprise. Never, perhaps would a more favorable time for it occur. The two that remained could easily be sent to another place, and the miserable old leaky house closed forever as an American College. But Father Kindekens went on receiving candidates as if he had great revenues at his disposal. 54 By September and November of 1858, the Diocese of Ghent again offered to the American missionary college a sizeable cadre of new candidates with the arrival of Edward Van Lauwe, Charles Vanquekelberge, Leopold Dielemann, 55 and Polydore Fermont. The Archdiocese of Mechlin also contributed its first candidates, Felix D. Jacquemin, Peter J. Ceusters and Alphonse M. Coenen. The roster for the new academic year was completed with the arrival of David Russell from Kentucky and three Prussian students from the Diocese of Paderborn: Frederick Friedland, Francis X. 52 Russell, "Notes on the First Years of The American College, p Ibid., p Ibid., p Dielemann is the first of the missionaries to the North Pacific Coast to be listed in the American College register; curiously the first several students are not listed. See Album Alumnorum Collegii americani Immaculatae Conceptionis B.M.V., Pars 1, Archives of The American College (Louvain: ).

100 71 Luigs and August Durst, a priest who was immediately made Vice-Rector by Kindekens. 56 By December of 1858, another American bishop had signed on as a patron of the new College, William Henry Elder 57 of Natchez, Mississippi. Not long thereafter, in 1859, F. N. Blanchet, desperate for priests and knowing a good thing when he saw one, dug deep in his own impoverished pockets for the funds to become an episcopal patron of the American College as well. 58 Thus began the enduring relationship between the struggling church on the North Pacific Coast of North America and the struggling seminary in Louvain. The enlistment of these new patrons meant of course a new infusion of cash for Kindekens and the continued survival of his project in Belgium. Kindekens for his part continued to lobby the American bishops for their patronage with varying success. Augustine Verot, 59 Vicar Apostolic of Florida, wrote to Kindekens in April of 1859: I have had the misfortune of being appointed Bishop for Florida which is an immense country and has no priests. I feel obliged to visit Europe in order to find some zealous missionaries that would be willing to share my labours in evangelizing the country. I naturally look to your College for assistance. I will visit your city, if I can, toward the beginning of June next, and I write to you now in order to make known to you beforehand the object of my journey, that you may prepare the way for the 56 Sauter, American College, 74. Durst s first letters to Kindekens survive in the Archives of The American College: Durst (Berlin) to Kindekens (Louvain), April 30, Durst (Breslau) to Kindekens (Louvain), May 7, Durst (Vienna) to Kindekens (Louvain), August 9, Elder, William Henry ( ), born in Baltimore, MD, was ordained in 1846 then appointed bishop of Natchez, Mississippi in In 1880 he was named coadjutor bishop of Cincinnati and became archbishop in 1883, where he served until shortly before his death. See James Harold Campbell, New Parochialism: Change and Conflict in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, , Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cincinnati, Also see Don H. Buske, "Elder, William Henry ( )," in The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, ed. Michael Glazier and Thomas J. Shelley (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1997), Sauter, American College, Verot, Augustine ( ), was born in Le Puy and studied at the Sulpician seminary of Issy with Lacordaire and Dupanloup. After ordination he taught at the Sulpician seminary in Baltimore. In 1858 he was named apostolic vicar of Florida. In 1861 he was appointed bishop of Savannah. A noted supporter of the Confederacy in the American Civil War, he was dubbed by some, the rebel bishop. The same could have been said of his role at the First Vatican Council where he argued for pastoral initiatives over dogmatic anathemas. He strongly opposed the declaration of papal infallibility. During the Council (1870) he was transferred to the new diocese of St. Augustine where he served until his death. See Michael V. Gannon, Rebel Bishop: The Life and Era of Augustin Verot, Bruce Publishing Co., Milwaukee, Also see Michael Gannon, "Verot, Augustine ( )," in The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, ed. Michael and Shelley Glazier, Thomas J. and Thomas J. Shelley (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1997),

101 72 success of my visit. I suppose you remember me, as I made your acquaintance in St. Mary s College Baltimore at one of the councils held there. I trust that you will do for me all that it will be in your power to do, for indeed there is no place in greater spiritual destitution than Florida & there is no place which deserves more the consideration and sympathy of missionaries as the country was [sic] originally settled by the Spaniards and runs the risk of falling altogether into the hands of Protestants. 60 There is no indication in the letter of Verot s interest in paying the subscription fee of $1,000, despite his request for assistance from Kindekens. Such is certainly the case with the bishop of Newark, James Roosevelt Bayley. 61 In the first of two letters to Kindekens, he wrote: I have much need in this Diocese, of two good Priests who speak the German Language. If from among those who apply to be received into your College you can find two young men who you think will make useful missionaries, I will very gladly forward you the amount of their Pension at such time in such a manner as you direct. I am glad to hear that your undertaking is becoming so successful it was much needed. 62 Kindekens responded: It will be truly gratifying to me to be able to render my services whatever to your Lordship, I shall therefore avail myself of the first opportunity to receive into our college two young men who I think will make [undecipherable] missionaries for the diocese of Newark.... Your Lordship will readily understand that it is necessary to come to a perfect understanding in certain points in order to avoid any possible misunderstanding. Moreover as the Rt. Rev. Patrons of our College are to have always the preference in the adoption of Students, I cannot always comply, as I would wish, with the requests of those Prelates who are not Patrons. If I were to give you a friendly advice I should 60 Verot (St. Augustine) to Kindekens (Louvain), April 8, 1859, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 61 Bayley, James Roosevelt ( ), was born in New York to a prominent Episcopalian family. In 1840, he was ordained an Episcopal priest. In 1842 while in Rome he was received into the Roman Catholic Church and ordained a Catholic priest in In 1853, he was named fist bishop of Newark. In 1872, he was appointed as archbishop of Baltimore, succeeding Martin J. Spalding, where he served until his death only five years later. See Edwin Vose Sullivan, James Roosevelt Bayley, The Bishops of Newark, , (South Orange, NJ, Seton Hall University Press, 1978), Also see: Thomas W. Spalding, The Premier See: A History of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, , (Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989). Raymond Kupke, "Bayley, James Roosevelt ( )," in The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, ed. Michael and Shelley Glazier, Thomas J. and Thomas J. Shelley (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1997), Bayley (Newark) to Kindekens (Louvain), December 20, 1858, Archives of The American College, Louvain.

102 73 say: Contribute a thousand dollars towards the fund of our college to become a Patron at once. 63 Bayley for his part took some months to respond to Kindekens s friendly advice then did so with these rather curt words: I am unable to comply with your suggestion to give a $1000 and become a Patron of the College. What I wish is that you would, if possible, find a couple of intelligent Belgians or Hollanders, whom you think likely to make good missionaries, receive them into your College, and prepare them for their future duties, I paying their annual pension. If you are successful in attaining one or two such [undecipherable word] for me, please inform me; I will send the necessary funds. It is not necessary that I should go into any details, as you know what we need. 64 Such were at least some of the difficulties Kindekens faced in dealing with the American hierarchy. By the summer of 1859, three new students had entered the college even as three other left for the missions; Fermont went to Louisville, Van den Moere to Natchez, and Rev. Adrian Croquet both entered and departed for the missions in the same year. 65 Croquet was the first of the American College s alumni to go to the aid of Archbishop Blanchet in Oregon City and the first alumnus of the college to arrive on the North Pacific Coast. Croquet would become most notable for two things: the first was his relationship as uncle to the future Cardinal Archbishop of Mechlin, Désiré J. Mercier 66 and second, as shall be noted in some length in a further chapter, was his extraordinary and even legendary piety and life of self-chosen poverty as he served the Indians of the Grande Ronde in Western Oregon. In that same summer new candidates for the missions entered the college: Adrian H. Bressers, Peter Kaiser and John Fierens. In October of 1859 the enrollment 63 Kindekens (Louvain) to Bayley, January 19, 1859 (preliminary draft on reverse of Bayley s original). Archives of The American College, Louvain. 64 Bayley (Newark) to Kindekens (Louvain), June 20, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 65 Sauter, American College, Mercier, Désiré J. ( ), born in Braine-l Alleud, was ordained in He served as professor of philosophy in Louvain and under the direction of Pope Leo XIII founded Louvain s Institute of Philosophy and promoted the renewed study of St. Thomas Aquinas there. In 1906 he was named archbishop of Mechlin and a year later named a cardinal. During the First World War he was noted for his opposition to the German occupation of Belgium. See John A. Gade, The Life of Cardinal Mercier (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1934). Firmin Desmet, ed., Le Cardinal Mercier (Brussels: Edition Louis Desmet-Verteneuil, 1927). Désiré J. Mercier, Cardinal Mercier's Own Story (New York: George H. Doran Company, 1920).

103 74 increased still more with the addition to the roster of Aegidius Junger, Paul A. Mans, Ferdinand Allgayer and from America, the nephew of Bishop M. J. Spalding, John L. Spalding. 67 With time, Dielemans and Fierens would follow Croquet to Oregon City and Junger would be adopted by Bishop A. M. A. Blanchet in Nesqually as would Mans (who would later join the Society of Jesus). These men would be the vanguard of a massive infusion of ecclesial labor into the nascent dioceses of the North Pacific Coast. The investment in the American College in Louvain of F. N. Blanchet and the later patronage of his brother, A. M. A. Blanchet, and fellow Canadian, Modeste Demers would provide immediate and long-lasting benefits for their dioceses. 68 Life in the American College Kindekens s responsibilities were not limited to simply raising funds, preparing a building and recruiting students; he also had to exercise his primary charge from Bishops Lefevere and Spalding: prepare young men for ministry in America. To this end, as has been already seen, he welcomed any and all worthy candidates into his new College without regard for their place of origin, language or culture. Thus almost from its very beginning, his student body consisted of men from Flanders, Wallonia, Holland, Prussia, Ireland and the United States. He was also a wise enough man to recognize the potential for trouble among such a culturally mixed fraternity. Van der Heyden describes the situation and Kindekens s response: But he [Kindekens] feared, nevertheless that the diversity of nationalities might give rise in the long run to unwelcome national rivalry, and that it might create discord where concord and union were essential requisites for present success and future permanency. To forestall contingent difficulties, he judiciously emphasized, in his talks to the students, the duty for each and every one to put aside all inclination to exclusiveness and clannishness. It was quite evident that had the spirit of nationalism been allowed to gain a foothold, the stay at the College would have been a sore trial indeed. The poverty of the house, and the hardships which this poverty entailed on the inmates, could be compensated only by brotherly love and by aspirations rising above the narrowmindedness [sic] which, with one eye sees all that is praiseworthy at 67 Sauter, American College, F. N. Blanchet gave to the Rector of The American College (by then, John De Neve), official delegation to provide to his seminarians the various sacred orders in a letter to the Rector dated 7 November A. M. A. Blanchet did the same in a letter dated 27 February Modeste Demers followed suit in a letter dated 12 July Clearly by these dates each was fully involved in the college. Liber Primitivus,

104 75 home, and with the other, all that is blameworthy beyond the contracted confines of clan and country. 69 Kindekens presented to the students the first house rule in October 1858, a year after its foundation. 70 Russell records the event in his notes: On the 8th of October 1858, the Rector dictated to the Students the written rules of the college, together with the ordo diei, which are in the hands of every one of the candidates at the present day. 71 The rule for the most part was modeled after that of the major seminary in Mechlin, and as such it was much the same as that of any seminary of the time. Two exceptions to this commonality were added to the rule. Rule Seven concerned the observance of silence in the house, which was to be maintained at all times except during recreation time but that during this period, only English and German were to be spoken as preparation for service in North America. Kindekens added the following injunction to his house rule, Rule Eight: Much more significantly 8. They are to live together with one heart, loving each other in fraternal charity, anticipating one another in carrying each other s burdens. They are to be most careful in avoiding any tendency to speak badly of one country over another. 72 With that, Kindekens established what would seem in retrospect to be one of the defining characteristics of the newly founded fraternity: mutual respect for one another s cultures and national identities. They were to be bound together by something deeper than whatever differences or divisions to which their varied backgrounds might tempt; that which would make a brotherhood out of this disparate collection of young men would be the common sense of mission and in particular, mission in America; Van der Heyden writes: 69 Van der Heyden, American College, , Liber Primitivus, Russell, "Notes on the First Years of The American College, p. 21. The text of both the original rule and the ordo diei are recorded in: Liber Primitivus, Liber Primitivus, Inter se concordes vivant charitate fraterna invicem diligentes, honore invicent praevenientes, alter alterius onera portantes. Caveant quam maxime a propensione qua solet una natio de altera male loqui. Translation by Aurelius Boberek, O.S.B. More recent rectors have continued to remind the college s students of Kindekens s Rule Eight as once again those students come to The American College from a wide variety of cultures and nations.

105 76 The students understood the Rector full well. They therefore, watched and contained themselves in the expression of their likes and dislikes, in order that the beautiful fraternity that bound them together in striving for the same goal would no be marred by the clashing of ideas born of a spirit of sectionalism and shortsightedness. So much did they value the union in which they lived, so thoroughly were they penetrated with their Rector s practical advice in this regard, that they looked on it as their primary rule of conduct wherever they met for social intercourse. Not to forget the rule, one of them Father De Fraine, according to some, Father De Meulder, according to others gave form to what they all felt on the subject. Whoever he was, he summed up Father Kindekens s instructions in a pithy sentence which has been handed down to us as the motto of the College: Missionarii Patria, Christi Dei Ecclesia. 73 Van der Heyden goes on to summarize the character of the college and its first rector in these words: To read them [the rules] now makes one feel that the mind which conceived them had in view candidates for the missions who were really earnest, sensible, and mortified men, men who were less in need of rules than of accessions to put them into practice. The rules, as they stand, give us also an insight into the character of Father Kindekens, and an idea of his conception of clerical training. He was evidently a plain, conservative, straightforward man, who aimed at forming for America plain, conservative, straightforward priests, priest who would be mortified without exaggeration, pious without ostentation, obedient without servility, charitable and gentlemanly. 74 It is clear that Peter Kindekens s leadership imposed a simple but sober spirit on those living under his wing. As Sauter notes: Poverty had already forced many restrictions on the missionary candidates, and the Rector saw fit to add only a few rules which would restrict them further, a policy perhaps indicating that he thought the best training was to train them to train themselves. 75 The privation experienced by the first inhabitants of the lowly college was not only a trial to be endured by the first Rector and his students, it served to form those students for the missionary tasks they hoped to soon undertake. Van der Heyden makes the point well: 73 Van der Heyden, American College, 55. The motto is loosely translated as: The homeland of the missionary: the Church of Christ, God. 74 Ibid., Sauter, American College, 78.

106 77 In point of fact, it was much more important to have students than wealth. The cry of the missions was for priests; and priest for the uninviting missions of the West and South could be prepared for a life of hardship and poverty in a seminary where the twin sisters were at home better than in a comfortably-appointed dwelling, where all the material wants of the missionary aspirant would have been abundantly supplied. 76 Further, the shared experience of their miserable situation, living in what Russell called the rat-hole, made of them a fraternity that would become an important part of their future lives in America. Van der Heyden quotes letters written by David Russell to document this aspect of the experience of those who were the first students: I could not have believed that I could so soon have become attached to those whom I never saw nor heard of before. We live like true brothers, all aiming at the same end by the same means. 77 As it would turn out, the strength of the fraternal life fostered in the college would be tested not only by poverty or the possibility of cultural friction, but by an unexpected event that marked the lives of the young men gathered on the Rue de Namur: the tragic death from typhoid fever of one of the college s students, Peter Ceusters. Peter Ceusters, a native of a village near Antwerp, arrived at the American College on October 1, By the 24th of the same month the young man was dead. Russell, clearly a first-hand witness to the events of those days, tells at length the emotional story of the young man s passing and with the florid eloquence typical of the mid-nineteenth century: Thus at the approach of the vacations of 1859 there were 18 candidates in the house. Eighteen, did I say? Alas! We have to relate that Death became jealous of Poverty, and entering into the house, cruelly snatched away a candidate, even the first days after he had generously devoted himself to the noble cause. Mr. Ceusters of Eckeren near Antwerp, was a promising young candidate for the missions. He entered the college on the 1st of Oct. 1858, young, vigorous, healthy, and full of enthusiasm for the cause for which he had resolved to abandon home and friends, and all that is commonly considered dear on earth. He had been in the house but about two weeks when he was attacked by typhus fever accompanied with bleeding at the nose. He was not considered to be in any danger, and so he was left quietly to his bed for a few days, some of the students going occasionally to attend him and render him whatever little assistance he needed. He seemed to be doing very well. The bleeding at the nose, however, returned at intervals with copious flows of blood which was rather ominous in such a malady. The physician was called. He instantly perceived that the holy young man would 76 Van der Heyden, American College, , Van der Heyden, American College, 46. Van der Heyden cites: The Record, Louisville, Jan 20, 1859.

107 78 soon go to receive the reward of his noble sacrifices. The fever soon became so violent that it brought on fits of raving that were frightful for those who saw him. He sank rapidly; and on the morning of the 24th Oct the Rector came to the little chapel, (which was then in the little room now employed as a library), and informed us that our dear brother had gone to receive his recompense. Never can we forget the impression created by this intelligence. The Rector was almost afraid to tell it, lest the students should all become frightened at the idea of so dangerous a fever in the house, and leave. But we believe he had no grounds to fear such a result. There were few in that small assembly who did not envy the lot of the Saintly Ceusters; and the possibility of sharing it was only another inducement to stick to the poor college. Two days after, we went in silent procession to the convent of Parc, where we deposed the last mortal remains of our beloved brother. None of us had known him for more than 23 days, and yet all loved him already as a brother; and all were convinced that they had been deprived of the example of a saint. Whoever saw that humble procession must have been moved profoundly. A few poor students of a very poor college, and the heart-broken father of the young martyr, headed by the disconsolate Rector formed the cortége. 78 The story of Ceusters reveals in a singularly poignant way, even allowing for the elegiac eloquence of its young reporter, that a deep and firm bond had been formed by these young men by their shared poverty and their common missionary hope. The tragic death of one of their number seemingly only strengthened that bond. A New Rector: John De Neve The fledgling American College was to undergo an abrupt transition with the arrival of John De Neve at the door in December of De Neve carried with him authorization from Bishop Lefevere to replace Kindekens. Though Russell refers to the arrival of De Neve as something improviso, correspondence among the principles documents that the dismissal of Kindekens had been brewing since almost the beginning. 79 As a response, probably to Kindekens s April 1857 letters to his episcopal patrons in the United States, M. L. Spalding wrote in May to Lefevere: I do not like his threatening [emphasis in original] us in case we do not choose to pay down at once [emphasis in original], and before we have any definite information that any thing has been done or will be done. This is not reasonable, as he should know us 78 Russell, "Notes on the First Years of The American College, p Sauter, American College, 85.

108 79 well enough to be sure that we will pay what we subscribed, whenever there is a reasonable hope that the money will be applied as we expected in subscribing. 80 Two months later, Spalding wrote to Lefevere again with his irritation at Kindekens obvious: I am very anxious about that college in Belgium. I am ready at any moment to pay the $1,000 whenever I have sufficient assurance that the College will go on according to the Prospectus. M. Kindekens has not vouchsafed to write a word to me, though he knew how anxious I was. And in the letters which he addressed to you and to Bp. McCloskey, he says not one word of the Cardinal of Mechlin, under whose general superintendence the college was to be placed, according to our agreement recorded in the Prospectus! This in not the straight way of doing business, a la Kentuckienne et a la Belge, which is pretty much the same thing. I beg you to assure M. Kindekens that my contribution of $1,000 is ready the moment I am assured by him that the college will go on according to our agreement. 81 In October of 1858, Spalding wrote again to Lefevere, The bishop of Ghent writes that it is high time to organize the college on a permanent footing [emphasis in original]. He then added: M. Kindekens sends me also a copy of the letters which passed between him and Bishop McCloskey which are sufficiently spicy on both sides, especially on the part of the Bp. of Albany. M. Kindekens is a little discourage at what Bp. McCloskey says and asks to be relieved from the rectorship after a year or two. I think we should encourage him and express our confidence in his administration and desire him [sic] to continue in office. 82 Kindekens s issue with McCloskey concerned funds received by McCloskey from the Society for the Propagation of the Faith for the support of students in the American College of which there were presently none. Kindekens demanded that McCloskey forward the funds directly to him or he would report the disloyal proceeding. 83 seems that Kindekens also antagonized the leadership of the Society, the support of whom was critical to the college s future. By October of 1859, the handwriting was on It 80 M. L. Spalding (Louisville) to Lefevere (Detroit), May 19, University of Notre Dame Archives. 81 M. L. Spalding (Louisville) to Lefevere (Detroit), July 9, University of Notre Dame Archives. 82 M. L. Spalding (Louisville) to Lefevere (Detroit), October 20, University of Notre Dame Archives. 83 Sauter, American College, 85.

109 80 the wall concerning Kindekens s future as rector. M. L. Spalding wrote to Lefevere s vicar general, Peter Hennaert: I have thought for some time that a change in the direction of our American College would be beneficial. V. Rev. M. Kindekens is wanting in one great quality requisite in the direction of so important a work, which is the suaviter in modo. He has enough perhaps too much of the fortiler in ce [emphasis in original]. In his correspondence with me, which has been generally very agreeable and satisfactory, he has intimated his willingness to retire, precisely on account of his difficulties with the gentlemen of the Propagation; I suppose that this might be one ground and a satisfactory one, for the change. Another might be that his Bishop needs his services at home. I think that the change might be made to his satisfaction and I believe that it should be made as soon as convenient. I am not acquainted with the Rev. M. De Neve, but I rely on the judgment of the Bishop of Detroit; I am prepared to sanction his appointment. 84 At the end of the same month, Spalding wrote to Lefevere: From what I just learn [sic], I think the change of rector should be made at once [emphasis in original], as the college is not getting on well at the beginning of this year. Please let the new rector start soon [emphasis in original]. 85 Spalding s letter also made it clear that Bishop Delebecque was similarly disenchanted with Kindekens and also had recommended to Lefevere that Kindekens be retired from the position. 86 It did not take long for Lefevere to act: on November 19, 1859, he wrote a formal letter to Kindekens announcing to him the decision that he should step down and hand over the rectorship to John De Neve: After consulting with the Rt. Rev. Bishop Spalding, on the matters connected with, and relating to the American College of Louvain, we both have thought it expedient, under the present peculiar circumstances, and, we may say, find ourselves compelled to come to a conclusion which is as embarrassing to us as it is painfull [sic]. It would be needless to say that the most flattering success which you have obtained through your indefatigable exertions and our prudence has only fortified the unlimited confidence we always had and still entertain more fondly than ever in your devotedness to this so important work and its interest being fully secured under your active and carefull [sic] management; but there is a circumstance, which you likely have had occasion to discover yourself, and which has really a vital bearing: in your corresponded with the administration of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, in endeavoring to awaken the feelings of its members by generously saying things which we could not prudently say, the delicacy of their feelings had been wounded, and apparently to such an extent that would prove fatal to the work for which you 84 M. L. Spalding (Louisville) to P. Hennaert (Detroit), October 1, University of Notre Dame Archives. 85 M. L. Spalding (Louisville) to Lefevere (Detroit), October 31, University of Notre Dame Archives. 86 Ibid.

110 81 have made so many sacrifices. For this reason we have thought it of absolute necessity after consulting and deliberating, both Rt. Rev. Bishop Spalding and myself, to make a change, although with the greatest reluctance, in the administration of the College, in order to remedy this inconvenience. Placed in this necessity, we have thought that the Rev. Mr. De Neve, whom we know, and who is also favorably known in Belgium and by the Council of the administration of the Propagation of the Faith is most likely to answer to the present requisition of the institution and we send him to you, begging of you to have the kindness to transmit into his hands the administration of the College, and to give him all such information relating to it, as in your prudent judgment and experience you may deem necessary or useful for his success. 87 The change at the top has been consistently portrayed as a smooth one by the college s historians. Van der Heyden writes only of Kindekens s installing De Neve as rector on the very day of his arrival. 88 welcome to the new Rector. 89 Sauter speaks of Kindekens extending a cordial The earliest recounting of the transition in David Russell s notes, surprisingly honest in relating the reasons for the change as far as he knew them, makes no mention of tension between the two men or ill feeling on the part of Kindekens at his dismissal. Russell, as a witness to the events as they unfolded and as one who would have been present for any chatter about them within the community, reflects the probability that any such tension or ill will must have been reasonably disguised from the small community: It seemed, indeed, that affairs would have marched on well enough, if there had been any funds to support the institution. But somehow, people did not yet feel confidence enough in the project to give anything of consequence. Perhaps they thought it was only a temporary establishment that would be abandoned as soon as a few priests could be sent out to supply the most pressing demands at the time.... Something had to be done to show that the American prelates were in earnest and that they by no means intended the college to be an ephemeral affair. It was believed that if a new Rector were appointed this confidence might be elicited. Moreover, Father Kindekens had gone to America in his early youth. He had become a citizen of the United States, and was ardently attached to the institutions of his adopted country, so much so, indeed that not a few considered him as a mere foreigner.... It was therefore necessary to find a person who was better known in Belgium, who had, at least in appearance, a more evident interest in the country, and who, at the same time was not ignorant of the wants of the America, and who, by 87 Lefevere (Detroit) to Kindekens (Louvain), November 19, University of Notre Dame Archives. 88 Van der Heyden, American College, Sauter, American College, 88.

111 82 experience, would know how to give the training required to supply the wants of the missions. 90 Kindekens, in fact, was deeply wounded by the arrival of De Neve and the letter of dismissal from the hand of his own bishop. His letter to Lefevere of February 9, 1860 made it clear that not only was he cut to the quick but that he felt it necessary to challenge the wisdom of the dismissal. In a somewhat confusing manner, possibly reflecting his agitated state of mind, Kindekens pleaded for reconsideration: Your Excellency will perhaps be surprised to receive once more a letter from me, dated from Louvain at the time you would probably be hoping to see me back in America; but I feel the need to write you once more frankly and, as they say, with open heart. Since the arrival at Louvain of Father De Neve, I find myself painfully disturbed. On the one hand, listless and tired from the difficulties which harass me; but inseparable from these, from an important undertaking, and especially disgusted by the arbitrary manner of the measure which has been taken (a measure in which has been neglected the customary courtesies given to the lowest servant). I feel compelled to ignore all other consideration and pack my bags immediately. I must also admit, Excellency, that twice I have been on the point of posting a letter announcing to the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith that finally I was ready to accept the mission. Happily, on the insistence of the good Father De Neve I have both times thrown these letters in the fire. On the other hand I was afraid to take this step from which I could not honorably turn back. First of all because there was a fear that it would be thought that my offended ego was the principal reason for this resolution. Secondly, I have my worthy mother, aged and ill, who is 85. Her advanced age and infirmities lead me to think of a dissolution in the near future. She has already suffered my departure three times, and that of my brother to the American mission twice. Would it not be asking too much, Excellency, to spare her the emotion of a last separation? Thirdly, I cannot hide from you, Excellency, that my stay in Louvain, however distasteful, is a time to assure the continuation and the progress of an establishment which has already cost me great pains and trouble and which, I dare to hope, has rendered great services to the missions in America. It seems evident that in the present circumstances my sudden departure from this establishment would gravely compromise its prosperity, and even its existence. Your Excellency will, I am sure, dispense me from going into details on this point that would seem to be making myself too important, however I can assure you that it is the general opinion of all those who have the progress of our college at heart. Fourthly, I fear that my sudden and unexplained departure from the American missions would give rise to reflections which would be prejudicial to our missions in the United States in general and particularly in your diocese. Your Excellency cannot be unaware of the bad feeling on the part of some of your clergy on certain administrative issues [emphasis in original], nor of the regrettable rumors which have 90 Russell, "Notes on the First Years of The American College", p

112 83 Lefevere: been circulating in this regard. Unfortunately these rumors have crossed the ocean and I would regret very much, Excellency, to become the occasion, though involuntarily, of giving the appearance of truth or of confirmation to these unjust allegations, at least in appearance. Please receive, Excellency, the assurance of my profound respect and of my devotion. 91 Spalding s reaction to Kindekens s appeal is interesting; he wrote yet again to 91 Votre grandeur s'étonnera peut-être de recevoir encore de ma part une lettre datée de Louvain au moment où elle espérait probablement me voir de retour en Amérique; mais je me sens le besoin d'écrire encore une fois à votre Grandeur sans détours et, comme on dit, à coeur ouvert. Depuis l'arrivée à Louvain de Mr. De Neve je me trouve dans un tourment fort pénible. D'un côté las et fatigue de difficultés harassantes; mais inséparable d'une entreprise importante et surtout dégouté de la mesure arbitraire qu'on vient de prendre (mesure où on a même négligé les convenances qu'on a coûtume d'observer envers le dernier de valets) je me sentais poussé à braver toute autre consideration et à faire immédiatement mon paquet. Aussi je dois vous l avouer, Monseigneur, déjà deux fois j'ai été sur le point de mettre à la poste une lettre pour annoncer à la S. Cong. De Prop. Fide qu'enfin j'était prêt à accepter la mission. Heureusement sur les instances du bon Mr. De Neve je l'ai chaque fois jeté au feu. D'un autre côté je craignais de prendre ce pas d'où je n'aurais plus pu me retirer honorablement d'abord parce qu'il y avait lieu de craindre que mon amour propre blessé ne fût le principal mobile de cette résolution. 2º J'ai une bonne et respectable mère, malade et âgé de 85; son grand âge et ses infirmités corporelles me font craindre une dissolution prochaine. Elle a déjà supporté 3 fois mon départ, et 2 fois le départ de mon frère pour l'amérique; peut-être ne serait-ce pas trop, Monsiegneur, de lui épargner dans ce moment les emotions d'une dernière séparation. 3º Je ne puis pas me dissimuler, Monseigneur, que mon séjour à Louvain, quelque dégout que j'en ai éprouvé, est encore nécessaire pendant quelque temps pour assurer la continuation et le progrès d'un éstablissement qui m'a déjà coûté tant de peines et de troubles, et qui, j'ose l'espérer, rendra d'immenses services aux missions des Etats-Unis. Il parait évident que dans les circonstances actuelles mon départ subit de cet establissement compromettrait gravement sa prospérité sinon son existence. Votre Grandeur voudrait bien me dispenser d'entrer en détails sur ce point; cela aurait trop l air de vouloir me rendre important, je puis cependant lui assurer qui c'est l opinion générale de tous ceux qui ont à coeur le progrès de notre collége. 4º Je crains que mon départ subit et non motivé des missions américaines ne donne occasion à des reflexions des E. U. en général et en particulier à votre diocèse. Votre Grandeur ne peut pas ignorer le mécontentement d'une partie de son clergé sur certains points administratifs, [emphasis in original] ni les bruits regrettables qu'on y a fait circuler à ce sujet. Malheureusement les bruits ont passé l' Océan et je regretterais beaucoup, Monseigneur, de devenir jamais, quoiqu'involontairement, l'occasion de donner l'apparence de vérité ou de confirmation à ces allégations injustes au moins quant au fond. Veuillez agréer, Monseigneur, l'assurance de mon profond respect et de mon dévouement. Kindekens (Louvain) to Lefevere (Detroit), February 9, University of Notre Dame Archives. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB. Oddly, though Sauter accessed the Notre Dame University Archives and would have presumably have come across this letter, he does not seem to have made use of this important letter or Spalding s response in his study (see following note).

113 84 I have received a packet of letters from V. Rev. Kindekens and De Neve, showing 1º that the former is very much displeased at the manner of his recall, 2º that we made an important omission in not writing about the change to the Cardinal of Mechlin, and 3º that M. De Neve favors the prospect of M. Kindekens remaining for say another year, with himself as Spiritual Director. If my dear brother of Detroit could spare M. Kindekens for another year, perhaps this prospect with De Neve might be the best. 92 Spalding s openness to the possibility of Kindekens staying on as rector for another year, was seemingly not shared by Lefevere, who with another of his own men already on site in Louvain, had closed the book on the affair. Kindekens left Belgium on August 11, 1860 to return to Detroit. 93 With that the guard changed and by January of 1860 John De Neve was securely in place as the second rector of the American College. De Neve would serve actively as rector from 1860 until 1871 and then again from 1881 through 1891; thus De Neve s influence on the college would span much of the rest of the century. 94 Notwithstanding Kindekens s objections and fears that the change might imperil the fragile institution, in retrospect, the change of leadership was the beginning of the American College s first flourishing. De Neve s American College John De Neve had only departed Belgium for the first time as a missionary to the Diocese of Detroit in 1856 having been recruited along with his cousin, Edward Joos, by Peter Kindekens. Since his ordination in 1847 he had served in his home diocese of Ghent with considerable distinction though not without substantial strain to his health as he struggled with the pastoral consequences of a typhoid epidemic in his parish of Renaix (Ronse), himself almost dying from the disease. 95 In 1848 he was named curate 92 M. L. Spalding (Louisville) to Lefevere (Detroit), February 16, University of Notre Dame Archives. 93 Sauter, American College, During the ten years between 1871 and 1881, De Neve did not serve actively as rector, as shall be seen further on, due to a severe mental breakdown and period of recovery. Though Edmund Dumont and James Pulsers would replace him during these years, De Neve strongly disputed later on any implication that he had not been the official rector of the American College even during these interim years. He actively took up the rectorial mantle again in 1881 but not without substantial resistance from many quarters. He served for ten more years until his mental health again failed him in Sauter, American College, 92. Van der Heyden, American College,

114 85 of Waarschoot, where he remained for the next eight years. He arrived in Detroit in October of 1856 and was soon given by Bishop Lefevere pastoral responsibility for the Catholics in and around the town of Niles. Of particular importance to his future work at the American College in Louvain, was his personal commitment to learning the English language as fully as he was able and to becoming as familiar as possible with the American culture and the complexities of American social life, especially as it related to the Church. 96 As Van der Heyden states, De Neve s brief but intense pastoral experience in Niles made a deep and enduring impact on the man: Indeed, all through the accumulating years, and in the midst of the weighty cares which fell to his lot as Rector of the American College, the days spent in the small Michigan village were not only not forgotten, but their recollection was ever the source of keenest pleasure. Neither time nor distance prevailed to lessen the interest he felt in all that concerned his old parishioners. He always kept up a correspondence with some of them, assisting them with his counsel, and encouraging them in the faithful practice of their faith. 97 His experience of American Catholic pastoral life would remain a vitally important in the kind of formation he would soon be offering the missionaries-to-be of Louvain. As already noted, in November of 1859, Bishop Lefevere informed him that he had been selected to take over the rectorate of the financially unstable American College. David Russell s notes record what he, as a student, knew of De Neve s competencies: Very Rev. J. De Neve, then Vicar General of the Diocese of Detroit, had been in the ministry in Belgium for the space of about 12 or 13 years. The positions he had occupied had enabled him to acquire an intimate knowledge of the manner in which ecclesiastical affairs were conducted in Belgium. He had been vicar for a long time in a model parish under a curate with whom an apt mind like his could learn everything that could be useful for almost every state of life. He had also been long enough in America to make all the observations that would afterwards be useful, and he had not failed to profit by his time. 98 As a personality, De Neve was quite the opposite of his predecessor: a kindly, sociable and fatherly figure who earned others confidence easily. He was just the person needed then to win over the Belgians, develop new sources of financial support. Once responsible for the college, De Neve inherited the substantial problems left to him 96 Sauter, American College, 93. Van der Heyden, American College, Van der Heyden, American College, Russell, "Notes on the First Years of The American College, p. 24.

115 86 by Kindekens, most of them of a fiscal nature. He responded to the needs of the day with competence. His early years as rector were notable for putting the college on sound fiscal footing, expanding substantially its real property (almost to the extent to which they exist to this day), improving the buildings, and perhaps most important for the long range health of the college, gaining for it the official and much delayed recognition it needed from the Vatican s Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. 99 One of the first and continuing challenges De Neve faced was to convince the Belgian bishops of the wisdom of allowing, if not actually encouraging, young priests and seminarians to go to the American missions. Van der Heyden reports: In May, 1860, he [De Neve] addressed the Belgian episcopal body, assembled at Mechlin under the presidency of Cardinal Sterckx, mainly for the purpose of insuring to young priests and seminarians desiring to devote themselves to the American missions their Bishop s ready consent. In this address he very adroitly appealed first to the Prelates zeal for the church and to their national pride. He recalled to them the oft repeated visits made by American bishops, to secure priests for their distant dioceses; and he enumerated the objections steadily brought forward by their eminent Belgian colleagues to stay the departure of their subjects for the missions. These objections resolved into one, namely the reluctance to see young men whom they had prepared with paternal care and vigilant devotion for the ministry in Belgium, go to other lands, to work there under conditions altogether new, often extremely dangerous, and without the aid, support, and practical training of which they were assured as assistants at home. In one word, they objected the want of special and appropriate preparation for the work expected of the missionary priest in America. The Louvain American College shattered this objection, very justly pleaded its Rector. It offered all the securities their Lordships could desire as far a [sic] thorough training for a missionary career was concerned. 100 De Neve likewise sought to answer the concern about the temptations the young priests might face in America: He answered possible objections, emphasizing his answer to what seemed the main difficulty, namely, the many moral dangers arising from the lonely apostolic life in a far off land which did not afford the protection surrounding the young clergy in a parish of their native country. The Rector argued that the American College answered this objection since its very purpose was to train the young missionaries to face the obstacles this life set before them Sauter, American College, Van der Heyden, American College, Sauter, American College, 109.

116 87 What life and formation was actually like for the young students of the American College can now only be gleaned in a somewhat circumstantial manner from the extant documentation. Besides the descriptions offered by Van der Heyden some fifty years later, the documents presently held in the Archives of The American College are rather scant. Unfortunately, the notes of De Neve s rector s conferences from the period are no longer to be found. Van der Heyden makes reference to these notes and quotes from the first such conference; the brief text is worth noting here for the limited insight it offers on De Neve s values, his priorities and his mode of formation: The fruit of discipline is one s own sanctification and the salvation of the souls of others. There is no occasion to fear for any missionary priest who has used to advantage the years of his seminary training. This, however, is an absolute requisite. To make good use of the time spent in the Seminary, you must keep the rules punctually, entirely, and with a good intention, Therein lie your present perfection, your future success in the ministry, and your certain sanctification. 102 Van der Heyden, seemingly with other such conference texts at hand, offers this evaluation of the ongoing series of De Neve s talks to his students: To all, the students listened with increasing pleasure; for they were all essentially practical, clear cut, and to the point. They inspired the listeners with a holy emulation to apply themselves to their studies, to practice discipline, to improve in piety and devotion. 103 De Neve supported his teaching and formation of the future missionaries by establishing in 1862 a Union of Prayer, a spiritual sodality to which his departing students joined themselves as means of supporting one another in their coming missionary lives and to animate those who were still in Louvain preparing for the missions. In its introductory paragraphs, De Neve wrote: 2 ly. Since the life of the missionary is devoted to the conversion of souls, which must be obtained chiefly by prayer, it was believed that such an association could not fail to draw down the blessings of God upon the missions. 3 ly. Our blessed Lord has promised, that He would be in the midst of two or three assembled in His name; and although the members of this association will be separated by great distances, they can unite, at least in spirit, round the throne of God, and beg Him to be with them, in their labors for the glory of His divine Son Van der Heyden, American College, , Ibid., Ibid., 120.

117 88 The rules of the Union of Prayer were dominated by promises to pray rosaries, add a special intention to the third hour of their breviary office for the members of the association, and to annually say at least three masses for both the association s living and dead members. Further, De Neve asked his Union of Prayer members to write at least one letter back to the college each year detailing that member s current address and offering a short account of his mission of the current year. 105 From the college s side, De Neve sent out to each member in America a four-leaf folder indicating with which mystery of the Living Rosary the members were to initiate the new year and the names of all the members of the Union of Prayer. Van der Heyden s history also records that De Neve sent long lists of helpful hints to his priests in the missions with advice such as, Ad missam te praepares devote et ferventer or Breviarium attente recites, et nunquam negligenter. 106 Clearly, De Neve saw the need from his own experience in America for a formal support system for his young missionaries if they were to survive the rigors and temptations of life there. By both inculcating a disciplined moral and spiritual regime into their daily life in the college and by setting up a system by which that regime could be supported and maintained in the missions of America, he believed he was giving to his students the tools they would need to fulfill their missions nobly. Mutual support in prayer, on-going fatherly advice from their rector even after they had left for the missions, and the maintenance of an on-going relationship to their alma mater requiring them to write annual accounts of their ministry to edify and encourage those following them, were all part of De Neve s project of forming and maintaining his missionaries. His Union of Prayer was one important tool for accomplishing that project. A number of De Neve s letters during his first years as rector may be found in the University of Notre Dame Archives. Early in his tenure he wrote to Rev. John G. Cappons, one of the first priests sent from the college to North America and De Neve s own successor in Niles, Michigan. De Neve s spirituality and paternal care for the young priest was evident: I rejoice at the success of Almighty God has granted in the whole of your labors in your mission in general, and in the school in particular. God is so good, and knowing our frailty He helps and blesses our struggling along, provided we do what we are able, and we rely on him. Let us then keep on in courage, in patience, in prayer, waiting for the blessed hope. Earthly sorrows, we must remember, are the roots of heavenly joys. A cross, says Doctor Faber, is a crown begun. We are only to be 105 Ibid. 106 Ibid., 121.

118 89 afraid that our crown will be little because our crosses are few and little. If any, press upon us as a heavy burden, we go to the source of all consolation and we are refreshed. I have the same consolation you have, we can keep the blessed sacrament and we have a very decent chapel. The students have collected an Harmonium [undecipherable] and have received the stations of he way of the cross; therefore in that respect we have nothing to wish for. 107 De Neve s letters to Bishop Lefevere are more businesslike in relating issues concerning property deeds, finances and all that he had been doing to move the college forward; likewise he provided progress reports on particular students destined for Detroit. The letters offer some insight into how De Neve himself saw things: The College is going on first rate now. I have my own professor of sacred scripture; a professor of English, German, two professors especially appointed in the University for this year for elementary theology and I think I may assure Your Lordship, that through the help of your prayers, we are in the way of having something good. As to support; we receive from God our daily bread, and that is all we ask for. I think if the gentlemen who are at the missions now sending some news I would get along very well. How easy it would be to write once a year; for instance 1º how many baptisms: 2 cath. Marriages, 3 a word about the church school. 108 Correspondence from students also gives some limited insight into life at the new college. A letter from a newly arrived student was sent to John Cappon; in it the unidentified writer expresses his impressions of the seminary: Last Saturday I beheld for the first time this celebrated seat of learning and the halls of the American College. The reception accorded me by V. Rev. J. Deneve [sic] exceeded even the anticipations I had formed of what kind of welcome his kindness would tender. They far surpass all the descriptions given of his character in America. He has claimed all the affections of his subjects without exception; they look upon him as a tender father. I got here on an auspicious day and in good time for a magnificent dinner in honor of the Immac Con under the patronage of which the institution is placed. At the conclusion of the dinner each of the students in turn delivered a short speech appropriate to the occasion. All was harmony and good humor. The subjects of the College number about 19; three or four of them are from America exclusive of myself. Among the latter is a nephew of Bishop Spalding. One of them is about to be ordained and go together with another young man lately ordained of Cork is to proceed together next summer to the States. I have no doubt the College will become as eminent among ecclesiastical establishments and in comparatively as short a time as the U.S. have [sic] taken rank among the nations of the globe. For my 107 De Neve (Louvain) to J. Cappon (Niles), October 10, University of Notre Dame Archives. 108 De Neve (Louvain) to Lefevere (Detroit), February 7, University of Notre Dame Archives.

119 90 part I will endeavor to make the best use of my time while here, a matter of expediency because of the difficulty of my past education. And if I live to become a priest I shall give the establishment all my support. 109 David Russell reveals the missionary spirit animating these men as they lived together in the humble college: I might say, that although the wide Atlantic rolls between me and my dear old Kentucky home, I am still not far from my native land; for I breathe in a pure American element. My fellow-students are all eagerness to set out for America. They speak of nothing else but America think of nothing else but America; and I really believe it is the subject of their dreams. Nor is this the effect of mere curiosity to see a land which they believe to be overflowing with novel wonders. Like true soldiers, they pant for the contest, that they may enjoy the sweets of victory. They are noble fellows every one. 110 One further source of important information about the tenor of life in the Louvain college during De Neve s first years as rector are the extant letters of another of its students, Charles John Seghers, perhaps the most famous of the institution s early alumni. 111 Seghers entered the American College on October 1, and already on the 7th of the same month he addressed a letter to his lifelong friend, Benoit Van Loo: Dear Friend, Taking advantage of the first free moment that I find, I hasten to furnish you, not with news, but with a few small details that concern our position, our way of life at the American Seminary. I was received here by these gentlemen, the 30th of September, with a cordiality that one rarely finds on this earth: from the first moments I had already come to know the Germans, the Brabantois, the Americans and the one Dutchman, who have taken possession of our establishment. You would hardly believe the admirable accord which reigns here among all these men so different in country, language and customs: I can assure you that there is not one with whom I have not already had a conversation. What can I say? Walk around the garden with the Rector or with the Vice Rector, is a thing which happens every day. Our Rector has already given us some lessons in English, but lessons which are so comic that we almost died laughing; three or four persons in the very middle of the 109 Unidentified author (Louvain) to J. Cappon (Niles), December 11, University of Notre Dame Archives. The signature on the letter is missing. The Album Alumnorum does not record a student arriving at that time. It seems likely that the author is Timothy O Sullivan, originally from Ireland who studied at South Bend (just a few miles from Niles) and Chicago before arriving in Louvain in In a letter to Cappon dated May 20, 1862, De Neve commended Cappon for sending him this first rate boy. 110 Van der Heyden, American College, The collecting of Segher s letters was accomplished by his first biographer, Maurice De Baets. 112 Album Alumnorum, 113.

120 91 conjugation of the verb to have could not keep from laughing out loud and thus producing general hilarity: this happened in our second lesson. And what makes us laugh the most is the way the Germans change all the v s into w s and all the d s into t s. Thus I was really amused to hear for the first few times the libera nossss tttomine. Our academic year began, like yours, with a triduum give us by P. Schoupe, the author of our dogmatic theology. What impressed me here from the first days is the rigorous exactitude with which the least prescriptions of the rule are observed. You might think I exaggerate, but I assure you that in fact, at the sound of the bell, one stops speaking, not only in the middle of a sentence, but in the middle of a word. 113 In a letter written a few weeks later to les Gantois, his various friends at the Ghent seminary, Seghers added a postscript to Benoit Van Loo that indicates that Seghers himself was pleased enough with his experience at the college to recommend it to others: Benoit, you have pleased the Rector; you know that he is a keen observer. He asked me to write you to the effect that the religious needs of America are immense, that they receive nothing because they are not known, that if you wished to give yourself to the American missions he would receive you without examination... in any case, consider the matter seriously Profitant du premier moment libre que je rencontre, je m empresse de vous munir non pas de nouvelles, mais de quelques petits détails qui concernent notre position, notre manière de vivre au Séminaire Américain. J ai été reçu ici de la part des messieurs, le 30 Septembre, avec une cordialité comme on en recontre rarement sur la terre: et dès les premiers moments j avais déjà fait connaissance avec des Allemands, des Brabantois, des Américains, et avec le seul hollandais que possède notre établissement. Vous ne sauriez croire quel admirable accord règne ici entre tous ces hommes si différents de pays, de langage, et de moeurs: je puis vous assurer qu il n en est plus un seul avec lequel je ne me sois pas encore promené ou avec lequel je n aie déjà entretenu la conversation. Que dis-je? Se promener autour du jardin avec le Recteur, avec le Vice-recteur, c est l affaire de presque tous le jours. Notre Recteur nous a déjà donné quelques leçons d anglais, mais des leçons si comiques que nous y avons presque crevé de rire; trois ou quatre messieurs au beau milieu de la conjugaison du verbe to have ne sachant plus se retenir, se mirent à rire aux éclats et alors ce fût une hilarité générale: ceci eut lieu dans notre 2de leçon. Et ce qui nous fait rire le plus c est la manière de prononcer des allemands qui changent tous les v en w et tous les d en t; aussi étais-je bien distrait en entendant les premières fois tous ces libera nosss tttominde. Notre année scolaire a commencé, comme la vôtre, par un triduum que nous a donné le P. Schoupe, l auteur de votre théologie dogmatique: ce qui m a frappé ici dès les premiers jours c est l attitude rigoureuse avec laquelle on observe les moindres prescriptions de la règle: Vous croirez que j exagère mais je vous assure en toute vérité qu ici au son de la cloche l on s arrête, l on se taît, non pas au milieu d une phrase, mais au milieu d un mot. Seghers (Louvain) to Van Loo (Ghent), October 7, 1862, Archives of The American College, Louvain. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB. 114 Benoît, Vous avez plu à notre Recteur; vous savez qu il est finement observateur. Il m a chargé de vous écrire que les besoins religieux de l Amérique sont immenses, qu ils ne meuvent pas, parce qu ils ne sont pas connu[e]s, que si vous voulez vous engager dans les missions

121 92 Other extant documents from the early days of De Neve s rectorate that give at least a hint of life and formation in the college are the original copies of handwritten newspapers that were prepared by the students as a means of practicing their English language skills. Entitled, The Missionary, the student newspaper does not seem to have continued beyond its first volume; numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13 are preserved in the Archives of The American College. 115 Its articles and smaller pieces reflected the common piety and religious sentiments of the period. Fealty to Pope Pius IX was a prominent feature in a number of its articles. There were continuing articles from number to number on how best to catechize children (corporal punishment was to be avoided and the giving of awards such as holy cards for achievement was to be encouraged). Reports on impressive sermons delivered in Louvain churches or dissertations defended at the University appeared. Perhaps most enlightening as to the politics current within the college is an essay in the second issue entitled A Free Church in a Free State. Its author is not identified but the handwriting and literary style are almost certainly those of John Lancaster Spalding; its content is expressive of one who is firmly in the camp of the intransigent ultramontanes described in the previous chapter: Freedom is the great watchword of our age; hence we have seen arise among our great and skillful politicians that glorious, but in their mouths nothing but sonorous and deceitful proposition: A free Church in a free state. Indeed what do liberals and free masons, for such are the men to whom prudent care have been confided the destinies of nations, what do they mean by this watchword? Is it their aim to have all the world agree in one religion, in one faith? Do they intend to have the Church of Christ which alone is true, which alone breaks the bonds of slavery in which the devil has kept the human race entangled, which alone affords the proper means to keep oneself free from evil and sin to make him enjoy an eternal freedom thereafter? If this is their vision why do they persecute that very Church? Why deprive the head of that Church on earth both of his temporal and spiritual power? Why do they incarcerate and murder bishops and priests? Why do they baffle at all what is holy and virtuous? 116 américaines, il vous recevera sans examen... en tout cas, pensez-y sérieusement.... Seghers (Louvain) to Les Gantois, November 7 or 8, 1862, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 115 The Missionary, February Issue No. 1 is dated January 18, 1862; issue No. 13 is dated May 11, Issues 1 and 13 were recently uncovered in an unmarked box of documents in the Archives of The American College; they have been returned to their proper file with the other issues. 116 "A Free Church in a Free State," The Missionary, January Archives of The American College, Louvain.

122 93 The overall tenor of the paper s articles reflected a world in which the true Church along with the Pope was seen as under attack from outside forces and therefore in great need of devoted and zealous priests and missionaries to defend it and extend it. The hierarchy and clergy clearly had the most important role in this mission, while the laity were largely left in the background. As revealed by these student newspapers, the intellectual and spiritual world inside the American College in 1862 was devotional, pious, clerical and deeply ultramontane. Of more importance, however, was the fairly constant emphasis on the missionary endeavor ( Euntes ergo docete omnes gentes. Math. XXVII.19 appeared on each masthead), and in more particularity a focus on these young men s future missions in North America. In the 13th issue, an article entitled The Savages expressed the European-centered missiology of the times in what are now rather embarrassing terms: college: Among all nations the Indians are deservedly called the most miserable. This unhappy people abandoned to themselves without religion, without laws and almost without a government seem to be an example to others who have already received the blessings [emphasis in original] of religion but however often quite as unworthy to receive this all-powerful benefit. Although theirs is truly miserable it does not the less inspire interest. 117 In the sixth issue, a letter to the editor offered this commentary on life in the Mr. Editor We all love the college: its past success and future prospects form to no small extent the theme of our letters, of our speeches in the refectory and of our conversations in vacation. But do we sufficiently consider the relations in which we show to our successors the important part that we must individually act in the development of this great work. We are the fountain where the dream must derive its freshness and limpidity: ours it is to lay the foundations of the moraled fire down deep in the torch of solid piety. How then shall we effectively discharge the obligations that devolve on us, who should be called the fathers of this beloved institution? The answer is evident by a strict compliance with our rules which are not very numerous and might nearly all be comprised in that one which is silence. 118 Other quotidian concerns in the lives of these young men are evident as well in the pages of their newspaper. In the fourth number, following a most serious article on the life of St. Polycarp, bishop and martyr, there is found the title of a more mundane piece: Gentlemen, black your shoes!!! That advice was illustrated by a lengthy story of one 117 The Missionary, May 11, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 118 The Missionary, February 23, Archives of The American College, Louvain.

123 94 of their number leaving the college in full clerical dress but with his shoes covered with the mud of Heverlee and the laughter and derision he received by the people he then encountered on the Rue de Namur. In the 5th issue, this counsel is offered: How to avoid laughing when one gives or receives the pax. Imagine it is our blessed Lord himself who says: pax tecum, when you receive it; and imagine that you represent our Lord when you give it. 119 Of special interest were the occasional reports on letters received from recently departed alumni relating their experiences in North America. They served both to inspire those still in Louvain with desire for the missionary life and to promote a stable life within the college. In the second edition, a letter from Father DeMeulder, by then in the Kentucky missions, was shared: We have on our table a letter from Rev. Fath. Demeulder, who was formerly a student in this institution, and who is at present pastor of a very extensive mission in the interior of Kentucky. The Rev. Father says he hopes to be excused for his long silence for two reasons: first he maintained silence because he considered his short acquaintance with the country did not justify him in hazarding remarks on matters which were so strange to him before his arrival there. Second, because not having had sufficient [sic] at the college to acquire a competent knowledge of the English language, he has been obliged up to the present to employ every leisure moment he could find in perfecting himself in that medium of communication without which he could do very little good, no matter how extensive his service might be. He then says that we in Europe have no idea at all of the American missions. [Undecipherable word] at this day there are missions in Kentucky of sixty or seventy miles in extent. He himself has one which stretches out to the distance of at least forty miles. He has in his mission three churches besides ten stations scattered over this vast area of country, all of which he must attend himself. The center of his parish, New Haven, contains about two hundred Catholic families. At Hodgenville which is some fifteen or twenty miles from New Haven, there are about fifty Catholic families, whereas some few years ago there were only seven.... He says that the American people have long been deceived by lying preachers, the emissaries of Satan, who for their own private and worldly interest ever kept their minds imbued with prejudices against our Religion. But the Americans, he says, though bad enough are naturally lovers of truth, honor and sincerity; and they are now fast opening their eyes and beginning to perceive the tricks of their deluders. All that is wanting at present is a sufficient number of learned pious and zealous priests, which, he doubts not, the American College will soon send over The Missionary, February 16,1862. Archives of The American College, Louvain. 120 The Missionary, January 26, Archives of The American College, Louvain.

124 95 Another example of the sharing of such letters from the mission, and one which has special interest for this present study, for it comes from Adrian Croquet just over a year after his arrival in Oregon. It is found in the 12th and final issue of the series: Yesterday a letter arrived from the far distant regions of the Rocky Mountains. It came from our most worthy brother Fath. Croquet who gives us a most stirring account of his mission in Oregon. In the space of thirteen months that he has been laboring in a mission which embraces both Indians and whites, he has baptized 260 persons of whom 40 were adults. How consoling must it be for that generous soul who has abandoned all that was dear on earth, to labor for Christ, for the extension of God s kingdom in the hearts of men to contemplate the harvest which he has already made! What a pleasing thought when he goes to take a short [undecipherable] at night, when he could perhaps truly say with his Divine Master: the foxes have lairs and the birds have nests but I have not whereon to lay my head what a consoling thought, I say, in such a moment to think that Christ is enthroned in 260 hearts in which Satan perhaps would now reign had he not gone to carry them the light that enlightens every man coming into this world!... But above all we shall ever thank Almighty God for the grace he has given us to witness the good example of that noble missionary. If America had a hundred such I would almost be willing to answer for its conversion in less than a quarter of a century. But then let us not have witnessed such an example in vain but let us profit by it let us imitate it in college that God may grant us the grace to imitate also in the missions. No nobler, no higher praise can be given of a man than that which our former Rector in his somewhat laconic style gave of Father Croquet. That is a priest who observed the rule of the house! No higher praise is wanting for if we observe the rules in every point, we open our hearts to the grace of God, we follow the direction of his holy inspirations, and he who does this will certainly have success in the missions. 121 A fascinating insight into the mind and spirit of at least one of the early seminarians of the American College is provided by the Spiritual Resolutions of John Lancaster Spalding of Louisville, Kentucky, nephew of Martin J. Spalding and himself, later, bishop of Peoria. They were written sometime in 1862 while he was still a student at the American College but preparing for his ordination to the priesthood and imminent return to Kentucky. As Joseph Coppens notes in his introduction to the Spiritual Resolutions, It [the text] throws vivid light on the formation and the priestly spirituality in the Belgian seminaries during the past century. 122 Even more, the resolutions provide insight into the spiritual formation offered at the college by John De Neve. Spalding introduced his 84 resolutions with the admonition to himself: 121 The Missionary, April 6, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 122 Il jette une vive lumière sur la formation et la spiritualité sacerdotales dans les séminaires belges au cours du siècle dernier. Joseph Coppens, "Les Résolutions spirituelles de Mgr Spalding, Evêque de Peoria," Annua Nuntia Lovaniensia 16 (1963): 155.

125 96 Read these at least once a week. 123 Many of the resolutions concern his personal life and efforts to live it more purely and morally of which the very first is an example: I will mortify myself in something at every meal or his 13th: Never will I again look at a woman. I will be more modest with myself. 124 Others were more specifically directed at preparation for his future life as a priest and missionary in America. 9. As soon as I become lukewarm I stop everything [italics his own], and make a retreat in order to become fervent again or 17. I never saw a laborious priest who was not a good one. +Schouppe. 125 Even more explicitly looking ahead to his life as a missionary, he affirmed: 36. In the missions I will never visit any family more than is necessary. I do not go back to America to see [sic] pleasure but to work and toil till I die. 126 His latter intentions likewise speak to his life as a missionary: 57. I will ask for a poor place in our diocese if for no other reason in order to give a good example. I will have no privilege. 61. I will have a time for my Breviary, spirit, lecture, beads. In the mission I will have a written order of life and live according to it, especially a fixed hour for rising. 76. I will choose a spiritual director here in the college and afterwards in the missions. 82. I will love the poor practically consoling them and giving them alms according to my means. 83. I will never amass a fortune. This is probably the greatest danger for a missionary in America. 127 In a more extended resolution on prayer he wrote in number 54: All the success of the life of a priest comes from the blessing of God. Let him pray and God will help him. In [sic] after years I have troubles and ill success in my missions it may be because I will not have prayed well in the Seminary. Every time I say my breviary I may gain more grace, more power to do good than by studying a week, a month or even a year. I use to put confidence in my own labor, in my study. This is not well. All the talent, all the learning in the world could not convert one man unless God bless them.... Oh! God let me put all my confidence in Thee, in the Blessed Virgin, in Thy saints, in prayer. Oh! Teach me that of myself I can do nothing whatever but fall into sin and damn myself Ibid. 124 Ibid.: Schouppe, S.J., Francis Xavier ( ), was born in Aaigem, West Flanders; he served as spiritual director in the seminary of Liège from 1863 to His writings on purgatory and similar spiritual themes remain popular among conservative Catholics to the present. From 1888 to his death he served as a missionary in Darjeeling. Revue bibliographique belge, 17 (1905) no 6, pp. XLI XLV. 126 Coppens, "Les Résolutions spirituelles de Mgr Spalding, Evêque de Peoria," Ibid.: Ibid.: 158.

126 97 Though perhaps seeming naïve and overly scrupulous by contemporary standards, Spalding s resolutions reveal the missionary zeal that was clearly animating him and his contemporaries and their concern that without a very serious spiritual discipline integrated deeply into their lives, they would succumb to the many temptations and threats to their soul that would surround them in the mission lands of America. 129 One final detail from those early years of the American College gives insight into the missionary dream that motivated the earnest young men of the house and which was propagated to keep their focus on the far away land beyond the Atlantic. A college hymn was composed by young Spalding with the music provided by fellow student, A. M. Coenen. Its text not only thematically picks up on the new college s motto, Missionarii Patria, Christi Dei Ecclesia, but captures well the mentality and spirit that pervaded the formation being given in Louvain and which the students adopted as their own: The Church of God, the Christian s home! Were e er the briny ocean s foam, Hath born the one true faith divine There stands her country s sacred sign. Chorus: Then give to the breeze our floating banner; We go in the bonds of love united, To where the western winds shall fan her Like Heaven s unfading crown unblighted... Where e er the sun of heaven doth shine, Wher e er a soul in darkness pine, There is our land, there is our home, Beneath the high cerulean dome. In dreary waste, in sunny dale, At icy pole, in southern vale, Our hearts are strong while we pray still, 129 Besides the Spalding and Russell documents, the handwritten class notes and practice homilies of Francis Janssens, (native of Tilburg), future bishop of Natchez and archbishop of New Orleans, are held in the Archives of the Archdiocese of New Orleans. Unfortunately, the disruptions caused by Hurricane Katrina in August 2005 have made those documents temporarily inaccessible. Of Janssens s years in Louvain see Annemarie Kasteel, Francis Janssens, : A Dutch American Prelate, (Lafayette, LA: The Center for Louisiana Studies, University of Southwestern Louisiana, 1992),

127 98 Oh! God, be done Thy Holy Will. Then send us where in death s dark gloom The heathen waits his awful doom; Oh! send us where the savage roam, There is our land and there our home.... Then, fare-thee-well, gray walls most dear, We love thee now, shall love they e er; And when we strike our country s foe, T is with thy truth we ll give the blow. 130 That the spirit of fraternity of those early years of the American College under John De Neve continued to grow and develop is witnessed by David Russell, who upon returning to the college in 1864 as a priest to teach English and serve as prefect, wrote to Rev. M. Bouchet, at the Louisville Cathedral: I feel perfectly at home here, and very well contended. The Rector is, as usual, exceedingly kind and affable, and the three professors are profuse in kindness and sociability. The students, too, are the finest set of fellows you ever saw; and the very best spirit prevails among them. They are 45 in number. It does me good to see the prospects of this institution. The buildings are pretty extensive, in fair condition, and the grounds handsome, besides being one of the most healthy situations in this very healthy town. 131 The Sum of a New Seminary The elements that were integral to the formation of the first students of the American College and which would become part of the tradition and ethos of the college in the ensuing decades are these: 1. The common life was spartan even after the substantial renovations of the buildings and purchase of adjacent properties. 2. The material poverty of the college in turn deepened the bonds among the students as they suffered together the inclemencies of life on the Rue de Namur. This intensive fraternity among the students would in itself serve them well once they arrived 130 Van der Heyden, American College, Russell (Louvain) to Bouchet (Louisville), November 7, University of Notre Dame Archives.

128 99 in the mission territories. They would remain in contact with one another, support one another, and in many cases continue to work together in their adopted dioceses. 3. Their fraternity in turn was reinforced by the one rule that distinguished their house from other seminaries at the time: the insistence on respect of one another s culture, nation and tongue and the concomitant subversion of one s own national identity to this common respect. This discipline of mind and heart not only allowed the seminarians and priests from so many lands to live together in concord but also gave them a most important tool for ministry in their new mission fields. It is one of the principle theses of this study that in fact, more than anything else that happened at the American College, this capacity to respect, understand and even adapt themselves to cultures other than their own, explains the pastoral success of these men as parish priests. Indeed, having arrived in their new mission fields they were transformed from foreign missionary priests into parish priests and in a very real way, then into American parish priests. And it seems fair to suggest that having become simply good pastors with minimal distinctiveness in their adopted land, it was all the more easy for later historians to leave them unnoticed. 4. Beneath all else that happened at the American College there was a deep zeal for apostolic labors in North America that was fomented by rectors Kindekens and De Neve. This zeal was supported by the devotions and religious pieties common to the mid-19th century but which were nevertheless animated by a desire to prepare men firmly committed to serve the unserved and bring the light of Christ to those living in darkness. How well and with what cultural sensitivity they effected that desire, of course, will be the subject of reflection further. It seems suitable to end this chapter on the establishment of the American College by noting the words of commendation that were offered to the hierarchy of Belgium by the Third Provincial Council (of bishops) of Cincinnati in May 1861: We also take much pleasure in thanking our Venerable Brothers, the Cardinal Archbishop and the Bishops of Catholic Belgium, for the truly Christian and noble zeal which has prompted them to lend their aid to the establishment of the American College of the Immaculate Conception of Louvain, the seat of the ancient and illustrious Catholic University which has shed so much luster on the Catholic Church. The College founded with praiseworthy concurrence of some Bishops of our Province, has already sent eleven zealous and efficient missionaries to our Church, and we anticipate much good to our holy religion as likely to result from its continuance and prosperity, of which we are well assured. We bespeak for the continued benevolent interest of the Belgian Prelates Van der Heyden, American College,

129 100

130 PART II FROM FIRST ARRIVAL TO FIRST BISHOP

131 102 CHAPTER IV FIRST ARRIVALS IN A NEW WORLD: Encountering a New World Having noted at the end of the previous chapter some of the qualities instilled in the young men from Louvain during their formative years in their American College, it is appropriate to commence a study of these men s first years in the missionary dioceses of the North Pacific Coast by also noting what they failed to receive. In a very real way, the young priests who found themselves quite suddenly facing altogether new lives in places like Oregon City, Nesqually or Vancouver Island were naives. They were not prepared and, it must be acknowledged, could not have been prepared, for the reality that would confront them as they stepped off the boat into a new and strange world. Their English language skills would still have been rudimentary in many cases. As unconscious participants since birth in European culture and inheritors of European history, their minds would have boggled at their first encounter with the culture, values, social mores, and certainly politics that they found in America, especially in the more rugged and less-developed western seaboard; American-style democracy, egalitarianism, and individualism would certainly have seemed strange and vexing indeed. As young men who had been raised in predominantly Catholic cultures within a Europe where church, state and a socio-political order were still very much intertwined and where Protestantism and Catholicism were kept at arm s distance, their doctrinal and ideological antipathy for Protestantism would seldom have been tried by the reality of actually living cheek to jowl with Protestant neighbors and competing head to head with Protestant ministers and preachers for souls. Finally, it must be admitted, for all their enthusiasm for becoming missionaries along the line of a Peter John De Smet, their training in missionary praxis would have been long on zeal and piety but short on

132 103 technique. More importantly, sensitivity to and respect for cultures other than their own would have to be something they either learned on site or did not learn at all. Perhaps this is why most of them, though certainly not all, took up ministry in the region among those most like themselves and left the work of evangelizing the indigenous peoples to others. The letter of De Meulder reported upon in the second issue of The Missionary offers insight into just how serious the culture shock these priests underwent could be once they landed in North America. He specifically mentioned his poor English and his efforts to improve it, having been obliged... to employ every leisure moment he could find in perfecting himself in that medium of communication. He expressed his eyewidening shock at his new situation by writing to his correspondents that we in Europe have no idea at all of the American missions. The young priest excused himself for not writing sooner but he felt it necessary to have maintained silence because he considered his short acquaintance with the country did not justify him in hazarding remarks on matters which were so strange to him before his arrival there. He wrote of Protestant preachers as the emissaries of Satan, who for their own private and worldly interest ever kept their minds imbued with prejudices against our Religion. Perhaps most striking of all is that he exposed his perplexity at the American people and their culture by confusedly commenting: But the Americans, he says, though bad enough are naturally lovers of truth, honor and sincerity. 1 Charles John Seghers s first years in North America were filled with trial and hard work, not to mention sickness. In his on-going correspondence with his beloved rector, John De Neve, whom he saw as his spiritual father, he openly shared his despondency at times. His letter to De Neve dated August 1, 1867, and written less than four years after his arrival in Victoria, expressed his own on-going case of culture shock as he attempted to deal with the extraordinary differences between the spiritual values of the Old Country and America: Dear Reverend Father That You have quite forgotten me, is certain: I received no letter, no word of encouragement, no line of consolation during eight or nine months. Not that I mean to blame you; not at all: I fancy that You say that I am big enough, and old enough to go on by myself (I wish it were so!) and I presume also that You have already so many pupils or better children to foster with Your paternal care, that I have been crowded out of Your heart. I accept my fate with resignation, but not with inward feelings of sorrow and loneliness. In vain have I looked for some encouraging and 1 "Father Demeulder: Kentucky Missions: Dedication of a church at Hodgensville," The Missionary, January Archives of The American College, Louvain.

133 104 animating letter form the old country for, I assure you, that I am more than ever an Old Country man: I hate American ideals and American notions of freedom and independence; but all of my expectations have been frustrated and disappointment came upon disappointment. And do you know what I have done to avenge myself? I have commenced to read the letters of S. Francis Xavier; and I found there plenty of what I wanted. So I have made up my mind that, if Father Rector had forgotten me, I should look for somebody else to speak to my mind some language which so seldom rings in our ears in these hateful countries. I was telling you that I am not yet Americanized; and I hope I never will be. I ought to explain what I mean: I find in the American ideas and notions a spirit so opposed to the catholic spirit, that I feel disgusted with it. To be a good priest, and be what they call an American is altogether out of the question. 2 For those who found themselves living and ministering among indigenous peoples, the shock of first encounter would have been all the greater. De Smet himself actually spent relatively little time living with his beloved Indians; 3 neither Kindekens nor De Neve had any pastoral experience as missionaries to native peoples. There could not have been preparatory classes in the American College curriculum offered with experiential knowledge and pastoral wisdom on native world-views and religious belief systems, language, or the dangers of importing communicable diseases into nonimmune native communities, even if such knowledge had already existed anywhere in the European-American world of science. Men like Adrien Croquet and Augustin Brabant who did in fact spend the entirety of their ministerial lives as missionaries among the Indians of North America, had no choice but to dive into the deep end of the missionary pool, to sink or swim, with what few resources they had available to them and with all the prejudices that were part of their own religious upbringing. Of the particular desolation of the Indian missionary, one of Brabant s reminiscences is particularly poignant: March 25 [1877]. This day, Palm Sunday, Rev. Father Nicolaye left after mass for Barclay Sound (Ucluliat), there to join a schooner which is soon expected to sail from thence to Victoria. Complaints of illness are the cause of his departure. I am under the impression that the poor Father is not really sick, but sick at heart to see the discouraging state of affairs here. And indeed our position would almost make an angel lose heart and courage. Solitude, we have not seen a white man since October; we have not received any mail for several months; our provisions are nearly all gone and what remains is of the poorest kind. And our Indians are as bad, and as much attached to their pagan ideas and superstition as before we commenced our work and 2 Seghers (Victoria) to De Neve (Louvain), August 1, 1867, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 3 David M. Brumbach, Peter John De Smet, S.J.: Fundraiser and promoter of missions (Doctoral Dissertation, Washington State University, 1992), 241.

134 105 took up our residence here. Father Nicolaye left me. God bless the poor man and restore him to health! I am now again alone with not a friend to speak to! 4 Adrien Croquet: The First Louvain Missionary on the North Pacific Coast With both such spiritual graces and formational deficits duly noted, it is appropriate to begin a study of these men s lives and influence in their adopted land by considering the first of the Louvain priests to take up the life of a missionary on the North Pacific Coast: Adrien Croquet. The story of Croquet s journey to Oregon and his first years of ministry there, especially as told through the text of his own letters is one of great importance to this study and will be related here more extensively than that of others for two reasons: First, he was the first to arrive from the American College on the North Pacific Coast and therefore held rights to the title of pioneer. His journey from Louvain to the North Pacific Coast would be repeated by many others but as the first to make the passage he led the way for the others and in a sense secured for them the assurance that it was both possible and worthy of their efforts. His correspondence back to Belgium and particularly to the American College, as has already been seen and will be noted again shortly, animated others to join him in the strange new world he had come to. Second, at the time of Croquet s departure to North America he was already considerably older and more pastorally seasoned than those who would follow him. He was clearly looked up to by his younger confreres for this reason, but it also gave him a unique position to understand his mission with a wisdom and perspective that they may have lacked due to their relative immaturity and freshness as priests. He had already formed a pastoral heart within himself and was therefore able to recognize in those he served a humanity and dignity that was less evident to others. Further, he had a welldeserved reputation for personal holiness and a deep spiritual life from his years in Belgium that followed him to Oregon. It is clear that Adrien Croquet was a polar star for the other missionaries who followed him to the North Pacific Coast and saw him as a model priest and missionary. He gave stability and direction to them just by being Adrien Croquet; it is evident that many of those who followed in his footsteps had recourse to Croquet s pastoral and spiritual wisdom. 4 Charles Moser, OSB, Reminiscences of the West Coast of Vancouver Island (Victoria, BC: Acme Press, 1926), 76.

135 106 Adrien Croquet was born in Braine-l Alleud on March 13, 1818, just three years after Napoleon s great loss in the nearby fields of Waterloo. Phillippe-Joseph Croquet and Emerance Garrebos first child was a daughter, Anne-Marie Barbe (who would become the mother of Cardinal Désiré Mercier); they then conceived a second child, but just two months before the birth of a son, Philippe-Joseph, her husband died; not long afterward, Croquet s mother took Antoine Charlier as her second husband. Young Adrien and his elder sister, Anne-Marie, would then be joined in the family by five halfsiblings. 5 Croquet attended elementary school in Braine-l Alleud then continued his studies at the Petit Séminaire in Mechlin, where he was considered a most distinguished student of philosophy, at one point winning a prestigious academic award that merited a grand celebration and procession in his hometown in August, Croquet continued his studies for the priesthood, was ordained in September 1844, then followed further theological studies for two years more at the University of Louvain. After completing those studies he taught at the Petit Séminaire in Basse-Wavre for a brief time. At his own request, he was then given a pastoral assignment as assistant priest in his home parish of Braine-l Alleud. There he dedicated himself especially to the care of the poor and the needy. As Van der Heyden writes: It was the poor whom he sought out in preference; for whilst he loved poverty for himself, he was ever on the alert to alleviate it in others. He made himself poor and suffered the poor man s privations, to be the better able to sympathize with want and to dispose of more means to assist those enduring its pangs. To this day the old folks of Braine-l Alleud tell their children of the good curate of forty or fifty years ago who was wont to give away whatever he had to give, and who would, as long as he could device a means of hiding the straits to which his liberality might bring him, strip himself of the very clothes he wore. More than once did he, even in the heart of winter, return home shoeless and stockingless, seeking to cover the glorious nakedness, handiwork of his charity, with his humble priestly robes. His mother, who knew the young curate s weakness, use to make frequent visits to his wardrobe and restock it. 7 After twelve years of priestly ministry in his native land, he responded to Father Kindekens s appeal for missionaries to America and entered the new American College 5 Martinus Cawley, ocso, Father Crocket of Grand Ronde: Adrien-Joseph Croquet, Oregon Missionary , 2nd ed. (Lafayette, OR: Guadalupe Translations, 1996; reprint, 1996), 5. See also: Jean Bosse, Mémoires d'un Grand Brainois: Monseigneur Adrien Croquet, le "Saint de l'orégon" (Braine-L'Alleud: Association du Musee de Braine-l'Alleud, 1976), Bosse, Memoires, Van der Heyden quotes here the Abbé Renard s funeral oration for Msgr. Croquet. Joseph Van der Heyden, "Monsignor Adrian J. Croquet, Indian Missionary," The American College Bulletin III, no. 4 (1905): 164.

136 107 in Louvain, arriving at the college on January 15, There are at least four extant letters from his days at the American College, they are dated February 16, April 13, June 12, and August 20, 1859, all written to his half-brother and fellow priest, Anthyme. In the February letter, composed only a month after his arrival at the college, he wrote: My Dear Brother, I would like with all my heart to do you the service which you ask of me for Quinquagesima Sunday; but I have just once more asked of the Father Rector of our house the permission to return home tomorrow, Thursday, until Saturday. He has granted me this favor. But I would be afraid to ask him another favor in so short a time. The freedom we have here in the ministry is rather restricted; that is understandable; in every institution, there must be a rule. 9 In a later letter Croquet wrote to his brother of the visit to the college of the Vicar Apostolic of Florida, though not mentioned by name, it was certainly Augustine Verot fulfilling his promise to visit Louvain that was mentioned in an earlier chapter: For several days we have had the honor of having with us a Bishop from America, who edifies all of us by his exemplary recollection, and especially on the occasion of the Holy Sacrifice of the mass, after which he remains for a very considerable time entirely absorbed in a profound meditation. He is the vicar apostolic of Florida in the United States, who comes to Belgium and to France to recruit missionaries; for he is practically alone in his vast diocese. Several of our confreres, not yet ordained, are ready to follow him. As for the priests, they are already engaged for other missions Collegium Americanum Liber C, No. 19. Archives of The American College, Louvain. 9 Mon cher frère, Je voudrais de tout mon coeur vous rendre le service que vous me demandez pour le quinquagésime; mais je viens encore de demander à Monsieur le Recteur de la maison la permission de retourner chez nous, demain Jeudi, jusqu à Samedi. Cette faveur m a été accordée. Mais je craindrais de lui faire encore une nouvelle demande pour un temps si rapproché. La liberté que nous avions dans le ministère est ici un peu restreinte; cela se conçoit; dans tout établissement, il faut une règle. A. Croquet (Louvain) to Anthyme Charlier, February 16, Archives of the Association du Musée de Braine-l Alleud, Braine-l Alleud. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB. Substantial extracts of the Croquet letters held in Brainel Alleud are included in Bosse, Memoires. 10 Nous avons eu pendant quelques jours l honneur de posséder un Evêque d Amérique, qui nous a édifiés tous par son recueillement exemplaire, et spécialement à l occasion du Saint Sacrifice de la messe, après lequel il restait pendant un temps très considérable entièrement absorbé dans une profonde méditation. C est le vicaire apostolique de la Florida dans les Etats- Unis, qui vient en Belgique et en France pour recruter des missionnaires; car il se trouve presque seul dans son vaste diocèse. Quelques-uns de nos compagnons non encore prêtres sont disposés à le suivre. Quant aux prêtres, ils sont déjà engagés dans d autres missions. A. Croquet (Louvain) to Anthyme Charlier, June 12, Archives of the Association du Musée de Braine-l Alleud, Braine-l Alleud. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB.

137 108 Croquet continued with the latest news of his impending assignment in America: I am waiting to receive a letter soon from Archbishop Blanchet in Oregon, in reply to the letter that our Father Rector wrote to him to announce that I was willing to enter his diocese. I can also, if I wish, go to Natchez, Mississippi, of which place the Bishop has already guaranteed the price of my trip.... My departure is scheduled for this week; but I do not yet know at what precise moment. 11 Finally, as time grew short before his departure, from Braine-l Alleud he wrote one final letter to his brother in which the pain of imminent separation is evident: We have just received a letter from Archbishop Blanchet, my bishop, who is actually in New York. He greatly desires that I leave immediately to go and join him and make together the trip to Oregon. I must therefore hasten my departure and I have no time to pay you the visits that I intended.... Could you not arrange it that you could accompany me as far as Oostende, or even as far as England, if that is possible? You must not, however, put yourself out, for I hope, with the grace of God, to have the courage to overcome the pain of separation. 12 Croquet s departure from the college is noted in the first volume of the Album Alumnorum under the date, August 1, 1859, along with fellow alumni, Constant Van der Moere (on his way to Natchez Diocese), and Polydore Fermont (going to Louisville). 13 He actually set sail from Oostende for London and then on to New York on August 25, 1859 As Croquet wrote to his brothers and sisters, he was met in New York by Archbishop F. N. Blanchet, himself. 11 Je m attends à recevoir bientôt une lettre de Monseigneur BLANCHET, [emphasis in original] archevêque dans l Orégon, en réponse à la lettre que Monsieur notre Recteur lui a écrite pour lui annoncer que je me dispose à entrer dans son diocése. Je puis aussi, si je veux, aller à Natchez au Mississippi, dont l Evêque m a déjà garanti les frais de voyage. Mon départ est fixé pour cette année; mais je ne connais pas encore l époque précise. Ibid. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB. 12 On vient de recevoir une lettre de Monseigneur BLANCHET, mon évêque qui est actuellement à New-York. Il désire beaucoup que je parte immédiatement pour aller l y rejoindre et faire ensemble la route jusqu à l Orégon. Je dois donc hâter mon départ; et il ne me reste plus de temps pour vous rendre les visites que je me proposais Ne pourriez-vous pas vous arranger en sorte de m accompagner jusqu à Ostende, ou même jusqu en Angleterre si c est possible? Vous ne devez pas cependant vous gêner; car j espère, avec la grâce de Dieu, que j aurai le courage de surmonter les peines de la séparation. A. Croquet (Braine-l Alleud) to Anthyme Charlier, August 20, Archives of the Association du Musée de Brainel Alleud, Braine-l Alleud. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB. 13 Album Alumnorum Collegii americani Immaculatae Conceptionis B.M.V., Pars 1, Archives of The American College (Louvain: ), 280.

138 we arrived finally at New York on September 19 in the afternoon, after a voyage of some twenty days. I could not have arrived in better time; my worthy Archbishop Blanchet was to leave the next day with 16 Canadian nuns and 5 Canadian priests for the three dioceses of Oregon City (which is mine), Vancouver and Washington Territory. 14 Together, the archbishop, Croquet and the Canadians sailed to Panama, crossed the isthmus overland, then continued sailing up the Pacific coast, arriving in Oregon City on October 21st. On leaving New York, it is true, I had the pain of being obliged to leave my dear confrere and friend, Canon Chapelle [a priest friend who was also crossing the Atlantic on the same ship accompanied by his nephew], but I found in the company of my Bishop one of my greatest consolations. We again embarked on the Atlantic ocean, going along the coast of North America towards the south to the Isthmus of Panama which we were to cross.... We crossed the Isthmus of Panama by train through the midst of swamps, mountains, and continual forests. When we got to the city of Panama at the other side of the isthmus, we immediately embarked on the Pacific Ocean, going up the coast of America in a north-westerly direction.... We arrived at San Francisco, California, on Sunday, the 16 th of October where we disembarked and stayed till the following evening. 15 While in San Francisco, Croquet and fellow travelers spent the night with Archbishop Joseph Alemany, whom Croquet described as a man full of merit and nous sommes enfin arrivés à New York le 19 septembre dans l après-midi, après une navigation d une vingtaine de jours. Je n aurais pas pu arriver plus à propos; Monseigneur Blanchet, mon digne Archevêque, devait s embarquer le lendemain avec 16 religieuses canadiennes et 5 prêtres canadiens, pour les trois diocèses d Oregon-City (qui est le mien), de Vancouver et de Washington territory. A Croquet (aboard the Star of the West in view of the Isthmus of Panama) to Anthyme Charlier, October 2, Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB. 15 En quittant New-York, j ai eu, il est vrai, la peine de devoir me séparer de mon cher confrère et ami, M. le Chanoine Chapelle, mais j ai retrouvé dans le compagnie de mon Evêque une de mes plus grandes consolations. Nous nous embarquâmes de nouveau sur l océan Atlantique, en longeant les côtes de l Amérique septentrionale vers le sud jusqu à l isthmus de Panama que nos devions traverser.... Nous traversâmes l isthmus de Panama en chemin de fer au milieu des moréages, de montagnes et des forêts continuelles. Arrivés de l autre côté de l isthmus à la ville de Panama, nous nous embarquâmes aussitôt sur l océan Pacifique en remontant les côtes de l Amérique dans la direction du Nord-ouest.... Nous arrivions à San Francisco dans la Californie Dimanche 16 octobre, et nous debarquâmes pour y rester jusq au lendemain au soir. A. Croquet (Oregon City) to his parents (Braine-l Alleud), November 2, Archives of the Association du Musée de Braine-l Alleud, Braine-l Alleud. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB.

139 110 virtue, revered and loved even by the protestants. 16 That a Catholic archbishop could be loved even by Protestants must have seemed a most rare thing to this young priest who had never before been outside of Catholic Belgium. His voyage continued northward toward Oregon by ship the very next day; they arrived in the land where he would spend most of the rest of his life on October 20th. 17 In a letter to his brother, Anthyme, written some days later, he described in more detail his arrival in Oregon Territory: However, we pass happily through the bars or banks of sand which are found at the mouth of the Columbia River and which leave a passage way just sufficiently wide for the ships. On Friday, the 21st of October, we come to the fort and the town of Vancouver, on the north shore of the Columbia, where we are received grandly by the Bishop of Nesqually in Washington Territory. There a Te Deum is sung and thanks given for so favorable voyage that God has granted us. After a few hours rest, we return to our ship and leave the Columbia to go up the Willamette River. When we get to Portland, a little city belonging to our diocese, the religious disembark to take possession of the establishment that has been prepared for them. We continue on our way and in the evening we arrive at Oregon City, the residence of the Archbishop. It is a pleasantly situated place on the Willamette River and might have 1000 to 1500 inhabitants. The whole population of Oregon, without counting several Indian tribes spread around, is nearly 60,000. The number of Catholics is not yet considerable. We live here in the midst of infidels and others of every sect and every belief. We need the grace of Heaven to preserve in the faith, and increase in number, the little flock of the faithful dispersed in this vast territory. We are 8 priests to work at this task, but we count on the prayers of the good souls who are interested in the propagation of the true religion; we count on your prayers and on those of the good sisters whom you direct plein de mérite et de vertue, vénéré et aimé même par les protestants. Ibid. 17 Ibid. It is interesting to note that Croquet signs this letter as Adrien Jos. Croquet, Missionnaire; though he has only just arrived in Oregon City he already sees himself very much as a missionary. 18 Cependant nous passons heureusement au milieu des barres ou bancs de sable qui se trouvent à l embouchure du fleuve Colombie et qui ne laissent qu un canal assez étroit pour le passage des vaisseaux. Vendredi matin, 21 octobre, nous abordons au fort et à la ville de Vancouver, sur la rive Nord de la Colombie, où nous sommes reçus au son de la cloche par l évêque de Nesqually dans le territoire de Washington. Là, un Te Deum est chanté en action de grâces pour la traversée si heureuse que Dieu nous avait accordée. Après quelques heures de repos, nous rentrons dans notre vaisseau et nous quittons la Colombie pour remonter la rivière Willamette. Arrivés à Portland, petite ville appartenant à notre diocèse, les religieuses descendent pour prendre possession de l établissement qui leur est preparé. Nous continuons notre route et nous arrivons le soir à Oregon-City, résidence de l archevêque. C est une localité agréablement située sur la rivière Willamette et pouvant contenir de à habitants. La population totale de l Orégon, sans compter plusieurs tribus indiennes qui y sont dispersées, est à peu de 60,000 habitants. Le nombre de catholiques n est pas encore bien considérable. Nous vivons ici au milieu des infidèles et autres de toutes sectes et de toutes croyances. Nous avons besoin de la grâce d En-Haut pour soutenir dans la foi et accroître en nombre le petit troupeau des fidèles dispersés sur ce vaste territoire. Nous sommes 8 prêtres pour travailler à cette oeuvre,

140 111 Once arrived in Oregon City, Croquet went about the business of arranging his affairs in both the old world and his new land. Those affairs included requesting of his brother that he contact Rector Kindekens of the American College so that he might send to him, among other things, a dozen medals of the Immaculate Conception. He requested that the materials be remanded to Mr. Dieleman, 19...a priest of the American College, who is about to leave for Oregon (if he has not already left) Croquet spent his first year in Oregon living with the archbishop in Oregon City or in the nearby mission of Saint Paul, but also passed four or five weeks in Fort Vancouver, see city of the Diocese of Nesqually, assisting his own bishop s brother, A. M. A. Blanchet, with responsibilities there in the absence of that diocese s vicar general, Father Brouillet. He also accompanied Toussaint Mesplié, 21 a Frenchman already at work in the Archdiocese since 1847 and ordained a priest in 1850, on an introductory tour to various nearby Indian missions. In a fitting transitional moment from one era to another, he assisted at the funeral of Margaret McLoughlin, the wife of John McLoughlin, the acknowledged founding father of the European presence in the Oregon territories. 22 In several lengthy letters composed during this period, Croquet mais nous comptons sur les prières des bonnes âmes qui s intéressent à la propagation de la vraie religion; nous comptons sur les vôtres et sur celles des bonnes soeurs que vous dirigez. A. Croquet (Oregon City) to Anthyme Charlier, November 20, Archives of the Association du Musée de Braine-l Alleud, Braine-l Alleud. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB. 19 Leopold Dieleman s family name is variously spelled Dielman and Dieleman in the original sources and various histories of the region. I will use the original Flemish spelling Dieleman prêtre au Collège américan, que va s embarquer pour l Orégon (si toutefois, il n est pas parti).... A. Croquet to Anthyme Charlier, undated and with no indication of location, but certainly from very soon after his arrival. Archives of the Association du Musée de Brainel Alleud, Braine-l Alleud. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB. 21 Mesplié, Toussaint ( ), served as a missionary in Oregon and Idaho for thirty-two years, many of them in service to the Indians along the Columbia River. While Bishop Lootens of Boise was in Rome for the First Vatican Council, he served as administrator of apostolic vicariate of Idaho. In later years he served as a volunteer Army chaplain. See Cyprian Bradley, O.S.B. and Edward Kelley, D.D., Ph.D., History of the Diocese of Boise: , 1 vols., vol. I (Boise, ID: Roman Catholic Diocese of Boise, 1953), Bosse, Memoires, 42. On the importance of John McLoughlin to the early Catholic community in Oregon see Francis Norbert Blanchet, Historical Sketches of the Catholic Church in Oregon, trans. Edward J. Kowrach (Fairfield, WA: Ye Galleon Press, 1983), Edwin V. O'Hara, Pioneer Catholic History of Oregon (Portland: Glass & Prudhomme Company, 1911), 1--7, Wilfred P. Schoenberg, S.J., A History of the Catholic Church in the Pacific Northwest; (Washington D.C.: The Pastoral Press, 1987), Patricia Brandt and Lillian A. Pereyra, Adapting in Eden: Oregon's Catholic Minority, (Pullman, WA: Washington State University Press, 2002), 1--9.

141 112 richly describes his impressions of his new land and first missionary efforts. Early in January 1860, he wrote his parents from the small mission of Saint Paul, not far from Oregon City: I am now provisionally at St Paul with another priest; St. Paul is a mission situated in the Willamette valley, eight leagues south of Oregon City. The parish is made up mostly of Canadian Catholics or of Irish immigrants, spread over a territory nine leagues in circumference.... You see, Oregon is not a country as savage as you might have thought, perhaps. There is already a population of about 40,000 whites (to distinguish them from the savages) who have come from different civilized states of America and from different European countries. But my preference is more for the savages, because I think that there is more good to be done among them than among the whites, who often in coming here think more of acquiring a fortune than of saving their souls. Thus, according to my desires, His Excellency intends to send me to a mission among the savage tribes which inhabit the shore of the Pacific Ocean. I am to go there soon after the winter; I will have as a companion a French priest who is already familiar with the savages. We will have a residence, a building of wood, of course, like all the others in this country. Don t worry about me; the savages, even those not yet converted, love and respect the Catholic missionaries. So it is that in the war which they had two years ago with the Americans of the United States, the Catholic missionaries circulated with impunity among the savage tribes, while others would have been torn to pieces immediately. While waiting to take up this post, I spend my time studying English and the language which the savages speak. I have begun to preach and to confess in English, which is more generally spoken among the whites Je suis maintenant provisoirement à St. Paul avec un autre prêtre; St. Paul est une mission située dans la vallée de Willamette, à huit lieues au sud d Orégon-City. La paroisse est composée en grande majorité de catholiques canadiens ou d irlandais émigrés, dispersés sur un territoire de neuf lieues de circonférence.... Vous voyez que l Orégon n est pas un pays aussi sauvage que vous vous l imaginiez peut-être. Il y a déjà une population d environ 40,000 blancs (pour les distinguer des sauvages) venus des différents états civilisés de l Amérique et des différentes contrées d Europe. Mais mon désir me porte particulièrement vers les sauvages, parce que je crois qu il y a plus de bien à faire parmi eux que parmi les blancs, qui souvent pensent plus en venant ici à acquérir une fortune qu à sauver leur âme. Aussi, conformément à mes désirs, Monseigneur m a destiné pour une mission chez les tribus sauvages qui habitent le littoral de l Océan Pacifique. Je dois m y rendre aussitôt après l hiver; j aurai pour compagnon un prêtre français déjà familiarisé avec les sauvages. Nous y aurons une résidence, une habitation, bien entendu de bois, comme toutes celles de ce pays. Vous n avez rien à craindre pour moi; les sauvages, même ceux qui sont encore infidèles, aiment et respectent les missionnaires catholiques. C est ainsi que, dans la guerre qu ils ont eue il y a deux ou trois ans avec les Américains des Etats-Unis, les missionnaires catholiques voyageaient impunément au milieu des peuplades sauvages, tandis que d autres y auraient été mis en pièces aussitôt. En attendant que je puisse me rendre à ce poste, je m occupe de l étude de l anglais et de la langue que parlent les sauvages. Je commence à prêcher et à confesser en anglais, qui est le plus généralement parlé parmi les blancs. A. Croquet (St. Paul) to his parents January 2, Archives of the Association du Musée de Braine-l Alleud, Braine-l Alleud. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB.

142 113 After his time in Fort Vancouver, he returned to Oregon City from he again wrote to his brother Anthyme of his ongoing experiences in his new land: One day after lunch I was called to a place two leagues [about six miles] from here to see a sick man at a place called Salmon Kreek [sic] (the river of the salmon). By way of precaution I took with me the holy oils, but without taking the Blessed Sacrament. I set out on horseback following my guide and I arrived at the house of the sick man at nightfall. I found myself in the presence of a veteran soldier of the United States, German by birth, and Protestant. As proof of his faith he showed me a cross which he had just made. The people in the house assured me that he had asked to see a Catholic priest before his death which he thought near. I noticed soon that the fever had disturbed his brain; and seeing that his state did not seem critical, I put off to another visit speaking to him of religion and the sacraments. I made the visit which I had promised; he was strong enough to leave where he was and had transported his domicile elsewhere. In this same house I had a meeting which always causes great pleasure when one is more than 6000 miles from one s country; for the first time I met a compatriot, someone from Antwerp, who had been living here for several years. The master of the house, an American Protestant, and his whole family made me very welcome and assured me that the inhabitants of this area were very well disposed to the Catholic religion. They even revealed to me their desire that a priest should visit them and preach to them from time to time. I promised them that I would ask the Bishop. They also spoke to me of certain sect members in the area, the united brothers, and the apostles of a new kind who had appeared in their midst, children who suddenly became preachers of the gospel, and another time an individual, inspired in the same way (I do not say divinely) who brought about by cries communication with the spirit that was in him. These sorts of aberrations, however, are not unique and isolated in the history of certain Protestant sects, and they show that man is capable of all sorts of extravagances when he abandons the unique sure rule of the authority of the Church Un après-dîner, je fus appelé à deux lieues d ici pour aller voir un malade dans un certain lieu appelé Salmon Kreek (la rivière aux saumons). Par précaution, je me munis des saintes huiles, mais sans prendre avec moi le St. Sacrement. Je partis à cheval à la suite de mon guide et j arrivai à la maison du malade, la nuit tombante. Là je me trouve en présence d un ancien soldat des Etats-Unis, allemand de naissance et protestant. Pour preuve de sa foi, il me montre une croix qu il venait de fabriquer. Les gens de la maison m assurèrent qu il avait demandé de voir un prêtre catholique avant sa mort qu il croyait prochaine. Je remarquai bientôt que la fièvre lui dérangeait le cerveau; et son état d ailleurs n inspirant pas d inquiétude, je remis à une autre visite de lui parler de religion et de sacrements. Je fis la visite que j avais promise, il s était trouvé assez fort pour quitter la place et avait transporté son domicile ailleurs. Je fis dans la même maison une rencontre qui cause toujours un bien vif plaisir quand on se trouve à plus de 3,000 lieues de sa patrie; je fis pour la première fois la rencontre d un compatriote, un anversois, qui depuis plusieurs années, habite ce pays. L hôte de la maison, que était américain, et protestant, et toute sa famille me faisaient l accueil le plus cordial et m assuraient qui les habitants de cette localité étaient très bien disposés en faveur de la religion catholique. Ils me témoignaient même le désir qu un prêtre pût les visiter et leur prêcher de temps en temps. Je leur promis d en faire la demande à l Evêché. Ils me parlèrent aussi de certains sectaires du voisinage, les frères-unis, et des apôtres d un genre nouveau que apparaissaient au milieu d eux; c était de jeunes jouvenceaux, des enfants, tout-à-coup devenus des prédicateurs de l Evangile, une autre fois, c etait un individu poussé ausssi par la même inspiration (je ne dirai pas divine),

143 114 While on one excursion inland to the town of The Dalles, Croquet s wide-eyed sense of wonder at this new land as well as his homesickness for the world he left behind were expressed: It is a pity that I am not a better painter and poet in order to give you a true description of these picturesque and charming places, of which your surroundings, as poetic as they may be, are far from equaling. Just a bit before sunset, I found myself before a charming site which caught my attention. In this rather solitary place there are already some rare houses, doubtless the cradle of a pretty village or city. My thoughts flew to your laughing hills, with the villages they shelter, to those places which I recall always with so pure a pleasure and which have always made me so welcome. 25 While traveling with Mesplié, Croquet continued to write of his experiences along the by-ways of Oregon. In a very lengthy letter to an unidentified correspondent, he described in great detail his expeditions with Mesplié and recorded therein the number of native children that were baptized in a particular village on a particular day as well as missionary stories that he believed would be of interest to his family in Belgium. Two such incidents in the letter, both having occurred in the small town of Corvallis, are worthy of note because they shed light on the strength of his feelings with his first close encounter with Protestantism, a direct competitor to the mission of the Catholics in the region. The first relates the details of his celebration of Pentecost in Oregon: It only remains for me now to record a few other details about our stay at Corvallis. This little town is situated 25 leagues from Oregon City, on the Willamette, in a lovely valley full of pretty farms, placed at regular distances. It is one of the most charming areas that I have come across in Oregon. We found here some excellent qui rendait par des cris les communications de l esprit qui était en lui. Ces sortes d aberrations d ailleurs ne sont pas des faits uniques et isolés dans l histoire de certaines sectes protestantes, et ils montrent que l homme est capable de toutes les extravagances quand il abandonne l unique règle sûre de l autorité de l Eglise. A. Croquet (Fort Vancouver) to Anthyme Charlier, April 19, Archives of the Association du Musée de Braine-l Alleud, Brainel Alleud. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB. 25 C est dommage que je ne suis pas meilleur peintre et poète pour vous donner une juste description de ces lieux pittoresques et enchanteurs, dont vos alentours, tout poétiques qu il sont, sont encore loin d égaler. Un peu avant le coucher du soleil, je me trouvais en face d un site charmant qui fixa mon attention. Dans ce lieu à moitié solitaire s élevaient déjà quelques rares habitations, sans doute le berceau d un joli village ou d une ville. Mes pensées s envolèrent alors vers vos riantes collines, avec les villages qu elles abritent, vers ces lieux que je revoyais toujours avec un plaisir si pur, et qui m ont donné une hospitalité si bienveillante. A. Croquet (Dalles) to his brother, April 22, Archives of the Association du Musée de Braine-l Alleud, Braine-l Alleud. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB.

144 115 Catholic families, almost all of them German. It would be impossible for me to express with what touching and fraternal hospitality they received us. We stayed with a Mr Bettingen, who directs the work on a church which is being built here presently. For, while this locality counts several Protestant churches, the Catholics did not yet have their own. We were there for the feast of Pentecost. What painful sentiments in my heart when I heard the bells of these churches. Alas! I said to myself, in our Catholic countries these same bells call the faithful to the beautiful and touching solemnities of the Church, and here they assemble the people to come to hear a voice which is not that of the truth. Does this not remind us somewhat of the catacombs? As for ourselves, we performed the functions of our holy ministry in a room which Mr Bettingen lent us for this purpose. For several days, instructions were given to the faithful; Mass was celebrated: the congregation and the assistants numbered about twenty persons. On the last day about half of them took Holy Communion. It is a very small flock, true enough, but such is the state of the Church in Oregon: the great majority of the people do not belong to us; they are either heretics or infidels. But this beginning, such as it is, with the good will that we met here, shows the fruits of salvation which one can work in souls, if only more often they could have some religious support of which up to now they have been deprived. Besides, if a priest were to be present here more frequently, probably he could prevent the defection and revive the failing faith of some others who are in danger of perdition. 26 Croquet continued writing of his competition with a Methodist minister in preparing a condemned man for his death in the same town of Corvallis. Both parties 26 Il me reste maintenant à entrer dans quelques autres details sur notre séjour à Corvallis. Cette petite ville est située à 25 lieues d Orégon-City, sur la Willamette, dans une délicieuse vallée qui est pleine de jolies fermes, placées de distance en distance. C est un des plus charmants pays que j aie rencontrés dans l Orégon. Nous y trouvâmes d excellentes familles catholiques, presque toutes allemandes. Il me serait impossible d exprimer avec quelle touchante et fraternelle hospitalité elles nous accueillirent. Nous logions chez un Mr Bettingen, qui a la direction des travaux d une église qu on y construit présentement. Car bien que cette localité comptât plusieurs églises protestantes, les catholiques n avaient pas encore la leur. Nous nous trouvions là pour la fête de Pentecôte. Quels pénibles sentiments affectaient mon coeur lorsque j entendis les cloches de ces temples. Hélas! me disais-je, dans nos pays catholiques ces mêmes cloches appellent les fidèles aux belles et touchantes solennités de l Eglise, et ici elles convient le peuple à venir entendre une voix qui n est pas celle de la vérité! Est-ce que ceci ne nous rappelle pas un peu les catacombes? Nous, nous exercions les fonctions de notre saint ministère dans un salon que Mr Bettingen nous avait prêté pour cet usage. Pendant plusieurs jours, des instructions y furent données aux fidèles; la Ste messe y fut célébrée: l assistance et l auditoire se composaient d une vingtaine de personnes. Le dernier jour, plus de la moitié s approchèrent de la Ste Table. C est là un bien petit troupeau, il est vrai, mais tel est l état de l Eglise dans l Orégon: la grande majorité de la population ne nous appartient pas; elle est ou hérétique ou infidèle. Mais ce début tel qu il est, avec les bonnes dispositions que nous y rencontrâmes, montre les fruits de salut qu on pourrait opérer dans ces âmes, si plus souvent elles pouvaient profiter de secours religieux dont jusqu à present elles se sont vues pour ainsi dire privées. En outre, si un prêtre pouvait se trouver plus fréquemment sur les lieux, probablement pourrait-il empêcher la défection et ranimer la foi défaillante de quelques autres qui sont en danger de se perdre. A. Croquet (Réserve de Grand Rond) to unidentified correspondent, September 27, Archives of the Association du Musée de Braine-l Alleud, Braine-l Alleud. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB.

145 116 had been involved in ministering to the condemned man and both were asked to be with him at the moment of his execution. Because of his strong sentiments towards the Protestant religion, Croquet demurred: Some of his words and the desire he expressed to be assisted on the scaffold by the Methodist minister with the Catholic priest, reveal to us the evil result of this influence. He seemed, nevertheless, happy to receive the help of our ministry during these painful moments. But we could not accept, as you will readily agree, to accompany him in his last moments under the conditions proposed to us, and thus put before our faithful the strange and unheard of spectacle of the minister of the true religion beside the minister of error, on the scaffold. 27 Such then, mostly in his own words, are but a few of the experiences and impressions of Adrien Croquet in his first months in Oregon. The picture given by his first letters to his family is one of a man who is as awed by the physical beauty of the place as he is troubled by his confrontation with American religious pluralism or indifference to religion altogether. With little pastoral experience in the region his concept of the native peoples as savages in need of salvation had not yet matured into something more understanding. Nevertheless, he had made his choice: it was to them that he would primarily dedicate himself rather than to the whites of the region. It is clear from a letter written to one of my best friends 28 back at the American College, John F. Fierens, (the original seems lost; a translation of which is found in Van der Heyden s on-going series on Croquet in The American College Bulletin), that all that was happening to him in his newly adopted land was not disheartening to him; rather it was animating him all the more to dedicate himself to the work of the missions. Moreover, he wanted others from his homeland to share that work with him. The letter reveals the man s missionary convictions and his instrumentality in bringing others from Louvain to the North Pacific Coast: My dear Friend Fierens, 27 Quelques unes de ses paroles, et le désir qu il exprima d être assisté sur l echafaud par le ministre méthodiste conjointement avec le prêtre catholique, nous dévoilèrent assez le funeste résultat de cette influence. Il paraissait néanmoins satisfait de recevoir les secours de notre ministère dans ces pénibles moments. Mais nous ne pûmes accepter, comme vous le jugez bien, de l accompanger dans ses derniers moments aux conditions qu on nous proposait, et donner aux fidèles le spectacle étrange et inouï de voir figurer à côté de lui sur l échafaud le ministre de la vraie religion avec le ministre de l erreur. Ibid. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB. 28 Vous pouvez charger de tout cela Monsieur Fierens, prêtre au Collège américain; il le fera bien volontiers; c est un de mes meilleurs amis. A. Croquet to Anthyme Charlier, no date. Archives of the Association du Musée de Braine-l Alleud, Braine-l Alleud.

146 117 I have just returned from an apostolic expedition that I made with Father Mesplié among several Indian tribes dwelling along the banks of the Columbia River and in the neighborhood of Mount Hood. We were everywhere most affectionately received, the chiefs honoring us by offering the calumet. Willy nilly we had to try the aroma of their tobacco, making ourselves perfectly at home with them. A certain number among them have already been regenerated in the waters of Baptism. On this very trip we baptized about a hundred.... Many adults need but to have a priest for a short time to instruct them and prepare them for Holy Baptism. They are all willing enough to become Christians. We are now on the eve of visiting other tribes towards the south-east, near the coast of the Pacific Ocean. It is probably there that I shall have my permanent place of residence. I learned that there are seven thousand Indians in the district. The flock to be evangelized is, as you see, not a small one. In time I hope to have a colleague to reside there with me maybe Your Reverence! It is my heart s wish. These Indians are confined to two reservations, from thirty to forty miles apart. But, besides these two reserves, there are three more in the diocese, each of which having, in round numbers, three thousand Indians. We ought to be able to multiply ourselves: for, to minister to the Redskins, we are only two missionaries; the others are engaged with the Whites. Now is the time to take possession of the missions, as the Protestants are on the alert and they may get a foothold before we do. Let us hope that the good God will inspire some generous souls to come to the assistance of the poor forsaken aborigines who call for the Black Robes and who are ready to listen to their teachings. May the Black Robes come then, to preserve the tawny children of the forest from the poison of error that is sure to be spread among them. My dear Friend, if you love the savages, and I do not doubt that you do hasten to make up your mind. If however, you prefer to work among the whites, there is room left for the exercise of your zeal among them. As for me, my heart goes out to the savages, and to these the Bishop has vouchsafed to send me. He told me that he had written asking you to come here in order to share in our apostolate. It is on that account that I write so freely to you.... Courage, then, my dear Fierens, and hasten to come! Oh, for the blessings awaiting those who have freed souls buried in the sloughs of unbelief and in the darkness of death! Present my respects to the Rev. Rector, Father De Neve; and to my old schoolmates at the American College, give the assurance of my undying attachment. May they not forget to pray for a poor missioner to the savages; nor for my poor Umpquas, Killimooks, etc.! 29 By the end of September, 1860 Croquet had been definitively assigned by F. N. Blanchet to the Grand Ronde Reservation, 30 which Croquet described to his brother in a letter written several months after his arrival on the mission: 29 Van der Heyden, "Croquet III-4," The name given to this Oregon tribe and its reservation is spelled Grand Rond in some original documents and letters of the time, including Croquet s. Van der Heyden spells it Grandronde. Further complicating the matter, there is an altogether distinct region and river

147 118 It was on September 25, 1860, that I arrived at the Grand Rond reservation to take up residence. The Grand Rond is situated at about seven leagues from the Pacific Ocean, thirteen leagues from the mission of Saint Paul an twenty leagues to the southwest of Oregon City. The reservation is made up of about 900 Indians belonging to different tribes, the majority of them being unbelievers. There are, moreover, other savages living along the sea coast that I have not been able to visit so far, the roads being impassable during the winter. The Indians of Grand Rond are spread about in a space of about fiver or six leagues in circumference, surrounded by forests and by the mountain range which runs along the Pacific coast. At the entrance to the reservation there is a military post made up of about a hundred soldiers the great majority of whom are Catholics, mostly Irish. 31 Of his ministry on the reservation, he continued: Up until now I have been binating on Sunday for the soldiers and then for the savages. But I hope that in the spring to be able to build a church for the use of both groups, and at the same time attach my presbytery to it, all of course of wood; I also hope that Providence will come to the aid of my indigence. Christian charity knows no bounds, it is universal, it will be mindful, I am sure, of this poor Mission so worthy of its attention. 32 Through these early months in Oregon, Croquet was not only communicating with his family but also, as the letter to John Fierens indicates, to his confreres and the priests of the American College. To fellow student Sebastian Goens he wrote a very lengthy on the east side of the Oregon territory near the border with Idaho that is called the Grande Ronde. In quoting original material I will retain the chosen spelling but in my own text will use the modern version, Grand Ronde. 31 C est le 25 septembre 1860 que je suis arrivé à la réserve du Grand Rond pour y faire ma résidence. Le Grand Rond est situé à environ sept lieues de l Océan Pacifique, treize de la mission de St. Paul et vingt lieues sud-ouest d Orégon-City. Cette réserve se compose d environ 900 Indiens appartenant à différents tribus, la plupart encore infidèles. Il y a de plus d autres sauvages habitant les côtes de la mer, que je n ai pas pu visiter jusqu à présent, les routes étant impraticables pendant l hiver. Les Indiens du Grand Rond sont disséminés sur un espace de cinq ou six lieues de circonférence, entouré par des forêts et par la chaîne de montagnes qui longe les côtes de l océan. A l entrée de la réserve se trouve un poste militaire composé à peu près d une centaine de soldats dont le plus grand nombre sont catholiques, Irlandais pour la plupart. A. Croquet (Grand Rond) to his brother, February 10, Archives of the Association du Musée de Braine-l Alleud, Braine-l Alleud. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB. 32 Jusqu à présent, je bine le dimanche pour les soldats et ensuite pour les sauvages. Mais j espère au printemps pouvoir bâtir une église qui sera pour l usage des uns et des autres, et y adosser en même temps mon presbytère, bien entendu le tout en bois; j espère aussi que la Providence viendra au secours de mon indigence. La charité chrétienne n a pas de bornes, elle est universelle, elle se souviendra, je n en doute pas, de cette pauvre Mission si digne d attirer son attention. Ibid. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB. Binating ( bine ), means saying two masses daily.

148 119 letter, much of it repeating word for word what he had written months earlier to his nephew, Philippe de Hennault. Of further interest to this study is his opening paragraph in which he repeated his call for assistance from the college: I need not tell you how much pleasure was afforded me by your letter. Indeed, with a keen feeling of delight do I read whatever is to the honor of my Fatherland and especially to the honor of the American College, whereto I am often borne in thought. Blessed will be the day on which I hall hail the arrival here of some of the inmates of that house, to recall with them the thrice happy remembrances which it left engraven on our hearts; but more so, that we may work together on the vast field awaiting cultivation in far-away Oregon! Whites and Indians call on all sides for apostolic laborers. 33 For the moment, quite by himself in his ministry, Croquet had plenty of challenges before him. He noted in a letter to De Neve that the American Civil War had dramatically increased the number of new American coming into the region, some 75,000 having arrived by steamer the previous summer. Concerning the mission to the sauvages he wrote that of the five reservations in the region, only one received the regular ministrations of a priest, the other four receiving only rare visits from Catholic clergy, leaving them open then to the ministrations of the Protestants. 34 The Grand Ronde Reservation was the only native reserve with its own priest; of its particular needs Croquet informed De Neve that at that moment he was obliged to send the greater part of the Catholic children on the reservation to Protestant instructors,... too often to the peril of their faith or at least to the detriment of their piety. 35 More particularly, he noted that another obstacle to his ministry was the fact that the selection of the director of the local school was in the hands of government agents; at that time the school in Grande Ronde was under the direction of an American, whose religious affiliation he did not know and whose wife was teaching the young girls manual labor. Whatever the value of the work, it was not good enough for Croquet: You will readily understand, Dear Father Rector, how difficult it is under such present conditions to rear these poor savage children in the principles and practice of our holy 33 Van der Heyden, "Croquet III-4," 25. As with the Fierens letter previously cited, the original of this letter is no longer to be found in the Archives of The American College. 34 Joseph Van der Heyden, "Monsignor Adrian J. Croquet, Indian Missionary," The American College Bulletin IV, no. 3 (1906): trop souvent au péril de leur foi ou au détriment du moins de la piété. Croquet (Grand Ronde) to De Neve, December 29, Archives of the Association du Musée de Brainel Alleud, Braine-l Alleud. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB.

149 120 religion. For that we need schools, we need Sisters Croquet s cry for his own schools and the religious women to staff them would become one of his paramount preoccupations throughout much of the coming forty years. In spite of these early obstacles, he also reported to De Neve that progress was nevertheless slowly being made. He reported that the Indians already had a church measuring forty-five feet by twenty feet, initiated just the previous October and dedicated to Saint Michael. This was in fact his second church, the first being that of Saint Patrick some six miles from Grand Ronde, 37 which he visited on the first Sunday of each month. He added that the bishop also was intending to assign him a third station that presently had no church, the construction of which could only begin the following spring if funds were found for the work. Also on his agenda were his own evangelical efforts: I have to teach catechism, if not every day, at least very often, to prepare catechumens for baptism and some neophytes for First Communion. I have every reason to be satisfied with the good dispositions manifested by my neophytes and with their attachment to their missionary. A remarkable thing for savages to do is that they assist me, bringing food and other things, when they know or think that I am in need. 38 As he was writing only a few days after the feast of Christmas, his report to De Neve on the celebration of the holy day among the Indians of Grand Ronde offered a very personal view into the world that he was then making his own: Last Christmas I sang Midnight Mass. Early in the evening, the Indians gathered into my house, which was soon crowded. Whilst awaiting the time for the Mass at dawn, they sang canticles, recited the beads, and off and on carried on a bit of conversation. 36 Vous comprenez assez, Monseiur le Recteur, combien il m est difficile dans le présent état des choses d élever ces pauvres enfants sauvages dans les principes et la pratique de notre sainte Religion. Pour cela, il nous faudrait les écoles, il nous faudrait les sœurs.... Ibid. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB. 37 The church of Saint Patrick was founded by Father James Croke in 1858 to serve German, Irish and American Catholics who had settled in an area known as Muddy Valley. The church was dedicated in 1861 shortly after Croquet s arrival in Grand Ronde. The dedication service was led by John Fierens. The community around the church diminished after the arrival of the railroad in nearby McMinnville in the early 1870 s. Physical remains of the church are visible at the sight to this day. See Cawley, Crocket, J ai à faire le catéchisme, sinon tous les jours, au moins très fréquemment, pour préparer au baptême quelques nouveaux catéchumènes, ou préparer quelques néophytes à leur première communion. Je n ai qu à me louer généralement des bonnes dispositions de mes néophytes et de leur attachement pour leur missionnaire; et, ce qui est remarquable pour des sauvages, ils m aident même, m apportent des vivres ou autres choses, s ils savent ou croient que je suis un peu dans le besoin. Ibid. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB.

150 121 After Mass they all bundled up in their blankets and lay down on the hard floor. Sleep did not visit me that night: my eyes would simply not remain shut. The spectacle of these poor savages huddled about the altar, spending the night so close to the Sanctuary, failed not to recall to my mind that Bethlehem stable where a few poor shepherds prostrated themselves at the foot of the crib of their newly-born Savior! 39 Croquet wrote that he also had to make excursions to visit the several tribes residing along the Pacific Coast, a responsibility he was able to fulfill only when the weather allowed. Now I shall end with a word about an excursion along the sea-coat, about twenty-five or thirty miles form here, which I made last summer. There dwell a few Indian tribes who live principally from the fishing of salmon, which are very plentiful in those parts as well as in almost all the rivers of Oregon. Among the Indians whom I visited on the occasion of that trip, I have been able to baptize only the children and the sick adults, having previously instructed the latter in the essentials of the faith. The journey to that district cannot be made at any other time than in the summer or fall. More than one-half of the year the roads are impassable, owing either to the heavy snow in the mountains or to the torrential rains. Neither, as may well be imagined, does the way thither boast of a hostelry for the wayfarer. The only shelters to be found are the heavenly vault and the forest tree. 40 In the ensuing months, Croquet s letters both to De Neve and to his bother showed that his principle preoccupation was with the young among the Native Americans in whom he was placing his confidence for the future of the mission: 39 A la fête de Noël, j ai chanté la messe de minuit. Dès le soir, ma maison se remplissait d Indiens, qui y attendirent le temps de la messe en chantant tour à tour des cantiques, récitant le chapelet ou y mêlant quelques conversations. Après le messe, chacun s enveloppe dans sa couverture et s étend sur le plancher pour prendre un peu de repos en attendant la messe de l aurore. Ma maison ressemblait alors à une loge de sauvages. Quant à moi, le sommeil m exempta pour cette nuit de sa visite, il me fut impossible de fermer l oeil. Comme le spectacle de ces pauvres sauvages groupés autour de l autel, passant cette nuit auprès de notre humble sanctuaire, rappelait naturellement à ma pensée l étable de Bethléem; alors que quelques pauvres bergers allaient aussi se prosterner devant la crèche de leur Sauveur nouveauné! Ibid. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB. 40 Maintenant je termine par une excursion que j ai faite l été dernier à 8 ou 9 lieues d ici le long de la mer. Là habitent quelques tribus Indiennes qui vivent principalement de la pêche, et surtout de celle du saumon qui y est très abondant comme il l est [en] général dans les rivières de l Orégon. Jusqu à présent je n ai pu faire qu y baptiser les enfants et les adultes malades, après avoir instruit ceux-ci de ce qu il est absolument nécessaire de savoir. Ce voyage ne peut se faire que dans la bonne saison. Plus de la moitié de l année les routes sont presque impraticables: les neiges qui couvrent les montagnes, le pluies continuelles qui grossissent les rivières ne permettent guère de faire alors cette route. Le long du chemin non plus, comme on le pense bien, point d hôtellerie pour le voyageur, point d autre abri que la route du ciel et l arbre des forêts. Ibid. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB.

151 122 Our main hope lies with the young generation; to raise them in the principles of the faith and in the practice of Christian virtues, that is where lies above all the future of the missions. 41 The great obstacle to achieving this hope, he explained in a letter to his brother, was that the American government had established a subsidy for Indian schools, but since this was controlled at the moment by the Protestants, the children attending these schools were receive no proper religious instruction. He hoped to change this situation revealing to his brother that he had already spoken with the government agent about it. A key piece of his hoped-for solution would be the arrival of religious sisters to provide Catholic education to the young, who would be essential for the progress of the Catholic Church on the Grand Ronde Reservation: Certainly, if it can follow its own tendencies, Grand Rond will be, I hope soon gifted with an establishment of these excellent sisters, who already have begun to produce such a happy change in other parts of the country. 42 Even at this early stage of his ministry at Grand Ronde, he expected the arrival of the sisters to be fairly imminent. He himself had traveled to Oregon by ship as a member of troop of F. N. Blanchet s new missionary recruits that included at least twelve Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, eight Sisters of Providence and eight Sisters of Saint Ann, all from Montreal. 43 The Holy Names sisters had remained in Oregon but upon visiting Grand Ronde, their superiors, Mother Alphonse and Sister Theresa of Jesus, had rejected it as a site for a convent and school. The community s anonymous historian writes: The Superior General found it impossible to establish a house at Grand Ronde under the existing conditions; in declining the offer of the Archbishop she did not leave him 41 Notre principal espoir est dans la jeune génération; l élever dans les principes de la foi et dans la pratique des vertus chrétiennes, c est en cela que consiste surtout l avenir de nos missions. A. Croquet (Grand Rond) to his brother, June 20, Bosse, Memoires, 62. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB. 42 Certainement, s il peut suivre ses propres inspirations, le Grand Rond sera, je l espère, bientôt doté d un établissement de ces zélées et excellentes soeurs qui ont déjà commencé à produire un si heureux changement dans quelques autres points du pays. Ibid. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB. 43 Mary Flavia Dunne, S.N.J.M., Gleanings of Fifty Years: The Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, (Portland: Glass and Prudhomme Co., 1909), 96. This book itself carries no acknowledgement of the author but Schoenberg identifies her as Sister Mary Flavia Dunne and so liberty is taken to note her authorship in this and future citations. See: Wilfred P. Schoenberg, S.J., Defender of the Faith: The History of the Catholic Sentinel (Portland, OR: Oregon Catholic Press, 1993), 97.

152 123 without the hope of accepting the Indian school when circumstances favored such an opening. 44 Not one to lose hope, Croquet wrote to his brother in June, 1863: I am not worried about the subjects inasmuch as we will soon receive from Canada a reinforcement of some thirty women religious for the dioceses of Nesqually and Vancouver Island. I hope my next letter will announce the happy solution to this matter which I've had at heart for a long time. It will be for me and for my Indians a blessing from Heaven and one of the surest guarantees of the future of the faith among these people The longed-for sisters would in fact not arrive at the Grand Ronde for eleven more years. Martinus Cawley explains that local politics led to the non-arrival of the Canadian sisters. The local government agent as well as Washington D.C. had given their assent to Croquet s plan for a sisters school on the Reservation. Unfortunately, employees of the Agency then went on strike against the agent, who was eventually replaced. In the midst of these troubles, the effort to bring in the sisters was lost. 46 On a very different subject, in his already mentioned June 20, 1863 letter to his brother, Croquet related in considerable detail an extraordinary story that shows Croquet responding to the rough and swift justice to be found in the Oregon country even as it reveals his devotion to sharing his faith with the least in society. In a situation similar to that of the condemned man of 1860, once again, Croquet found himself involved with another man similarly facing ultimate penalty. In June of 1862, the unfortunate man (who remained nameless in Croquet s account), had been accused of murder and condemned to death by hanging. The man asked to see a priest though he was son of Protestants, though unbaptized, and had already been visited by a Methodist minister. Croquet visited him on a number of occasions and assisted him in preparing for his imminent encounter with the noose. Croquet baptized the man and offered mass for him in his jail cell, the fellow making his first and last communion then. Croquet also confirmed him. Croquet completed his narrative by noting to his brother that after 44 Dunne, Gleanings, Je n ai pas à craindre du côté des sujets à fournir: d autant qu il va nous arriver bientôt du Canada un renfort d une trentaine de religieuses destinées pour les diocèses d Orégon-City, Nesqually et l île de Vancouver. J espère dans ma prochaine lettre vous annoncer l heureuse solution de cette affaire que j ai à coeur depuis longtemps. Ce sera pour moi et mes Indiens une bénédiction du Ciel et une des plus sûres garanties pour l avenir de la religion parmi ces peuples.... A. Croquet (Grand Rond) to his brother, June 20, Bosse, Memoires, Translated by P. Wallace Platt, CSB. 46 Cawley, Crocket,

153 124 reception of the sacraments, the man was calm and resigned before his fate, the result of the grace he received. 47 Croquet and another priest accompanied the man to the scaffold, general absolution was given, psalms and prayers were recited while the condemned man up to the moment of his death continued to display the same calm as before. Of the gruesome event, Croquet expressed his hope that it would bring some good to those who observed it: All that made a favorable impression of the Catholic religion on several spectators, and there were, I understand, some who stated that if there exists among the different churches called Christian one that is divinely established, it must be the Catholic Church and they were going to begin to study its doctrines seriously. May this event be the occasion of the conversion of some of our separated brethren! 48 Of Croquet s attitudes towards the Protestants, whom he now confronted with a regularity unknown in his homeland, some insight is gleaned from his words to De Neve in his letter of November 27, 1863: Concerning my own missions, I have no marvelous occurrences to report. Among the two missions or stations I attend among the Whites, my ministry consists principally in visiting once every month, in preaching there, in celebrating Mass, in trying to keep the small flocks within the fold, and to bring back from time to time a strayed sheep, often for years a stranger to the Sacraments. Not a few of our separated brethren come occasionally to hear the word of God. There is a third station, some eight miles from here, where several Protestant families have manifested the desire to be instructed in the tenets of the faith, and where I go at intervals, to comply with their wishes. To the well-intentioned Protestants I lend pious and controversial works. I must confess, however, that the conversion of these people is no easy task; for to convince is not to convert, as experience has taught me. However, I succeed in dispelling anti-catholic prejudice; and, who knows, perhaps the way is thus smoothed for the conversion of some of these souls, when in due time God s grace touches them le résultat de la grâce qu il avait reçue. A Croquet (Grand Rond) to his brother, June 20, 1863, Bosse, Memoires, Tout cela produisit sur plusieurs spectateurs une impression en faveur de la religion catholique; et il y en eût, à ce que j ai entendu, qui avouèrent que s il existe parmi les différentes églises qui s appellent chrétiennes, une divinement établie, ce doit être l église catholique et qu ils allaient commencer à étudier plus sérieusement sa doctrine. Puisse cet événement être l occasion de la conversion de quelques-uns de nos frères égarés! Ibid. Croquet separately writes of the incident in a letter to De Neve, but with somewhat less detail: Croquet (Grand Rond, Yamhill Co.) to De Neve, November 27, Archives of The American College, Louvain. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB. 49 Maintenant, pour en venir à mes propres missions, je n ai pas de grandes merveilles à vous raconter. Parmi les deux missions ou stations dont je suis chargé parmi les blancs, mon ministère consiste principalement à les visiter tous les mois, y prêcher et célébrer les SS. Mystères; maintenir dans le devoir le petít troupeau de fidèles qui le composent; ramener de

154 125 Finally, Croquet shared with his brother the sacramental fruit of the previous year s work with the following summation: Here now is the total of baptisms administered during the year 1862: baptisms of children: 67 of adults: 33 (among whom 27 in danger of death) As a reminder of just how distant Croquet and those who would follow him were from their homeland and their families, at least as measured in time and the impossibility of receiving news with any kind of immediacy, the death of Croquet s mother in 1866 is worth noting. His mother, Emerence, died on January 18, March of the same year, more than three months later, Croquet wrote to his parents, not yet aware of her death: It would be very comforting, dear parents, to know that the Good Lord keeps you still in good health and that you are happy in the bosom of our dear family, at least so far as that is possible in this world. I should very much like to be able to write to each one of my brothers and sisters; but I know you will pass on to them my kind wishes. My love for them, as for you, is always the same and has not suffered from the absence or the distance that separates us. 52 In November of 1866, almost eight months after this letter and eleven months after his mother s death that Croquet, finally having received notification of his mother s passing, wrote to his father to express his grief and condolences: In temps en temps quelques âmes égarées qui depuis des années ne s étaient plus approchées du S. Sacrement. Un certain nombre de nos frères séparés viennent aussi y entendre la parole de Dieu. Je vais aussi de temps en temps annoncer les vérités de notre sainte religion dans un autre endroit à sept ou huit milles d ici, où plusieurs familles protestantes ont manifesté le désir d être instruites sur ce point. Dans ce but je leur prête aussi, comme à tous ceux que veulent les accepter, des livres de religion et de controverse. Il faut cependant l avouer, la conversion de ces sortes de personnes n est pas une tâche si facile, l expérience apprend assez que convaincre n est pas encore convertir. Du moins par là bien des préjugés contre l Eglise Catholique sont dissipés, et peut-être, les voies préparées pour la conversion de quelques âmes, que la grâce opéra en son temps. A. Croquet (Grand Rond,Yamhill Co.) to J. De Neve, November 27, Archives of The American College, Louvain. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB. 50 Voici maintenant le total des baptêmes administrés pendant l année 1862: baptêmes d enfants: 67 d adultes: 33 (parmi ceux-ci 27 en danger de mort).... Croquet (Grand Rond) to his brother, June 20, Bosse, Memoires, 64. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB. 51 Ibid., Il me serait bien doux, chers parents, d apprendre que le bon Dieu vous conserve encore la santé, et que vous êtes heureux au sein de notre chère famille, autant du moins qu on peut l être ici bas. Je voudrais pouvoir écrire à chacun de mes frères et soeurs; mais vous voudrez bien leur communiquer mes sentiments. Mon attachement pour eux, comme pour vous, est toujours le même et n a pas souffert par l absence ni la distance qui nous sépare. Croquet (Oregon) to his parents, March 29, Archives of the Association du Musée de Braine-l Alleud. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB.

155 126 The letter from my dear brother, the pastor at Virginal, brings me knowledge of the painful loss that you and all of us have suffered by the death of our beloved mother and of your dearly beloved spouse. I was far from imagining the mortal blow that was so soon to separate us from a mother we loved and so justly venerated, one who has left her family only examples to be admired and followed; a mother worthy to live forever in the heart of her children! 53 Croquet s ensuing decades of service on the Grand Ronde and Siletz Reservations were ones marked by his life of self-abnegation, 54 severe penances and ascetical practices, the giving away of all that the had, 55 constant travel to his mission stations, minimal progress in Christianizing the Indians of his parishes. Baptisms of adults remained far and few between. Croquet did have some success in finally getting some sisters to open a school on the Grand Ronde; the Sisters of the Holy Names finally committed to open a school on the reservation in Having been designated a Catholic reservation by President Grant s Peace Policy, the government agreed to offer the sisters a $100 per capita for each child they boarded and taught. At the completion of his long-hoped for dream, Croquet found himself overwhelmed with emotions... too deep for words God had heard the sighs and prayer of these long years of weary waiting and he was satisfied. 56 Croquet s sighs and prayers would have to recommence only a few years later; by September of 1880, the sisters chose to abandon the school since promises by the government to provide separate boarding areas for the girls and boys were never met. All was not lost forever for the Grand Ronde. With the assistance of the aged and recently retired archbishop, F. N. Blanchet, and the support of the newly appointed Charles John Seghers, three Benedictine sisters from Collegeville, Minnesota arrived to staff Croquet s school in The abbot of St. John s Abbey in Collegeville visited the Grand Ronde and Umatilla in 1882 at Seghers s request but was so unimpressed with all that he saw that he not only did not promise any monks to the archdiocese, he 53 La lettre de mon cher frère, le curé de Virginal, vient de me donner connaissance de la douleureuse perte que vous et nous tous venons de faire par la mort de notre très chère mère, votre bien-aimée épouse. J etais loin d appréhender le coup fatal qui devait si tôt séparer de nous une mère que nous aimions et que nous vénérions si justement, qui n a laissé à sa famille que des exemples dignes d être admirés et suivis; une mère digne de vivre pour toujours dans le coeur de ses enfants! Croquet (Grand Ronde) to his father, November 11, Archives of the Association du Musée de Braine-l Alleud. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB. 54 Joseph Van der Heyden, "Monsignor Adrien J. Croquet, Indian Missionary," The American College Bulletin V, no. 3 (1907): Cawley, Crocket, Dunne, Gleanings, 141.

156 127 had the sisters withdrawn and returned to Minnesota as well. 57 They were followed a year later by Benedictine sisters and monks from Switzerland, the monks forming the core of what would later become Mount Angel Abbey, not far from the Grand Ronde. What the sisters found waiting for them was an... ill-shapen frame structure, patched with additions as necessity may have required. 58 Mother Johanna, the small community s superior, wrote: Of their new pastor s odd manner, His Grace, the Archbishop had procured for the good pastor a very nice white horse. One morning when Father Croquet went to the stable to feed her, he found in place of his pretty white mare a shabby looking bay. What did he do? Nothing, but feed the new horse, saying, I thought I had a white horse. 59 With the support of the Benedictine sisters, the school continued to educate the children of the Grand Ronde for years to come, though Croquet, as always, had a difficult time keeping the sisters fed and often found himself needing to ask for assistance from others to meet his obligations. In 1889, Croquet returned to Belgium for the first time since his departure some thirty years earlier. He found his priest-brother, Anthyme, aging and not far from death and so relied instead on his nephew, the future cardinal, Désiré Mercier, to escort him to the shrine of Our Lady in Lourdes to whom miracles in Grand Ronde had been attributed. 60 As Croquet s fiftieth anniversary as a priest approached in 1894, Archbishop Gross arranged to have the missionary priest named a monsignor. Croquet protested the honor but was convinced to accede to the new dignity as... a gesture of loyalty to the Pope. 61 Of the purple socks offered him by the archbishop he soon gave them away to a needy Indian and the purple robes he refused to wear and stuffed them unused into a drawer. 62 By 1898, Croquet was looking forward to returning to Belgium once and for all. He wrote to his nephews and nieces in February of that year: Now my future is in the hands of divine Providence. If the Lord grants me life and health, my wish is to go and finish my days in Belgium. My health is still rather good; but I no longer have the 57 Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, Ibid., Ibid., Cawley, Crocket, Ibid., Ibid.

157 128 strength I had formerly to carry on further missionary work. 63 By April he had secured the permission of the archbishop to definitively leave his mission, moving him to write his nephew, Désiré Mercier: I am pleased to tell you that I have obtained the permission of [His Grace] the Archbishop to leave Oregon and return to Belgium. There is a priest to replace me as soon as I am ready to leave. 64 On October 9, 1898, Croquet announced to his small flock at the Sunday mass that he would soon be leaving forever his post on the Grand Ronde and returning to Belgium, a younger priest, Felix Bucher, having been assigned to take over from the old man. As one of the Benedictine sisters of the mission later wrote, his parishioners responded to the news in an extraordinary manner: From Sunday to Friday morning, Oct 14, the date of his final leave-taking, they came in groups to his rooms, where they would sit motionless for hours, scarcely saying a word, only now and then the squaws would be heard uttering a low dreary wail, similar to that practiced by them at funerals. The last night especially was a memorable one; for the male portion of the congregation pre-empted it for an all night s watch with their beloved Father. They crowded his rooms, sat and talked with him talked of the past, the present and the future. Msgr Croquet never retired, be it remembered, before 1 or 2 A.M.; but on this particular night he dispensed with sleep entirely. When day broke and the hour arrived when he must prepare for the six o clock Mass, he, with trembling hand and faltering step, distributed among the faithful watchers, the various little ornamentations of his room. Holy pictures, crucifixes, reliquaries, holy-water fonts, etc., were carried away as mementoes of heir departing pastor and friend. Nine o clock was the hour set for departure; but long before that time a large crowd had gathered around the school-house awaiting the fatal blow in a mournful silence. 65 After traveling to Portland where he was bid farewell by the clergy of the city, he journeyed by train to New York then by ship to Belgium. He lived with his nephew, Désiré Mercier for a while in Louvain before moving to his sister s home in Brainel Alleud. He died on August 8, The opening words of the funeral homily 63 Maintenant mon avenir est dans les mains de la divine Providence. Si le Seigneur me prête vie et santé, mon désir est d aller finir mes jours en Belgique. Ma santé est encore assez bonne; mais je n ai plus les forces d autrefois pour supporter beaucoup plus longtemps les travaux des missions. Croquet (Grand Rond) to Nephews and Nieces, February 17, Archives of the Association du Musée de Braine-l Alleud. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB. 64 J ai le plaisir de vous annoncer que j ai obtenu le consentement de Mgr l Archevêque pour quitter l Orégon et m en retourner en Belgique. Il a un prêtre pour me remplacer aussitôt que je serai prêt à partir. Croquet (Grand Rond) to D. Mercier, August 1, Archives of the Association du Musée de Braine-l Alleud. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB. 65 Van der Heyden, "Monsignor Adrien J. Croquet, Indian Missionary,"

158 129 delivered by his lifelong friend, Abbé Renard, were those of Saint Paul: Quam speciosi pedes evangelisantium pacem, evangelisantium bona! (Romans 10:15). 66 Such then was the ministry, the sacrifices and the life of Louvain s first missionary on the North Pacific Coast, the Saint of Oregon. John Fierens Follows Croquet to Oregon Adrien Croquet did not have long to wait for the others from Louvain for whom he had been pleading. John F. Fierens departed the American College for the Oregon mission on August 11, The exact date of his arrival in Oregon City is lost but Fierens wrote to John De Neve shortly after his arrival in Oregon City which allows us to know that it was probably some time in October; his letter, dated October 31, 1860, related details of his voyage from Belgium to New York. Perhaps somewhat uncomfortably, the young priest was accompanied by his former rector, Peter Kindekens, on his own way back to Detroit after having been deposed from his position as head of the American College. While in the area, Fierens and Kindekens visited a number of clergy including Msgr. William Quinn, 68 vicar general of the Archdiocese of New York. Fierens commented on his efforts to speak English well in this and other visits, I did my best to speak English like a Yankee. 69 He continued in his letter to De Neve to share the news that he had visited Croquet and found him in good health and that, for the time being, he would be staying with the Archbishop F. N. Blanchet until the spring,... and then perhaps to Jacksonville. 70 Finally, of his situation with the archbishop Fierens noted, It is not good for me here; the people in the house speak French all the time so that I won t be learning much English Ibid.: Album Alumnorum, Quinn, William ( ), was born in Donoughmore, County Donegal, Ireland and came to the United States in He was ordained a priest in 1845 for New York and served as pastor of several parishes including the cathedral. In1873 he was appointed vicar general and administered the archdiocese during the First Vatican Council. In 1886 he returned to Europe for health reasons and died in Paris. See Virtuology.com, July 20, Ik deed mijn best, om het engelsch te spreken als een Yankee. J. Fierens (Oregon City) to J. De Neve, October 31, Archives of The American College, Louvain en dan misschien naar Jacksonville. Ibid. 71 Doch het is hier niet goed vor mij; men spreekt hier in het huis altijd fransch, ik zal er dus niet veel engelsch mede leeren. Ibid.

159 130 his brother: From his side Croquet likewise made mention of Fierens presence in a letter to Our dear confrere, Father Fierens, whom I was so glad to see, provides us with a [undecipherable] assistant. Doubtless The American College at Louvain will send us others, and that will not be too much: the mission is large and our enemy looks everywhere to sow the tares of error and evil in the field of our heavenly Father. 72 Fierens was indeed assigned by F. N. Blanchet as the first pastor of Jacksonville, a mission that covered most of the southern reaches of the archdiocese. successor, F. X. Blanchet (the archbishop s nephew), described the mission as: Fierens s miles long and 150 miles wide. One can see this would make a truly large diocese. It is easy to see that a missionary must be quite a traveler. He must cover one thousand miles every year if he wants to visit his scattered sheep twice a year. 73 The town of Jackson held one Protestant church and one Catholic, built just two years before Fierens s arrival by Rev. James Croke. Fierens would serve there for two years, until 1863, when F. N. Blanchet would call him to Portland to serve as pastor of the cathedral as well as his vicar general. While in Jacksonville, letters from Fierens to his pastor appeared in two numbers of a weekly church bulletin published in his homeland, De Katholyke Zondag. Of his dangerous travel to Jacksonville he wrote: Here is my departure to my parish. This is different from the entry of a new pastor in our Belgium. Quite often I was thinking of your entry as I started my journey to my designated mission parish. It was the 23rd of November when I started my journey to Jacksonville. I traveled a few hundred miles on the Urillamette [sic] river by steamboat, further I could not go by water; then I took the stagecoach, which is a coach which delivers letters and newspapers from one place to another. In this vehicle pulled by four horses I had to travel another two hundred miles before I arrived in Jacksonville. The details of this awful and difficult journey I will not describe because they would fill at least another whole page. I will only tell you that it took eleven days before I arrived in Jacksonville and that I never in my life have seen such horrible, bad and dangerous roads, or even in my mind imagined it. It is true that it was in the winter because in the summer they are pretty good. Twice I almost drowned as we arrived at the South Umqua river, the road was washed out by 72 Le cher confrère Mr Fierens, que j ai revu avec tant de plaisir, nous fournit un [undecipherable] auxiliaire. Le Collège Américain de Louvain nous enverra bientôt d autres sans doute; ce ne sera pas trop: la mission est grande et à côté de cela l homme ennemi cherche partout à semer l ivraie de l erreur et du mal dans le champ du Père de famille. A. Croquet (Grand Ronde) to his brother, February 10, Archives of the Association du Musée de Braine-l Alleud, Braine-l Alleud. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB. 73 Francis Xavier Blanchet, Ten Years on the Pacific Coast, ed. Edward J. Kowrach (Fairfield, WA: Ye Galleon Press, 1982), 27.

160 131 the heavy stream and high water; we went further for a half-hour along the slopes of the mountains, we continued by foot, the mail and our luggage strapped to the horses back. Here another small accident befell me. My good and strong suitcase for which I paid thirty francs in Leuven [Louvain] had its last day. The horse to which it was strapped slipped and rolled with it forty to fifty feet down into the river. It [the horse] fell on rocks and instantly died, and my suitcase was in pieces and lay in the river; if the coachman and I had not gone down so quickly all would have been lost, farewell forever, carried away by the stream. All my things, my clothes, my breviaries (one completely new, not yet opened, the smallest Hanicq) and some other treasured possessions were badly damaged and wet. I was very satisfied that I still owned them and not everything was lost. So you see that though you cross safely the grand ocean three times, when you come on land you can still have a shipwreck.... My arrival was the 3rd of December at 5:30 p.m; the brass band and the sisters were not home to greet me; I went to the hotel where I stayed for five days until my sacristy or room was ready to receive me. The 8th of December, the feast of Our Lady, I said mass for the first time in my mission and spoke to my people reading them my letter of appointment, so Our Lady inaugurated my mission Zie hier nu myn vertrek naer myne parochie. Dit verschilt ook een weinig van eene inhaling van eenen nieuwen pastor in ons Belgenland. Menigmael dacht ik aen uwe inhaling, Eerwaerde Pastor, als ik op reis naer myne bestemde missie of parochie was. Den 23en November begaf ik my op reis naer Jacksonville. Omtrent honderd mylen deed ik af met den stoomboot op de rivier Urillamette [sic], verder kon ik met het water niet gaen; dan nam ik de postvoiture, dat is de voiture die de brieven en gazetten van de eene plaets naer de andere brengt. Met dezen wagen, door vier paerden getrokken, moest ik nog twee honderd mylen afleggen vooraleer te Jacksonville te komen. De byzonderheden van deze onaengename en moeijelyke reis zal ik u niet beschryven, want dit zou voor het minste een gansch blad papier meer vragen. Ik zal u alleenelyk zeggen dat zy elf volle dagen vroeg eer ik te Jacksonville aenkwam, en dat ik nooit in myn leven, zulke afschuwelyke, slechte en vervaerlyke wegen heb gezien, of my zelven in den geest voorgesteld. Het is waer dat het in den winter was, want in den zomer zyn zy tamelyk goed. Twee mael ben ik in gevaer geweest van te verdrinken, en toen wy aen de Zuider Umqua rivier kwamen, was de weg door den grooten stroom van het hooge water weggespoeld, en wy moesten een halve uer verre, op het afhellen der bergen, te voet doortrekken en den post en ons reisgoed op den rug der paerden binden, en alsoo vooruitgaen. Hier valt my een ander klein ongeluk foor. Myne schoone en sterke valies of handkoffer welke ik te Leuven dertig franken betaeld had, zag hier haren laetsten schoonen dag. Het peerd, op wiens rug zy gebondend was, stronkelde en rolde ermede veertig tot vyftig voeten naer beneden in de rivier, viel op de rotsen en was ter plaets plots dood, en myne valies was in gruis en lag in de rivier, en ware de koetsier en ik zoo spoedig naer beneden niet gegaen, het was met alles gedaen, adieu voor altyd, de stroom had alles weggevoerd. Alhoewel al myne zaken, myne kleederen, myne brevieren (een gansch nieuwe, nog niet geopend, die kleinste Hanicq) en eenige andere my duerbare voorwerpen, gansch beschadigd en nat waren, ik was toch zeer tevreden die nog te bezitten, en niet alles verloren te hebben. Zoo gy ziet dat waermede men drymael den grooten Oceaen veilig overtrekt, daer komt men te lande schipbreuk mede te lyden.... Myne aenkomst was den 3n December om half zes uren des avonds; de harmony en maegdekens om my te ontvangen waren niet t huis; ik begaf my naer het hotel, al waer ik vyf daagen gelogeerd heb, tot dat myne sacristy of kamer wat gereed was om my te ontvangen. Den 8n December feest van Onzer [sic] Lieve Vrouw Onbevlekt Ontfangen, heb ik voor de eerste

161 132 Fierens offers a description of the world in Jacksonville in which he now finds himself as missionary priest: As for my rectory, I have my sacristy, a place twelve feet wide and fourteen feet long; that place serves for everything, bedroom, office, big meeting room, sacristy, etc. etc. 75 In a succeeding issue of the same church newsletter, Fierens went on to describe his mission in substantial detail: For the moment, Reverend, all I can say is that I know where my mission begins but not where it ends. It begins at the California border marker on the Pacific Ocean and extends from west to east to the Rocky Mountains. How far south to north I don t know; but I do believe I know one thing that in the course of my lifetime I could not walk across the whole thing. My mission is not one of Indians and savages. There are some in various parts but in small numbers and very widespread: a few here and there. My mission is a mission to the whites: to the civilized (if I may call them that) and I believe they come from all nations on earth. What you should know is that in the area around Jacksonville there are a number of mines; and some fifty, sixty and more miles form here, there are also a number of mines and so, all around here all the way to California the famous and celebrated land of gold. So now we have fortuneseekers from every country: many Germans, many Americans, a number of Irish, some French and Italians, many Chinese, and a few from the Sandwhich Islands, etc. 76 mael in myne missie misse gelezen, tot myn volk gesproken en hun myn zendingbrieven voorgelezen, dus een Liever Vrouwdag huldde [sic] myn missie in. John F. Fierens, "1e Brief van den Eerw. Heer J. F. Fierens, Belgische Missionaris in Amerika," De Katholyke Zondag: Godsdienst en Zedeleer, July , This newsletter as well as the number that follows are held in the Archives of The American College, Louvain. Translation by Joske Dick 't Hart. 75 Voor myne pastory heb ik myne sacristy, eene plaets van twaelf voeten breed en veertien lang, dat dient voor alles, voor slaepkamer, voor spreekkamer, voor groote zael, voor sacristy, enz. enz. Ibid., 219. Translation by John A. Dick. 76 Voor het oogenblik zal ik Ued. alleenlyk zeggen dat ik wel weet waer myne missie begint, maer niet waer zy eindigt: aen de grenspalen van California en aen den Oceaen Pacifique begint ze, en dan strekt zy zich uit van West tot Oost tot de Rotsbergen (Montagnes rocheuses), hoe verre van Zuid tot Noord weet ik niet, doch eene zaek geloof ik te weten, dat is, dat ik ze in myn leven niet gansch en overal zal kunnen doorloopen. Myne missie is geene der Indianen of wilden. Daer zyn er wel verscheidene in, doch zyn het kleinste getal en zeer verspreid: hier en daar een klad. Myne missie is een missie der witten of geciliviseerden [emphasis in original] (als ik ze zoo noemen mag) van alle natien de wereld, geloof ik. Want gy moet weten, dat Jacksonville zyn verscheidene mynen; en vyftig en zestig en meerdere mylen van daer, zyn er ook verscheidene, en zoo al over hier en daer tot in California, het beroemd en vermaerd goudland. Welnu gelukzoekers van alle landen heeft men hier, vele duitsers, vele Amerikanen, verscheiden Ierlanders, eenige franschen en italianen, vele chinezen en eenige van de Sandwhichsche eilanden etc. etc. John F. Fierens, "2e Brief van den Eerw. Heer J. F. Fierens,

162 133 After relating the many difficulties of the mission, including a brief comment on his proximity to the nearby Protestants, My church... is located just adjacent to the protestant one: the street passes simply between the two so that I can keep watch on all the goings on. 77 Fierens cautioned his reader not to presume upon his unhappiness: Do not conclude from this, my friend, that I am not at peace in my current state, that I am tired of it or that I am in a state of grief. Not at all, thank God. Heart and soul are strongly tested from time to time when you see all the unhappiness and misfortune; but I am always filled with an inner contentment and completely at peace with my state in life, more so in fact than in my homeland To bolster his reader s confidence in his well-being still more, Fierens quoted the words that the archbishop, F. N. Blanchet, had recently written to him: Please write to me, write to me at lest once a month. I must know how you are, how things are going, what are your hopes, etc. I pray for you; I bless you. You are in a position of confidence, a position of honor; maintain your high dignity, the confidence placed in you. I embrace you tenderly and I bless you. 79 Croquet made further brief mention of Fierens in a letter to John De Neve dated January 22, 1862, Father Fierens has been at Jacksonville for two months; this important mission in the south of the Diocese had been, up until his going there, without a resident priest. He is happy, in good health, like me. 80 Fierens s reminiscences of the travails he suffered on the way to Jacksonville must have been oft-repeated across the years for they found mention more than thirty Belgischen Missionaris in Amerika," De Katholyke Zondag: Godsdienst en Zedeleer, August , 242. Translation by John A. Dick. 77 Myne kerk... staet juist nevens de protestansche: de straet loopt er alleenlyk tusschen beide, zoo dat ik goed kan afspieden wat er soo al naer toe gaet. Ibid., Besluit toch hier niet uit, vriend, dat ik niet te vrede in mynen staet ben en het moede ben, of rouwkoop heb; o neen, God zy dank, het hart en geest zyn wel van tyd tot tyd hard gepynigd, ziende al deze ongelukken en dwalingen, doch eene innerlyke tevredenheid blyft my altyd by, en ik ben gansch te vrede in myn lot, beter te vrede als in myn Vaderland.... Ibid. Translation by John A. Dick. 79 De graces écrivez-moi, écrivez-moi au moins une fois par mois. J ai besoin de savoir comment vout êtes, comment cela va, quelle espérance vous avez, etc. Je prie pour vous, je vous bénis. Vous êtes au poste de confiance, au poste d honneur; soutenez votre haute dignité, la confiance mise en vous. Je vous embrasse avec tendresse et vous bénis. Ibid. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB. 80 Le P. Fierens est à Jacksonville depuis deux mois; cette importante mission au sud du Diocèse avait été jusque là sans prêtre résidant. Il y est content, plein de santé, comme moi. A. Croquet (Oregon City) to J. De Neve, January 22, Archives of the Association du Musée de Braine-l Alleud, Braine-l Alleud. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB.

163 134 years later in an 1897 letter from then Jacksonville pastor to a small journal published by Louvanist, Father Louis Verhaag: The first parish priest appointed for the Southern part of Oregon was Rev. John Francis Fierens, a native of Belgium, of the diocese of Malines [Mechlin]. He was appointed for Southern Oregon on the 20th of November, 1861 and started from Oregon City for Jacksonville on the 25th of November. He went first by the steamer to Corvallis, from there he took the stage to Jacksonville and had a fearful trip of western life. He met a continual storm and escaped twice from being drowned; his baggage with his horse were thrown into the south Umpqua river, the horse was killed but Father Fierens was saved in a miraculous way. The Rev. Father arrived in Jacksonville on the 5th of December at 5 o clock, p.m., and remained in the United States hotel until the sacristy was transformed into a kind of lodging room. On the 8th of December the Rev. Father said mass in St. Joseph s church, Jacksonville. Father Fierens had very hard times in the beginning and met with little encouragement. The congregation in Father Fierens [sic] time consisted of 12 families. 81 By May of 1863, Fierens was writing to De Neve no longer in Dutch alone but in both Dutch and English. Almost as if to surprise the rector with his progress he suddenly switched into English midway through the letter commending the rector on his initiative to unite the Louvain missionaries across North America in his Union of Prayer: Well, dear Father De Neve, I am indeed much obliged to you for your attention and favor of enrolling me in the association established last year in our dear mother house of Louvain; and I congratulate you for the happy idea to establish such a meritorious and consoling association, which must unite all the American children of Louvain in one body, in one family, sharing in all the prayers, labors, privations and sufferings of its members. You say well, dear sir, in your Second Consideration that the conversion of souls, must chiefly be obtained by prayer [emphasis in original]. I always heard and believed that, but now more than ever I am convinced of that; the sun in heaven shines no brighter to my eyes, than this truth to my mind. We have well to teach, to speak, to convince even, but to what will all our trouble amount, 81 L.P. Desmarais, "Memoranda of the Jacksonville Mission," Reminscences and Current Topics of the Ecclesiastical Province of Oregon I, no. 3 (1897): This short-lived journal was edited and published by Louis Verhaag while stationed in Baker City, Oregon. Its first issue was published in January 1897 and continued to be published through March In his final issue, Verhaag explained the periodical s decline: The lack of interest shown by many in to giving us the necessary information about the early and present events of the different missions in the Ecclesiastical Province; our limited time, not to say means, to properly and carefully prepare our monthly pamphlet; and above all the desire of His Grace Archbishop Gross to assist Very Rev. Father Orth in the up-building of the Catholic Sentinel, the official organ of the Province, will render it necessary for the present to combine the Reminiscences with the Catholic Sentinel. Verhaag s arrival from Louvain and first years in Oregon will be noted in Chapter 6 of this work.

164 135 what effect will it produce if the Lord does not send down his heavenly dew of grace it is all in vain; all our words, all our fine exhortations (as we imagine) and solid arguments pass through their ears as the wind over their heads, and let their hearts and minds empty. 82 As Fierens continued the letter to his rector he became more personal and almost confessional in tone, revealing far more of his deeper feelings about his situation than were published in the pages of De Katholyke Zondag: In your kind letter of the 10th of August last, you told me that though you had full conviction that my zeal and courage had not diminished, but if you were to obey the impulses of your heart you would sooner write me an exhortation than news; as to that, dear Revd Sir, I candidly confess, it does more good to the heart, it leaves a more lasting and useful benefit behind it; for although, I think, I may tell you, that courage is not yet wanting, but still maintains, thank to God; however you can understand we are always in danger of losing and falling off, chiefly in this wild and abandoned country, and then also in my dreary solitude, debarred as I am of all society and enjoyments and deprived up to the present moment of all spiritual consolation, or in other words, of all success in my mission to convert souls to God. I do not really know, if I have here yet performed any spiritual good (temporal good, I have some, since I completed and improved our church property) for I see people, it seems to me, less zealous than last year, and perhaps more negligent to hear Mass on Sundays, at least some. Dear Father De Neve, I am sure, you have no idea what a mission is a mining district, and with what reckless people we have to deal here; all nations of the world, and often times, I believe, some of the scum of many of them; then the great facility to make money, and thus the opportunity to squander it in vice, make it worse above measure. Besides, the restless spirit of miners makes them unsettled or homeless, today you find one here, and a week or a month afterwards two, three, four, five or six hundred miles are laying between you and him; and you can well imagine what effect religion can have on minds that are under such fluctuation for more than ten or fifteen years. How many Catholics I have here in my mission, I could not tell you, that is impossible for me to know, for many who are, won t always make them known for such, because they have no intention to support or practice their religion..... I have lost a good deal of my people since the discovery and excitement of the gold mines in North-eastern Oregon and Eastern Washington Territory. Our diocese settles very fast now in the eastern part of it and will soon open a fine field for some of your young Apostles of Louvain. I have between 40 and 50 practical Catholics in my whole mission; so you will easily understand, Revd Sir, how much there remains to be done by a feeble instrument as I am; and how often the heart must be heavy and the mind afflicted when I observe the unfruitfulness of my labors; but provided the Lord favors me with patience and resignation and keeps up my courage, I am satisfied, and submit myself willingly to his inscrutable designs, knowing that another more worthy may reap what I have sown. 82 J. Fierens (Jacksonville) to J. De Neve, May 5, Archives of The American College, Louvain.

165 136 But a little exhortation and encouragement of a dear and esteemed old friend will always be precious to me, as I stand in need of it; neglect not then to write from time to time; remember me most particularly in your prayers, as the most consoling support you can give me. 83 Finally, Fierens ended his letter to De Neve with a more general reflection on the new country he had so recently found himself in: I am always happy to hear that our dear seminary of Louvain, under your care, is making in so short a time such wonderful progress and has already sent forth so many young apostles to this bewildered America, but now more than ever promising; for when this bloody and fratricidal war shall be ended and peace restored, I hope they will make earnest reflections as to the cause of this scourge and profit by the example; may the Lord open their eyes to the truth. 84 John Fierens would not have long to endure the sufferings of his mission for within just a few months, F. N. Blanchet called him to Portland to serve as pastor of the cathedral and as well as his vicar general. The news was not well received by Fierens who saw it as the end of his happy and peaceful life in the mission he had become increasingly attached to. More than that, he mistrusted his own qualifications for the new posts being given to him by F. N. Blanchet. Upon receiving the news of the imminent change, he wrote to John De Neve: 83 Ibid. 84 Ibid. For the present, I will only tell you that I won t be much longer Pastor of Jacksonville and of Southern Oregon. When I came back from my mission into the most southern reaches of Oregon and northwestern California] and after an absence of two months, I found a letter from his Lordship awaiting me and calling me to Portland. And see what strange news for me: his Lordship desires me to come down and to bring all my effects with me, as it is no more to return. He wants me to make [sic] Pastor of his Cathedral in Portland; thus my life of Missionary is ended, I consider my happy life probably gone in, for as you know in the cities we are nearly as in Europe. I am indeed afraid of this new post, and I wrote to his Lordship that I did not think myself able and qualified for that post, etc, that he might find somebody else more fitter, etc; but it is in vain, I will have to go; I cannot refuse.... Thus as you see, I must say good-bye to my dear Mission of Jacksonville, where I have done so little good yet and it might be nothing; what then will I go and do in Portland where everything might work against me. For, Dear Sir, this is a great anxiety for me, that his Lordship has to dismiss the present pastor who is an Irishman, who is very stubborn and disagreeable with his Lordship. So you can conceive what perplexities might befall me, for you know the Irish also how excitable they are; they

166 137 are very good people, but when you have them against you, they are dreadful. What amount of prudence and sagacity will then probably be required of me? O my goodness! I have always been in scarcity of these good qualities, I could never get provided with [sic]. What a poor show then for me.... Yes! Dear Father, I believe my happy life is gone by, I was here peaceable and well satisfied, I was attached to my dear mission, though I had few consolations or none in my ministry, still I was full of hope, for my flock liked me exceedingly well and I was very much respected by the liberal Protestants, and besides I had here such a beautiful and healthy climate, such a lovely valley to feast my eyes upon such lofty mountains to admire, etc, etc! 85 In fact, Fierens was right: his life was indeed changing; his new work in Portland would occupy him for the remainder of his life. Of his two years in Jacksonville, his successor there would write in 1873: Reverend Fierens now Grand Vicar and Curé at Portland, administered St. Joseph parish for almost two years and all the old parishioners remember his zeal and his piety. 86 As bucolic as his missionary life in Jacksonville may have been, what he would accomplish in Portland across the next thirty years was far more important for the developing church on the North Pacific Coast. As is evident from the extant letters of both Croquet and Fierens from their earliest years in Oregon, their archbishop, notorious for his difficult relations with almost every priest who ever worked for him, 87 found the Belgians greatly to his liking; they were loyal and obedient and in particular he liked Croquet for his spirituality, humility and missionary zeal and Fierens for his administrative acumen. Van der Heyden records the text of a letter written by the archbishop to De Neve in January 1861 with these glowing words: Accept, accept as many priests as you can of the age, the experience, the virtue, and the zeal of a Croquet and a Fierens. Tell your candidates that there are here thousands of souls to be saved among the Whites as well as among the Redskins.... There are perhaps those who, because this province does not yet hold out all the comforts, all the inducements that are to be found elsewhere, hesitate to come here. But among the Belgians there are no such! No! No! They have hearts aglow with zeal for Gods glory, the apostles whom Belgium and the Louvain College have sent to us and will, we trust, continue to send. With them the country is ours. The Goliath of Protestantism will fall; the young Davids will conquer. Courage, then! For to you and to all those who by their learning and their alms are the regenerators of the world, 85 J. Fierens (Jacksonville) to J. De Neve, September 8, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 86 Blanchet, Ten Years on the Pacific Coast, Brandt and Pereyra, Eden, 35.

167 138 belong a great glory, a great reward. If we do some good here, it is you who enable to do it. 88 So pleased was F. N. Blanchet that as early as 1862, he was openly suggesting that young Fierens be his successor as archbishop of Oregon City. 89 Fierens was the leading force in establishing in Portland a system of Catholic schools; from his position as cathedral rector and vicar general he was more than instrumental, he was essential, to the foundation in 1871 and success of Portland s Saint Michael s College. Besides the education of young boys, the college had as a perhaps unspoken purpose the nurturing of vocations to the priesthood. Indeed, as Schoenberg points out, it succeeded in this in that one of its first students, Edward O Dea, later became the third bishop of Nesqually. 90 From the time of his move to Portland Fierens fingerprints were all over the administration of the archdiocese and its affairs; as vicar general, much of the official correspondence coming out of the chancery bore his influence if not his actual signature. One of his greatest accomplishments was the support he offered to the lay founders of the first Catholic newspaper in the western part of North America, the Catholic Sentinel. 91 He did so while the archbishop was traveling in Rome making use of his temporary authority as administrator of the diocese to give official church approbation to the project. 92 The newspaper would go on to become a primary record of Catholic life and ministry throughout the region of the North Pacific Coast that remains to this day as an invaluable source of historical data. Fierens s vision in promoting its establishment and his efforts to see it develop merit the highest appreciation of historians of the region who would so greatly benefit from its pages across the decades. 93 Fierens was sufficiently admired and respected for his work in Portland that when the new diocese of Helena was about to be erected in 1880, Fierens s name was on the first terna for the see. 94 The job went to Brondel, leaving Fierens free to plan and oversee construction of Portland s new cathedral. Finished in 1885, it was a gothic 88 Van der Heyden, "Croquet IV-2," Brandt and Pereyra, Eden, Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, Schoenberg, Defender, xv--xvi. 92 Ibid., The history of the Catholic Sentinel and its importance to the region is documented quite fully in Schoenberg s already cited Defender of the Faith. 94 Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, 286.

168 139 affair that cost over a hundred thousand dollars. 95 More important than the cathedral building itself, his work as pastor of the cathedral parish over the course of some thirty years was marked by energetic and caring service to the ordinary people of the parish. One of his initiatives was the foundation of the Saint Vincent De Paul Society in 1869, the first in the province; the Society later spread to the other dioceses of the region and has had over the decades a strong role in tending to the needs of the poor in their respective communities. 96 Along the same lines, Fierens s care for the stranger and the sick led him to found Portland s Catholic hospital, Saint Vincent s, staffed by the Sisters of Charity (Providence). 97 On the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood, one of the addresses offered to Fierens noted in the florid oratorical style popular at the time the following encomium: You came among us as a stranger, unheralded an unknown, but he golden chain of Catholic faith which bins us all both priests and people in one fold, with one shepherd, soon wound its links around each Catholic heart, and we learned to love your for your exemplary piety, your prudence and the practical counsel which we gathered from your words of precept and your personal example. Sixteen years ago you found us a few Catholics without provision even for a suitable home wherein to shelter a pastor; but such rude accommodations as were provided you accepted with that celestial spirit of humility which is the proudest legend that can be inscribed upon the standard of the cross borne by each missionary of the true Church of Christ. 98 Fierens remained as pastor of the cathedral and trusted second to his archbishop until his death in Dieleman, Vermeersch, Junger and Mans Come West The year 1862, only the fifth since the foundation of The American College, saw the arrival of four more American College priests on the North Pacific Coast. Leopold Dieleman and Adolphe G. Vermeersch, both formerly of the Ghent seminary, Aegidius Junger, a Prussian from the Diocese of Cologne, and Paul Mans of Mechlin, all completed their formation at the American College on September 13, The new 95 Ibid., Ibid., Catholic Sentinel, January 16, Ibid. 99 Album Alumnorum, 51, 59, 61, 85.

169 140 clerics traveled to North America as a group, the first to do so, so were able to enjoy the supportive friendship of one another as they made their way westward, certainly a very different kind of experience in departing their homeland than that afforded Croquet and Fierens. The four young priests set sail from Antwerp within a few days of their departure from the American College, on the 16th of September; shortly thereafter they wrote a common letter from Southampton to De Neve (signed by all four). In it they assured their rector that the first leg of their journey had been agreeable and without incident, that they had visited the Cathedral of Saint Paul in London and attended mass at the Church of the Oblates of Mary. They end their letter by reassuring their rector that though they may be... separated in body, our hearts remain always with you. 100 In an undated letter to De Neve, Vermeersch announced their arrival in Oregon then advised the rector that they would not see Fierens for two more months since he was away at the time on a mission elsewhere but that they expected to visit Croquet very soon: In a short time we shall see Mr. Croquet. They say marvelous things about this man. When one hears his story one seems to be hearing the life of a hermit or that of a Penitent of Thebes. 101 This visit that Dieleman and Vermeersch expressed the hope of making clearly took place since Croquet wrote to De Neve in December of 1862 of the happiness the young priests from Louvain brought him in their coming to Grand Ronde. First, I must thank you sincerely and express to you my deep gratitude for all the trouble you have taken to come to the aid of our poor missions and to send us two new helpers such as Fathers Dieleman and Vermeersch. Already they have given me the immense pleasure of visiting me here at Grand Rond. I cannot tell you how pleasant and consoling it was to see again my dear confrere, Father Dieleman, whom I knew already at the American College. Good Father Vermeersch spent several days here with me and I had the opportunity to appreciate all his goodness and charity. I séparés de corps, nos coeurs resteront toujours avec vous. Vermeersch, Mans, Dieleman, Junger (Southampton) to J. De Neve, September 16, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 101 Sous peu nous allons voir Mr Croquet. On raconte des merveilles de cet homme. Quand on entend son histoire, on croit entendre la vie d un hermite et d un Pénitent de la Thébes. A. Vermeersch to De Neve, undated. Archives of The American College, Louvain. This letter is undated by Vermeersch but another hand has added to the first page the notation Portland Oregon 1862 ; it is probably the hand of Van der Heyden, who refers to the letter in his biography of Croquet: Van der Heyden, "Croquet IV-2," 93. Bosse s transcription of this sentence seems to be a translation back into French from Van der Heyden s previous English translation of the original. The original text and that of Bosse are quite disparate.

170 141 am very happy for Oregon to have acquired two missionaries of their caliber and I hope they are called upon to do great good. 102 F. N. Blanchet wasted no time in putting Dieleman and Vermeersch to work. Strangely, the two of them would succeed almost immediately in the challenge most dear to Croquet but at which he had thus far failed: the establishment of convents and schools in their new parishes. Dieleman was assigned to the state capital, Salem, whose Catholic population in 1863 consisted of a few families of limited resources. 103 Happily for the young priest, F. N. Blanchet directed the Mother General of the Sisters of the Holy Names to visit Salem with the hope that she would choose the site for the establishment of a convent and school. Dieleman was reported to be enthusiastic at the prospect and concurred with F. N. Blanchet that the school should be opened the coming September. Dieleman and the Mother Superior entered into negotiations with the local Masonic Lodge for the purchase of their hall, which then was turned over to the sisters in the middle of August. 104 On August 18, 1863, Dieleman welcomed three sisters to Salem and within days the Masonic Hall was converted into the Academy of the Sacred Heart. Dieleman then set about raising funds and securing extended credit for the institution as well as doing everything possible to support, encourage and guide the sisters during initiative years. 105 Evidently, that support also included exorcising the building of its Masonic ghosts, for as Schoenberg notes: Father Dieleman... threw enough holy water on the building to put out a fire. He was quoted as saying, The devil that day had danced his 102 D abord, je dois vous remercier sincèrement et vous exprimer ma profonde gratitude pour toutes les peines que vous avez bien voulu vous donner pour venir aux secours de nos pauvres missions et pour nous envoyer deux nouveaus auxiliaires, tels que les R.R.P.P. Dieleman et Vermeersch. Déjà ils m ont procuré l indicible plaisir de venir me visiter au Grand Rond. Je ne sais pas vous dire combien il m a été doux et consolant de revoir le cher confrère Mr. Dieleman que j avais déjà connu au collège Américain. Le bon P. Vermeersch a passé ici quelques jours avec moi et j ai eu l occasion d apprecier toute sa bonté et sa charité. Je me réjouis pour l Orégon d avoir acquis deux missionnaires de leur mérite et j espère qu ils sont appelés à y faire beaucoup de bien. A. Croquet (Grand Rond) to J. De Neve, December 29, Archives of the Association du Musée de Braine-l Alleud, Braine-l Alleud. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB. Van der Heyden offers an English translation of much of this same letter and reports that at the time it was received it was widely circulated in both French and Flemish newspapers; see: Ibid., Dunne, Gleanings, Ibid., Ibid., 103.

171 142 last polka in the building. 106 When the Academy opened its doors on September 7th eighty day-students and six boarding students (all girls) were enrolled. By first establishing a Catholic school in his community, Dieleman lost for the moment his chance to build a church: the $300 he had saved for the project was invested instead in the sister s academy. 107 In a way, by making that kind of decision, Dieleman had taken the first step in becoming a typical American pastor, one who gave priority to Catholic schools over parish church buildings. By spring of 1864, Dieleman had found new financial resources and completed construction of a new church in Salem, which was dedicated by F. N. Blanchet in April of that year. The archbishop presumably felt a priest who could build so much so quickly could be better utilized elsewhere; he soon thereafter transferred Dieleman to Canyon City, a gold-rush town in the dry eastern reaches of the Oregon Territory (in what is presently the Diocese of Baker). There Dieleman began again his work of parish building and had Canyon City s new St. Andrew s Church up and the first mass said within its walls by December. 108 Adolphe Vermeersch found himself assigned to St. Peter s Mission at The Dalles, a small town situated on the south bank of the Columbia River. He had been preceded in the pastoral post by Father Mesplié who before departing the mission estimated that it had over 500 persons pertaining to it, most of them Indians. 109 As with Dieleman, Vermeersch s first priority was convincing the Sisters of the Holy Names to establish themselves in his parish and set up a school there. The Mother General, Mother Theresa of Jesus, promised as much to Vermeersch and set the projected date for the openning the academy for the autumn Vermeersch in turn promised to the sisters a frame house next to the parish church, his own rectory in fact, 111 as a convent; with that space at the ready he went to the local boat landing on the banks of the Columbia on August 19th to extend a cordial welcome to the religious and conduct them to their future home which they found neat and inviting. 112 Because of Vermeersch s generosity and leadership of his Catholic community, the sisters did not 106 Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest. 107 Brandt and Pereyra, Eden, Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, Dominic O'Connor and Patrick J. Gaire, A Brief History of the Diocese of Baker, 2 vols., vol. 1 & 2 (St. Benedict, OR: Benedictine Press, 1930), Dunne, Gleanings, O'Connor and Gaire, Baker, 147.

172 143 experience hardship and poverty upon their arrival as had the Holy Names sisters in other towns. The women of the parish had raised $400 to assist them in establishing their new school and... the benevolent patrons of the school anticipated the wants of the Sisters and generously supplied them. 113 Mary s Academy boasted 143 day students. 114 By the end of the first year, the St. In the first of three letters posted to De Neve from The Dalles, Vermeersch wrote that he was responding to the obligation imposed by the rector upon his missionaries to offer regular reports on their works and the state of their missions. 115 He wrote that he... does not have a fixed assignment... and is in The Dalles... more as an assistant than as a pastor Nevertheless, he reports to De Neve that he had prepared for their first communion five children... who have received their Savior for the first time from my hands. 117 He also shared the less happy news that the number of baptisms of both children and adults had diminished somewhat due to a quarantine, but he added this pastoral note: The baptism of an old savage that I did at the hour of her death has given me much consolation. [Undecipherable] I am morally certain that if I had not been there he would have died [undecipherable]. 118 As with most of the early missionaries to the region, Vermeersch was not immune from failing physically under the weight of the difficult environment in which he lived. While still in The Dalles, he was visited by his classmate from The American college, Aegidius Junger, who wrote to De Neve of his visit with Vermeersch: On the 6th of September, three days after my return to Walla Walla, I started for Vancouver, to make my retreat there. On the way I called on Father Vermeersch. He 112 Dunne, Gleanings, Ibid. 114 Brandt and Pereyra, Eden leurs travaux et l état de leurs Missions. A. Vermeersch (Dalles) to De Neve, September 9, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 116 D abord je n ai pas eu de poste fixe jusqu ici et celà fait que [undeciperable] plûtót comme assistant que comme Curé.... Ibid qui ont reçu pour la première fois leur Sauveur de ma main. Ibid. 118 Le baptême que j ai administré à une vieille Sauvage à l heure de la mort me cause le plus de consolation. [undecipherable] je suis moralement certain que si je n aurais pas été sur la place, elle serait morte [undecipherable]. Ibid.

173 144 was yet weak and exhausted from a long spell of sickness, from which he was just then recovering. 119 Once again, F. N. Blanchet seemed unable to leave his priests to enjoy the fruit of their labors; on October 30, 1865,Vermeersch was transferred from The Dalles further east and inland where the archbishop assigned him the task of re-establishing the St. Anne Mission among the Cayuse Indians on the Umatilla Reservation along the Umatilla River, a mission that had been destroyed in the Indian wars. 120 On the 26th of November Dieleman was moved from Canyon City to replace his friend in The Dalles. 121 Little is recorded of their work in these missions except this brief note, A bell weighing 533 pounds and costing $400 was placed in the belfry by Father Dielman December 27th, 1866, and an organ was installed about the same time. 122 Vermeersch would remain at St. Anne s among the Cayuse serving as both pastor and schoolteacher 123 until He returned to the western side of Oregon and was stationed on the French Prairie, not far from Croquet. In 1880 his gothic style church of St. Louis was dedicated by Archbishop Seghers. 124 Little further notice of Vermeersch is found in the usual records. He died in Dieleman was moved next to Baker City in where he built the first church and dedicated it to Saint Francis; it was destined to become a cathedral once the eastern side of Oregon had been erected into the Diocese of Baker in Dieleman served in Baker City until 1874, when the parish was turned over to Vermeersch for a brief time. After an extended visit to Europe, Dieleman took up his pastoral work again in Astoria where he was instrumental in opening a hospital with the promise of staffing from the Sisters of Providence and founding of Holy Names Academy the Sisters of the 119 Joseph Van der Heyden, "The Rt. Rev. Aegidius Junger, Second Bishop of Nesqually, Washington," The American College Bulletin VI, no. 1 (1908): Brandt and Pereyra, Eden, 32. In 1847, A. M. A. Blanchet established his first mission as bishop of Walla Walla on Indian lands along the middle Umatilla River. Brouillet, his vicar general, prepared a humble residence for the bishop at the site, but the mission never proceeded due to the Cayuse murder of Marcus and Narcissa Whitman and others at nearby Waiilatpu, (just south of present-day Walla Walla) and the ensuing wars between the Indians and Whites. See: Blanchet, Sketches, O'Hara, Pioneer Catholic History of Oregon, , W. L. Davis, S.J., "St. Andrew Mission (St Anne) among the Umatilla," Centennial Souvenir of the Catholic Church in the Walla Walla Valley: , O'Connor and Gaire, Baker, Ibid. 123 Brandt and Pereyra, Eden, Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, O'Connor and Gaire, Baker, 27.

174 145 Holy Names. 127 Dieleman remained in Astoria until his retirement from the parish, thereafter serving as chaplain of the hospital until his death in Paul Mans arrived at the American College on October 7, 1859 from the Mechlin seminary. He was ordained a priest in Mechlin by Cardinal Sterckx and departed for North America on September 13, Mans s history during his early years in the Nesqually diocese is only dimly known. No extant letters from him exist in the archives of the American College nor were any found in the archives of the Diocese of Seattle. Correspondence between 1872 and 1874 to Mans from Bishop A. M. A. Blanchet is available in summary form. He was assigned originally to St. Augustine Parish and St. James Cathedral in Vancouver (Washington Territory) 130 from 1864 and remained in Vancouver until 1872; in a letter to John De Neve dated October Junger reports meeting him in Vancouver. 131 From Junger s letter it is clear he was assigned to the boy s school opened in Vancouver in 1856 by Fr. Brouillet. 132 Mans, Junger wrote: Of his impressions of On the ninth I landed at Vancouver, and, dear Father, the bishop has kept me here ever since. On meeting my good friend, Father Mans, I was happier than words can tell. How we spoke of you and of the American College! We lived over again the pleasant years spent there, and we recounted with gratitude all that we owe you and the dear professors Dumont and Van Kerckhove. Father Mans, although he did not complain, looked pale and care-worn, and I had my misgivings about him. Subsequent events proved that I was not mistaken; for he soon took very sick, so sick indeed, that I feared for his life. But he recovered, thanks be to God; and he is again 126 The erection of the Baker diocese was controversial. See Chapter V of the present work. 127 Dunne, Gleanings, 178. See also "Necrology," The American College Bulletin V, no. 3 (1907): "Necrology," 136. At the time of his death, Dielemans had been intending to travel to Belgium to participate in the fiftieth anniversary of The American College. 129 Album Alumnorum, There are two cities on the North Pacific Coast that bear the name Vancouver. Vancouver, Washington is located in the south-west corner of the state, just across the Columbia River from Portland, Oregon. It served as the see of the Diocese of Nesqually until 1913 when the see was moved to Seattle and the diocese renamed after its new see city. Vancouver, British Columbia, is a large metropolitan area and the see of a major Canadian archdiocese. 131 Van der Heyden, "Junger VI-1," 14. His entrance into the Society of Jesus was noted in Louvain but no date is given for the change: Album Alumnorum Collegii Americani Immaculatae Conceptionis B.M.V., Archives of the American College, vol. 1 (Louvain: 1857 to 1866), Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, 154.

175 146 at his accustomed task of teaching at the boys college. During his illness, I tried to replace him as best I could and at present I am his assistant. 133 Mans was transferred to Port Townsend in The following year he left the Diocese of Nesqually, was received into the Society of Jesus and began a new vocation as a Jesuit at Santa Clara College in California. He evidently maintained good relations with his friends in the north for in August of 1878, the Catholic Sentinel reports that he had delivered a lecture entitled, The Catholic Church: the Champion of Freedom in the Portland Masonic Hall to an audience of about four hundred, who greeted the lecture with liberal applause. 134 His diary from 1873 while serving in Port Townsend is extant in the Archives of the Californian Province of the Society of Jesus. Concerning his years in the Nesqually Diocese his Jesuit obituary notice reads: At the close of his course [in Louvain], during which he had given proofs of solid piety and intellectual acumen, Fr. Mans offered himself, with the sacred unction of ordination still fresh upon his hands, for the missions in Washington Territory. Twelve years were devoted to his work amid all the hardships and privations incident to missionary life in a new and unsettled country. But his sacrifice was not complete. He had long cherished a desire to consecrate himself to God by the vows of religion, but his ecclesiastical superiors were naturally unwilling to lose the services of a priest whom they so highly esteemed. Still he did not relinquish his pious design and after renewed solicitations succeeded in obtaining their reluctant consent. 135 A final word about Mans comes from his own hand. In a letter written to John De Neve by Mans on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of The American college and dated March 5, 1882 Mans wrote from Santa Clara: Very Rev. and Dear Father Rector: Your beautiful circular of February 4 th has come to hand, and many are the sweet recollections its repeated perusal has since brought to mind, yet dearer than all and what made the heart strings vibrate stronger was the short postscript appended propria manu by him whom I shall ever cherish as my first prompter and guide along the thorny, toilsome path that leads to the happy goal of a missionary life. 136 After several paragraphs of congratulatory words to the rector and the college Mans ended the letter with this commentary on his own life: 133 Van der Heyden, "Junger VI-1," The Catholic Sentinel, August 1, 1878, Portland. 135 "Obituary: Fr. Paul Mans," Woodstock Letters XIX (1890): Joseph Van der Heyden, "The American College: ," The American College Bulletin IV, no. 2 (1909):

176 147 Here I intended closing my epistle; but filial affection whispers that I owe it to your fatherly interest for me that I should acquaint you with my present personal condition. Know, then, dear Father, that it is now going on eight years since I obtained my long desired wish of joining the Society of Jesus and from the first day to the present hour I say it to the greater glory of God out of Heaven I could not have been a happier man. May you enjoy God s superabundant blessings, is the earnest prayer of yours affectionately, P. Mans, S.J. 137 Fortunately, much more is known of Aegidius Junger s activities and missionary life in his early days in Washington Territory. He had arrived at the Louvain seminary at the same time as Mans. Being a native of Burtscheid near Aachen, he was a German speaker, which would be a valuable pastoral asset in many of the North American mission fields. He studied in Louvain contemporaneously with Mans, they were ordained to the priesthood together and in fact they two men departed for their new diocese, Nesqually together. 138 In November of 1861, De Neve proposed to A. M. A. Blanchet the adoption of both Mans and Junger for his diocese. 139 Junger s adoption by A. M. A. Blanchet elicited a warm and submissive letter from the young man to his new superior: Monsignor! I find it impossible to express to you the joys and feelings of filial affection which animated me toward you at the moment when I read your honored and amiable letter and also the impression which your sweet words made on me, which confirms more and more the promise of fidelity which I have made you. I thank you for your goodness and foresightedness towards me which you have shown in deigning to send me such a consoling letter. 140 Once arrived in Vancouver, Junger was assigned by A. M. A. Blanchet to Walla Walla, the see of his former and now suppressed diocese. Walla Walla was still a quite 137 Ibid. See also: Joseph Van der Heyden, The Louvain American College: (Louvain: Fr. & R. Ceuterick, 1909), Album Alumnorum, De Neve (Louvain) to A. M. A. Blanchet, (Vancouver, W.T.), November 6, Archives of the Archdiocese of Seattle. 140 Monseigneur! Je m est impossible de vous exprimer le joie et les sentiments de l amour filial, qui m animaient envers vous au moment ou je lisais votre honorée et aimable lettre; aussi l impression que m ont causeé vos douces paroles me confirme [undecipherable letter] elle de plus en plus dans la promesse de fidélité que je vous ai faite. Je vous remercie donc pour votre bonté et votre prévenance envers moi, que vous avez demonstrés en daignant m envoyant une si consolante lettre. Junger (Louvain) to A. M. A. Blanchet, November 1861, Archives of the Archdiocese of Seattle. Translation by Denis Carlin.

177 148 primitive place set deep within the interior of Washington Territory, and so A. M. A. Blanchet sent him forth with this challenging mission: Now for the spiritual. You will have much to do with regard to several families of Canadiens settled on the Walla Walla River, a few who live nine miles from town. You can choose a centrally located house where the children can be gathered for catechism lessons, mass can be said, etc.... You will find several Canadiens in a state of deplorable degradation, weakened in faith. Through ardent zeal, I believe you will bring them back to the path of salvation. Finally, after having planted and watered, you will patiently wait for God to make things grow at the proper time, and I am certain that he will. 141 Junger was the first regular priest to tend the Catholic community in Walla Walla so set about his new mission with enthusiasm. His instructions from A. M. A. Blanchet were specific and came in nine points, among them: 1. When arriving at Walla Walla he can consult Mr. Simms, who has a mill a little distance from town, to know in which house he will be able to live decently while waiting. 2. The Catholics of Walla Walla must immediately prepare themselves for the construction of a church; the missionary will not cease to encourage them. 3. In regard to this end, there must be a subscription made. The missionary should be accompanied by an influential citizen of the place. 4. It is necessary to make or to have made, a plan for he building, to be submitted to the approval of the Bishop. To the one end of the church, and in the church, will be built the priest s house, unless it is preferred to have a house built completely separate from the church. 142 The difficulties Junger encountered in his first days in Walla Walla were recalled by members of that community on the occasion of his death in 1896 in news reports carried both in Walla Walla s Union and Portland s Catholic Sentinel: I knew Bishop Junger well, said Judge R. Guichard yesterday to a Union reporter who called at his residence to obtain some reminiscences of the late bishop. He came to Walla Walla in 1862, I think, when I was keeping a store on the corner of Third and Main streets. At that time he had just come over from the old country, was sent up here to raise funds to build a church, and was unable to speak but a few words of English. He was a linguist, however and readily learned the language. 141 Patricia O'Connell Killen, "Constructing Regional Religious Identity: The Pacific Northwest through the Letter Books of Augustine Magloire Blanchet, Bishop of Walla Walla and Nesqually," in Annual Conference of the American Catholic History Association (Portland, OR: 2002), Anna Clare Duggar, F.C.S.P., Catholic Institutions of the Walla Walla Valley: (MA, Seattle University, 1953), 65.

178 149 Yes, I think that I was about the first acquaintance that he made in this city. He saw the sign Kolhoff & Guichard above the door, and recognizing that they were German names, came in and introduced himself. I offered him a glass of wine, which he drank, remarking that it was a pretty good breakfast. Why, said I, have you not had breakfast yet? No, he answered, with downcast eyes. What time did you have supper? I didn t have any at all. The young priest replied. How long has it been since you have eaten anything? Two or three days, the priest at last confessed. Is it a real fact that Bishop Junger used to sleep on a counter in your store? the reporter asked Mr. Guichard. Yes, he replied with a smile, but that was a common thing in those days. 143 Like his confrere, Adrien Croquet, Aegidius Junger responded to his rector s exhortation to write of his early experiences in the mission in a lengthy letter to John De Neve dated October 22, He began the letter noting, This letter is my compliance with the promise to acquaint you with the experiences of my first year of missionary life. 144 He continued with the narrative of his first months in Walla Walla: From the day of my arrival there, Nov. 13 th, 1862, through the winter and spring, I confined my activity to the limits of the little town, getting acquainted with the people and with the customs of the country, perfecting myself in the knowledge of the English language, and building a little house, as I was ordered to do by the Bishop. Of course, I longed to go as soon as feasible through all the country within my missionary jurisdiction; but this was out of question during the winter months, and on account of the bad condition of the mountain trails whilst the accumulated snow of months is being melted under the influence of the sun s rays, I was advised against setting out during the spring. My first earnest missionary expedition was thus delayed until last July. On the ninth of that month I left Walla Walla astride a sound little western pony that bore at the same time, in a pair of saddle bags, whatever was needed to administer the sacraments and to offer up the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The first settlement I was bound for, was at a distance of ninety miles from Walla Walla. I hoped to reach it after a two days journey; but the heat was so intense that I was obliged to let my bronco pace slowly and to take three days for the trip. The first day I had told off [sic] but twenty-seven miles when I was glad to sight a house: I hoped that it would shelter me for the night. I was not disappointed; for its owners received me most kindly and entertained me as well as they could "Bishop Junger's Early Life: Reminiscences of His Labors in Walla Walla Valley," Catholic Sentinel, January Van der Heyden, "Junger VI-1," 10. This and the following letter are no longer to be found in the American College Archives. 145 Ibid.,

179 150 The letter continued at some length in a similar vein relating the details of his first missionary journey. After a few days of difficult travel overland, Junger arrived in Lewiston, Idaho: My first preoccupation on arriving was to find out a Catholic family. I did not have to seek long, and although it was past six o clock p. m., I succeeded in making arrangements to say mass the next morning at 10:00 o clock, and to get the information to all the known Catholics of the place. Having tried a few days in this little town, to stir up Catholic sentiment among the members of the Faith, I left for another journey of ninety miles. It brought me to the twin mining-camps of Oro Fino and Pierce City. I spent a fortnight between these two places, said mass twice, and had two baptisms. Seeing that money was plentiful among the men, I hazarded a suggestion here and there for a contribution towards a church in Walla Walla. I met with such ready response that I was emboldened to ask others and, indeed, Father, I was rewarded beyond expectations; for I secured some eight hundred dollars. Providence favored me, I thought, not only in this respect, but also in others. For instance, whilst in Oro Fino, a man took French leave with the horse for which I was under obligation to the kindness of a gentleman in Walla Walla. Fortunately for the owner of the horse and for your humble servant, the would-be horse thief was spied by the keeper of one of the places at which I had spent the night on my way to the mining camp. The gentleman knew the horse, and he said to the rider: Why, that s the priest s horse! Which way are you bound with it? The quidam tried to deny the imputation contained in these words; but it was to no avail. He was sent back to Oro Fino under the dire threats of being summarily dealt with as a horse thief. When he returned the animal to me, he said that he had merely borrowed it, to run after a man who had stolen some money from him. That was a yarn, of course; for the man whom he named had neither taken anything form him nor left the camp. 146 Junger narrated then the next leg of his journey to yet another mining camp, Florence, and then on to Warren s Diggings: As stated above I remained two weeks at Oro Fino and Pierce City, and thence I went to another camp 110 miles to the south. I would not risk to travel alone this time as I had done before; because of over half to the distance, there was not a single house to shelter in, and even experienced travelers looked upon the way as being very difficult to find. Under the circumstances, I was delighted to fall in with a party of seven miners, whose road lay in the same direction as mine for about sixty miles. Although they were mostly Protestants, or rather agnostics, they hailed my accession with great joy, treated me very deferentially, generously shared their provisions with me during the three days of our companionship, and went even out of their way with me to a place whence I could reach my destination without fear of going astray.... On the fifth day out, I reached my goal Florence. I remained only three days in this town, because it was almost deserted, owing the great drought and the scarcity of water in the area around the place. From Florence I made my way to Warren s 146 Ibid.,

180 151 Diggings over the worst road I had traveled yet. For about nine miles of the journey, I went down so precipitous a descent that it made me dizzy. Moreover, it was so dusty, owing to the dryness of the season and the uninterrupted traveling, that at times I waded in dust up to my knees.... Having reached my destination [Warren s Diggings], I was made to feel at home with a good German Catholic married to a most estimable Irish lady. The fortnight I spent with them would have been most enjoyable but for the fact of being deprived of celebrating mass, just because that thieving Indian showed so little discrimination in leaving me my coat and sneaking away with my chasuble [Junger had previously narrated the sad story of the theft of his chasuble]. All I could do during my sojourn was to preach and to lead in prayer. This of course I did. From Warren s Diggings I made my way back home, passing again through Lewiston and Florence. 147 As noted already, Junger left Walla Walla in September 1863 for Vancouver so that he might make his retreat there. If he truly wanted to remain in Walla Walla, it was perhaps a less than wise decision; at the completion of his retreat A. M. A. Blanchet did not allow him to return to Walla Walla but appointed him instead to be pastor of the cathedral parish of Saint James in Vancouver and at the same time named secretary to himself, a position Junger held until he was elevated to that of vicar general some twelve years later in recorded in his March 28, 1864 letter to De Neve: He was discouraged by the promotion to Vancouver as he Dear Father De Neve, I must acknowledge to you that I felt somewhat discouraged at the loss of my mission of Walla Walla. I had to leave it just when I had become acquainted with the people and the people with me. I felt the sadder about it, because after having fought against great odds and having collected the money for a little church, I was not allowed to build it. However in my morning meditations I tried, by dwelling upon the virtue of patience, and its sweet results, as well as on all the reasons for practicing it, to cheer myself into saying with all the fullness of my heart: My superior s will is God s will, and God s will is the surest and safest source of happiness. I commend myself to your good prayers, dear Reverend Father, that I may acquire the necessary patience and resignation in all disappointments, and a perfect spirit of submission to everything my superior asks of me. 149 Perhaps Aegidius Junger would experience some sense of accomplishment deferred when he returned to Walla Walla as the bishop of Nesqually on Christmas Day, 147 Ibid., M. Eileen Rose Kelly, S.H.N., The Second Bishop of Nesqually (Research Paper, Seattle University, 1946), Van der Heyden, "Junger VI-1," 17.

181 , to dedicate the new St. Patrick Church that had been just erected there, 150 the noble neo-gothic successor to the humble frame building for which he raised funds but was not allowed to build. Junger s March 1864 letter to De Neve, as did so many of these young priests correspondence back to their rector, continued with yet more detail, even spiritual concerns: Whilst at Walla Walla, I was very remiss during the first two months, in making my morning meditation, because, after spending the night rolled in a pair of blankets on a store counter, I did not feel in a mood to meditate on anything, except on the roughness of my late couch. My morning and my evening prayers, the office and the beads, I said regularly; but, for want of a suitable place in which to offer up the holy sacrifice, I said mass only on Sundays. On that day I was allowed the use of the school. At the end of two months, I had sufficient means to start the building of small frame house. Once esconced [sic] therein, I conformed to the rules of our cherished College. Here in Vancouver I continue to do the same. I rise at five o clock, make my meditation, and say mass at six. From half past seven on, the time is all taken up with teaching, I spend two hours in school every day with parish work, and with the various duties that fall to my share as chaplain of the Sisters and of the institutions in their charge; namely, of their boarding school, hospital, orphan asylum and insane asylum. It is only on rare occasions that I find leisure to study or to have a little chat with dear Father Mans. Do you know what the most pleasant topic of conversation seems to be for both of us? Our Alma Mater. To fly in thought to those walls sacred to us is one of our greatest consolations and joys. Your request is now complied with, dear Father Rector; you have my ordo diurnus. I shall await your good pleasure concerning it; for I consider myself still a member of the Americanum of Louvain, and as ready to follow your precious counsels as if they were commands. I made several visits to Father Fierens, pastor of Portland, Oregon, and a fortnight ago I conducted a mission for the Germans in his church. They were greatly in need of a new dress coat for their souls. I did all I could to help them to one, and succeeded in bringing fifteen to confession and to their Easter duties. Very soon I shall have another chance with them; for I did not reach them all. Father Fierens is in good health and the very man Portland needs. He has difficulties without number to contend with; but, with his courage and perseverance, and the true missionary spirit that is his, he cannot fail to overcome them.... Your wish that I should have one purse with Father Mans is a matter of fact. When he is in need, he calls on me and I reciprocate "Historical Sketch," Eighty-fifth and Fiftieth Jubilee Souvenir: The Catholic Church in the Walla Walla Valley, 1847, 1881, 1932, July This 1881 structure was built at a cost of $20,000 and continues to this day as parish church. It was most recently renovated by this writer while he served as pastor there from Van der Heyden, "Junger VI-1,"

182 153 Van der Heyden notes in a final comment to this letter that it ends with sincere wishes for the college and with the hope that the students will apply themselves to study English, to become truly pious, and versed in the sacred sciences. 152 I have taken the liberty of quoting at some length from Junger s letters since they provide such a clear picture of the challenges faced by these young missionary priests as well as insight into the character of Junger and his confreres. They reveal the inner spirit of a man like the young Junger as he undertook with extraordinary vigor his missionary responsibilities and did so with gumption and adaptability meeting substantial obstacles at almost every turn; similarly they also show how the burdens of the missionary life took a heavy toll on the health of others like Mans and Vermeersch. Finally, and most important to this study, these letters reveal once again the deep fraternal attachment that was felt by many of these men to The American college, to its rector and to one another. It is clear that Junger continued to see De Neve as a spiritual and moral father and that his relationship with his Louvain confreres was of the highest importance to him. That relationship with De Neve, maintained now by long-distance correspondence, nurtured and sustained these young priests in the new world they suddenly had become part of. Without the support of De Neve and their own fraternity as fellow alumni of the American College, quite probably more would have failed as missionaries, as did Junger s cousin, Leonard Haupts, whose story will be told later in the following chapter. In Junger s first year as pastor of the cathedral he oversaw its renovation and was given authority to attend to all communications with other priests during the bishop s absence. In January of 1866, A. M. A. Blanchet announced that Junger would serve as administrator of the diocese while he attended the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore later that year; 153 in a letter of appointment to Junger dated August 1, 1866, A. M. A.. Blanchet officially named him to these positions. 154 Junger clearly had earned the confidence of his bishop. Of this period, his confrere from The American college, coworker and fellow bishop, John Brondel, would speak at Junger s funeral in 1896: Soon he was recalled to Vancouver to help the apostle of Washington, Bishop Blanchet, in his old age. He was to Bishop Blanchet, at Vancouver, what Fierens was to Archbishop Blanchet, at Portland, and what Seghers was to Bishop Demers, at Victoria, a loving son, who with a strong arm and bright mind helped his Bishop to 152 Ibid.: Kelly, The Second Bishop of Nesqually, A. M. A. Blanchet, Vancouver, Washington Territory, to Aegidius Junger, August 1, 1866, Archdiocese of Seattle Archives.

183 154 carry the burden of the episcopacy in declining years. They have all now preceded us with the sign of the faith, and sleep in the Lord, but not without leaving us the example of their worthy sacerdotal and episcopal lives. 155 This study will consider more of Junger s ministry in the diocese of Nesqually in a later chapter, for his life would take a dramatic new turn in October of 1879 when he would find himself consecrated the second bishop of his missionary diocese of Nesqually. A Much Needed Shot in the Arm With the arrival on the North Pacific Coast of these six men, and with the expectation of more soon to come from the fledgling college in Louvain, the church in the region was being given a much needed shot in the arm. The field was just too large and the needs too great to be handled efficiently or effectively by the Blanchets and Demers and the few priests operating under their care or by the Jesuits in the region. Moreover, the bishops French Canadian vision of church, the demanding personalities of the Blanchet brothers, not to mention the wild and wooly unattractiveness of the mission field to some, was making it difficult to recruit clergy and move ahead in any significant way. The first men to come from Louvain were arriving with little thought about those concerns. They accepted for the most part the peculiarities of their new bishops, worked on their English, adjusted themselves to North America, and just went to work. This was exactly what the church needed most if it were to successfully transform itself from a wilderness church run by pioneer bishops to something more institutional, more structured, and better able to meet the demands of what would soon enough become a flood of new immigrants to the region, not to mention the ongoing efforts to minister to those already there. 155 John B. Brondel, "The Funeral Sermon," The Catholic Sentinel, January

184 CHAPTER V THE INFLUX FROM LOUVAIN CONTINUES: Goens s and Seghers s Arrival and First Years It is clear that by 1863, the rector of the American College, John De Neve, had made a special commitment to the dioceses of the North Pacific Coast. He was not content with simply sending a few of his charges to incrementally bolster the presbyterates there. He was demonstrating already a deep and abiding commitment to that faraway vineyard. With six men already in place in the region, he would take no pause. He put yet more in the pipeline, including his best and brightest: the young Charles John Seghers, whose life and work throughout the ecclesiastical province would make an impression that was indelible. It did not take long for De Neve to designate the talented Seghers and his diminutive classmate, Sebastian Goens, as the next alumni of the American College to find themselves destined for the mission territories of the North Pacific Coast. Transferring from the Ghent seminary, Seghers entered the American College on October 1, 1862; he was ordained to the priesthood while studying there on May 30, 1863, and departed for the missions on September 14, 1863, the first of the Louvain men to serve Modeste Demers s impoverished diocese of Vancouver Island. 1 Seghers s companion, Sebastian Goens, was a seminarian from Mechlin who had arrived at the American College on October 4, 1860 and was ordained with Seghers in May The two men then left the college for Oregon City together on September 14, They had arrived 1 Album Alumnorum Collegii Americani Immaculatae Conceptionis B.M.V., Archives of the American College, vol. 1 (Louvain: 1857 to 1866), Ibid.,

185 156 by early December for Vermeersch began a his letter to De Neve dated December 9, 1863 with the simple words, Monsieur Goens est arrivé Goens remained in the Archdiocese of Oregon City for eleven years, serving primarily in the capital city of Salem, having replaced Dieleman as pastor there. In June of 1874, he returned to Louvain to take up the position in the American College of econome and prefect. He served in these capacities for ten years, dying in Mechlin on July 24, Van der Heyden describes Goens during his years in Salem as a man... highly esteemed there for his unbounded zeal and a childlike piety that gave to his diminutive person a certain halo and made him a power for good where a brilliant and striking personality might have failed. 5 After his return to Louvain and the college, Goens continued to offer support and financial assistance to his friends in the missions, most particularly to Adrien Croquet. 6 Little more is known of his work during his years in Oregon Territory. Perhaps Van der Heyden had Goens s companion, Charles John Seghers, 7 in mind as the contrasting brilliant and striking personality in the above comment, for Seghers was clearly anything but retiring when it came to the missionary enterprise. 3 Vermeersch (Dalles) to De Neve, December 9, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 4 Joseph Van der Heyden, "The American College: ," The American College Bulletin IV, no. 2 (1909): Ibid.: Also see: John D. Sauter, The American College of Louvain ( ), Recueil de Travaux d'histoire et de Philologie (Louvain: Publications Universitaires de Louvain, 1959), Five of Croquet s letters of gratitude posted from Grand Ronde, Oregon and addressed to Goens survive in the Archives of The American College. They are dated: 27 May, 1877, 13 February 1878, 3 September, 1878, 20 January, 1879, 16 September See also Sauter, American College, The story of Seghers s life from his days as a seminarian in Ghent to that of his violent death in the wilds of Alaska has been told in extensive detail by his most recent biographer, Gerard G. Steckler, S.J.; see Gerard George Steckler, S.J., Charles John Seghers, Missionary Bishop in the American Northwest: (Doctoral Dissertation, University of Washington, 1963). Many years later Steckler s dissertation was shortened and published as a book: Gerard George Steckler, S.J., Charles John Seghers, Priest and Bishop in the Pacific Northwest, : A Biography (Fairfield, WA: Ye Galleon Press, 1986). Steckler s doctoral dissertation is a far more detailed and valuable historical account of Seghers s life; for this reason I will make reference to it rather than the 1986 condensed text. An older and somewhat more hagiographic biography of Seghers appeared in both Flemish and French in the late 1890 s; see Maurice de Baets, Mgr. Seghers: de Apostel van Alaska (Gent: Boekdrukkerij Van H. Vander Schelden, 1897). Maurice de Baets, Mgr. Seghers: l'apôtre de l'alaska (Gand: A. Siffer, 1896). A serialization of De Baets text appeared in English in The American College Bulletin; (continuing from vol. III, no. 2, April 1905, pp , through vol. IV, no. 1, January 1906, pp ). The De Baets text

186 157 Seghers arrived at the doors of the American College as a young man described by his new confreres as skinny and pale and he coughed. 8 Nevertheless, his arrival in Louvain was anticipated with excitement by his new seminary mates. Wrote one, We were told that one of the best students, one of the brightest, most pious and zealous seminarians of Ghent, would soon be with us. 9 Disregarding concerns about his health, young Seghers plunged into his preparations for the missions in America. Just at that time Modeste Demers, bishop of the struggling diocese of Vancouver Island was following the example of his episcopal confreres, the Blanchet brothers, and had signed on as a patron of the American College with the hope of receiving strong and productive missionaries for his impoverished territories. John De Neve had indicated to Seghers that he was to go to the Diocese of Nesqually, a fact that young Seghers happily shared with his friend at the Ghent seminary: The Diocese? All is decided: please God, I am leaving towards the month of August for the province situated in the West of the United States, between the Rocky mountains and the Pacific Ocean, called by the name of Washington territory, principle towns Nisqually [sic] and Fort Van Couver (which contains 500 inhabitants). 10 Seghers s destiny would take an unexpected turn, however, with the arrival in Louvain of Demers s letter to De Neve requesting the assistance of the college in providing missionaries to his diocese. Demers s words to De Neve were intended to move the rector to come to his aid: was translated into English a second time in 1943 and published in America; see S.S.A. Mary Mildred, The Apostle of Alaska: Life of the Most Reverend Charles John Seghers; A Translation of Maurice De Baets' "Vie de Monseignor Seghers" (Paterson, NJ: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1943). The principle source for the original biographies of Seghers by both De Baets and Steckler is a substantial collection of his letters addressed to the rector of the American College, clergy and family members; they had been collected by De Baets then deposited in the archives of the American College. They resided there until the collection was removed by the former archivist of the Archdiocese of Portland, Rev. William (Willy) J. Price. The collection was graciously returned to the Archives of the American College in June 2003 by the Archdiocese of Portland, thanks to its most recent archivist, Mrs. Mary J. Grant-Doty. 8 Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., Ibid. 10 Le Diocèse? Tout est décidé: S il plait à Dieu, je pars vers le mois d Août pour la province située à l Ouest des Etats-Unis, entre les montagnes Rocheuses et l Océan Pacifique, appelée du nom de Washington territory, villes principales Nisqually [sic] et Fort Van Couver (celui là

187 158 The reputation made by your priests who have been called by the Bishops Blanchet of Oregon City and Nesqually, and the general satisfaction that they give by their sense of religion, their zeal, and their devotion, make me turn to your charity in asking you to take an interest in the poor Diocese of Vancouver which has suffered and still suffers so much from the dearth of evangelical workers. The Europeans are here in great numbers, some digging for gold, others farming. There are many savage tribes here who do not have the advantage of Catholic missionaries to instruct them, and who are being exposed to the infectious errors of Protestantism before having a chance to know the truth. The Anglicans in particular, helped by their thousands of louis sterling [emphasis in original], are multiplying everywhere, and are trying here, as is their wont, not to make Christians of the Indians but to eradicate the first impressions they have received from the Catholic missionaries, and, I thank God for it, from me in particular, whom all those tribes I have known for twenty-five years, and who wield great power among them. 11 Upon receiving the letter of Demers, De Neve must have shared the bishop s appeal with Seghers for Seghers wrote to his friends in the Ghent seminary in May that both Nesqually and Vancouver Island were possible destinations for him. He seemed positively intrigued, by what he had recently heard about Vancouver Island from the Oblate superior of the region, Louis D Herbomez, 12 who had recently visited Louvain: As for me, my departure is fixed for the month of August, or at the latest, for the month of September: my diocese will be positively, if Providence so permits, the diocese of Nesqually (Washington territory, in the north of Oregon) or Vancouver Island with its 11,000 natives and three priests; that island about which Father d Herbomez told us such marvelous and interesting things almost a year ago. The island is quite mountainous; the coasts bordered by rocks; winter is rather mild, considering that rain is almost continuous during the months of November and December comprend 500 habitants). Seghers (Louvain) to Benoît Van Loo, March 18, Archives of The American College, Louvain. Translation by Denis Carlin. 11 Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., 8. Steckler cites Demers à De Nève, Victoria, 25 fèvrier 1863, ACL. The letter cited has not been located in the American College Archives. 12 D Herbomez, Louis-Joseph ( ), born in Brillon, dept. of Nord, France, entered the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, was ordained in 1849, then came to the Oregon missions in North America in In 1858 he was made Vicar of Missions in the region. In 1864 he was named vicar apostolic of British Columbia where he served until two years before his death. See Jacqueline Gresko, Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, Library and Archives of Canada, http// (accessed July 13, 2004). 13 Quant à moi, mon départ reste toujours fixé pour le mois d aôut ou, au plus tard, pour le mois de septembre: mon diocèse sera positivement, si la Providence le permettra, au diocèse de Nesqually (Washington territory, au nord de l Orégon) ou l île de Vancouver avec les 11,000 Sauvages et 3 prêtres; cette île dont le père d Herbomez nous a raconté des choses si merveilleuses et si intéressantes il y a à peu près une année. L île est fort montagneuse; les côtes sont bordées de rochers; l hiver y est assez doux, vu que les pluies sont quasi continuelles durant

188 159 Shortly after Seghers was ordained to the priesthood yet another letter from Demers had landed in De Neve s hand detailing even more the needs of his diocese. 14 While spending some final days in Ghent in late August before his expected departure for North America, he was informed by De Neve that he would definitively be assigned to Vancouver Island. Clearly, his surprised response indicates that he was at that moment still expecting to find himself in the Nesqually diocese rather than that of Vancouver Island: Father Rector I acknowledge my receipt of the interesting news which you have just communicated to me. I do not however see in the departure of this new colleague a sign in favor of my vocation to the Island of Van Couver; because, given that All Hallows is sending a missionary to this island, one will be tempted to think that of the two missionaries who due to se out from Louvain, one should stay in Oregon and the other in the Diocese of Nesqually to help the three dioceses at the same time. Convinced nevertheless that you must have had your reasons for judging what is God s will for me, I abandon myself with confidence to Divine Providence, ready to work for the glorification of God s holy name in whatever place he would ever wish to send me. Last Friday Monsignor s secretary incorporated me (that is the expression in the dimissorials) in the Diocese of Van Couver. 15 Seghers departed with Goens for his new mission on September 14, Their journey took them from Southampton, across the Atlantic, across the Isthmus of Panama and up the Pacific Coast to San Francisco and finally to Portland, where Goens and les mois de novembre et décembre. Seghers (Louvain) to Friends ( Les Amis ) (Ghent), May 13, Archives of The American College, Louvain. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB. 14 Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., Monsieur le Recteur Je vous témoigne ma reconnaissance pour l intéressante nouvelle que vous venez de me communiquer. Je ne vois pas cependant dans le départ de ce nouveau collègue un signe en faveur de ma vocation à l île Van Couver; parce que, par là même que All Hallows envoie un missionnaire dans cette île, l on serait tenté de penser que des deux missionnaires qui doivent partir de Louvain l un doit se rendre dans l Oregon et l autre dans le diocèse de Nesqually, de secourir les trois diocèses à la fois. Néanmoins, convaincu que vous devez avoir eu vos raisons pour juger de la volonté de Dieu sur moi, je m abandonne avec confiance à la Divine Providence, prêt à travailler à la glorification du saint nom de Dieu dans quelqu endroit qu elle veuille m envoyer. Vendredi dernier le secrétaire de Monseigneur m a incorporé (c est l expression des dimissoriales) dans le Diocèse de Van Couver. Seghers (Ghent) to De Neve, September 1, Archives of The American College, Louvain. Translation by Denis Carlin. 16 Album Alumnorum Collegii americani Immaculatae Conceptionis B.M.V., Pars 1, Archives of The American College (Louvain: ), 113.

189 160 Seghers took time to visit with their friend, John Fierens before Seghers continued on November 17, 1863his sea journey northward to Victoria on Vancouver Island. 17 Seghers s arrival in Victoria was a godsend to the beleaguered diocese of Vancouver Island; Demers is reported to have wept and embraced the young priest upon his arrival at the episcopal residence of Victoria. 18 Quick to recognize what a prize he had received in Charles John Seghers, Demers was moved to write the following to John De Neve: I see in him everything you included in your encomium. I am sure that this young priest has been called to do great things in this part of the Lord s fields. I hope he perseveres in the sentiments which animate him now and that he never forgets that a priest to make others holy has to be holy himself! His pronunciation of the English language is excellent, and in a few months he will be proficient in [it]. Here since Tuesday, he prepared a little sermon for today, Sunday, and it went over well. The knowledge he has of music and his strong and resonant voice make him a logical choice to work in the cathedral.... You would say that he has been here a long time, judging from the way he has been able to adapt himself to people and to his present position. 19 For his part, Seghers also shared his impressions of Bishop Demers and his new mission field with De Neve a month after his arrival. The lengthy letter, significantly, is written in English, perhaps as a first sign of the young priest s will to fully adapt himself to his new mission. I suppose, Dear Fr. Rector, that you desire to get some faithful description of Van Couver s island and my position in it. The matter is abundant, and I know not exactly on what point You wish to be particularly instructed. I fear moreover to act rashly by giving my judgment about things with which I am scarcely acquainted. I hope however to contribute to the common good by communicating to you whatever I know or mean to know concerning these missions. Mgseur. Demers is a good hearted, zealous priest; he seems to me to be very intelligent, and I believe that, if he is not a man of learning, it is only because his wandering life did not allow him to spend time in profound studies. (He has been in Oregon two years before Fr. De Smet). He shows towards me an affection which a few children can find in their own parents: he does, for instance, not allow me to fast here, although he is fasting himself; and in the first days I was here if I had not stopped him, he should have bought for me an abundant lot of unnecessary objects which he thought to be indispensable to me. 17 Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., Based on the Seghers s letters held at The American College, Steckler describes the journey in considerable detail. 18 Ibid., Ibid., 27.

190 Now, Rev. Fr. Rector, numerous priests have been working in Victoria, among whom some were bad and others were true saints; and they left those missions. Why? The bad ones, of course, because they had to do it; and the others nearly all because of difficulties with the bishop. Shall I be able to remain? With the grace of God, I hope I shall; but I may assure you that all the priests in California and even the Sisters of Victoria have told me that I shall start one day just as the others did before me. Those difficulties arose from the management of the temporal affairs of the diocese. Mgseur Demers, I think, is not a perfect administrator, and his priests have been oftentimes too independent in regards to him, hence some difficulties which his tempered disposition could not but increase. If I can obtain from heaven the spirit of submission to my bishop I do not see what may ever be a motive to me to leave these missions.... My business, Rev. Father, resembles that of the priests in Belgium: I arise at 5, study and say mass, after which we take breakfast at 71/2; then after a little talk, I read in a spiritual book and say my little hours; after that time I am free, till dinner at midday, either to study or to accompany the bishop in his courses to the town; after dinner having said my vespers, I have free time till I say my mattens [sic] and take supper at 61/2. After supper I study Chinook with the bishop (who knows it perfectly), or converse with him and the french priest about the affairs of the mission, or write letters till 10:00 o clock. Since I arrived in Victoria I studied very little, if I except the reading of English, [indecipherable] sermons, the preparation of music for mass and vespers, in which I often do play our harmonium myself, and the taking care of the church, either for sacraments to be administered or for the decoration of the altars, are my chiefly occupations. As soon as I know sufficiently chinook I will visit oftentimes the Indian camps, where I hope to find frequently one or more children to be baptized; for these Indians do not come anymore to the Cath. priest, unless they want medicine for a dying [sic]. In such a way, my days pass here with an extraordinary swiftness. The bishop tries to get me acquainted with the Catholic population and at the same time with the English language and therefore he takes me often along with him to the town. The population of the town is about more or less 2000: during winter the number increases on account of the miners who flee from the snowy, icy goldmines of the Frazer river and Williams creek.... Victoria possesses a church that is too small for the Catholics whose number amounts to 1500 good and bad ones.... We have also a convent of sisters, in whose chapel people come hear mass on Sundays. Those sisters are most pious and zealous women; the care of whom is entrusted to an Oblate, and who are going to start both a hospital and an orphan school: they now are confined in a small convent at the number of 23, and teach the children of every kind of people, either Catholic or infidels. No school for girls would succeed in competing with theirs. Moreover, they intend to open a boarding school among the Cowitchens; and next spring, I hope, a priest joined to F. Rondeau, shall with the sisters, carry prosperity and heavenly blessing among those savages; this mission languished a little not being actively enough supported.... The population of Victoria might be divided into 2 classes: one part of the inhabitants are settled here and find a livelihood either in commerce or in keeping a farm, a few

191 162 also labor for wages; the other part of the population is a floating one that passes some months of the year in Victoria and spends the rest in working the gold mines of the mainland, or in some copper and coal mines on the very island. Now the generality does not intend to breathe its last in these regions, but hunting after gold, they try to gather a sum which they can enjoy in their respective country: this disposition is to be found in a great many of our people. Secondly, they are all thinking only on gold, dreaming only of gold and speaking only of money: the dollar is nearly their idol. And thirdly white people are here so wicked and immoral that it makes us sometimes tremble for he future of Victoria and fear for punishments. These 3 things chiefly are the obstacles which our religious ministry has to overcome. A word about that wickedness: the squaws of the Indian tribe that live near Victoria may be considered as public women; they are walking the whole day in the street of the town and in the roads out of the city insomuch is dangerous [sic] to stop a little while in a remote place when an Indian woman is present: she does not wait a minute to come nearer. At the end of the day, you can see a great many of them walking in the streets of Victoria, dressed as an European lady with a hat and a crinoline; the man comes and takes his squaw with him, to pass the night in his house... [ellipsis in original]. And those things are public and they dare speak of their squaw without feeling in the least ashamed! Some money or some whisky is for the Indians the price for which they prostitute their wives and daughters. And what is still more grievous: such a manner of making money and getting whiskey begins to be known by the Indians who live in the north of the island: sometimes it happens that wicked savages come with their canoes to Victoria for selling their squaws. Among our Catholics we have most Irishmen; Frenchmen, Germans and a few Italians and Spanish talking people from Mexico or South America. Some of them are really good and pious; the greatest part is very careless and indifferent about religion; and the Frenchmen are worse than infidels, angry at the only presence of the priest. But I believe this state of things will soon change; because it is the effect of the absence of good priests and the presence of most scandalous priests. (I could tell already five or 6 stories about such monsters). The rest of the population consists of episcopalians, methodists, presbyterians and Jews. But all have a good opinion of the Catholic priests; in so much that it may be asserted that the public opinion is favorable to the Bishop, against bishop Hills (the Episcopalian bishop) especially since the difficulties which interfered between both. But the sisters, whom Bishop Demers brought here from Canada, are enjoying indeed a reputation and popularity which promises the brightest success.... I wish you, Rev. F. Rector, and all the Gentlemen of the College to pray fervently for our wicked Victoria. The state of temporal affairs, with regard to money is here very bad: we in Victoria have enough; but he mission of the Cowichans is languishing for want of support, and in such a way a new mission among Indians undertaken by a secular priest is difficult, not to say impossible. Yet except for perhaps 3 missions on the mainland, all what is to be done in this diocese regards the savages. Therefore the Gentlemen, that wish to come to Van Couvers island, may be sure that they will enter into an arduous life, so much the more that the winter season on the mainland is long and frightfully hard. The bishop wishes they should know German and French, besides English; and indeed I have heard already twice a confession in German. But, I pray You, dear F. Rector, tell

192 163 them not to read, or if they have read them, not to believe what F. De Smet has written about Oregon and its Indians: My bishop, and all the priests, either Oblates or others, attest that (I say it reluctantly, yet for the best) nothing is more besides truth than those letters, having been written not by F. De Smet, but according to some of his adnotations by other Fathers of the same religious corporation, who never saw in their life a part of the described country, or a single of its inhabitants. Now all the hopes of Monsg. Demers are turned towards our American College: and indeed he resolved, instructed by repeated experiment not to accept anymore any wandering priests, especially if he is an Irishman: he places his confidence in clergymen educated either in All Hallows or in Louvain. As for the Oblates, although he rejoices sincerely in the good services they are rendering to his mission; yet their position, as a religious order, constitutes them too independent that he should use them in such a way as he would like to do. Even when he was wanting priests, they offered their services to him with such conditions as were rather burdensome to him; but compelled by necessity he accepted them and entered into a state that could not last a long time: he had to nourish and lodge some; and a great deal of the money received in the church belonged to them. 20 This extraordinarily open letter to his rector (in a note appended after his signature Seghers asked for the rector s discretion in the matters he had shared with him), young Seghers not only gave a vivid and unvarnished picture of life in Victoria in 1863 and the problems facing the church there, but also insight into the character of the young man writing it. Perhaps paramount in that character was the moral certitude and strength that he brought to a social situation he experienced as deeply depraved. Dissolute and wandering priests came in for denunciation as much as the gold-worshipping miners and prostituted squaws that seemed to fill the city. The intense moral clarity and conviction already evident in this early letter from Victoria would become one of the hallmarks of his life as a priest and bishop. Obedience and respect for superiors, self-discipline and an ordered life, fidelity to prayer and sound doctrine, zeal and selfless hard work made up the backbone of this young priest. These were just the qualities needed to keep a man a good priest in such a wicked environment. 20 Seghers (Victoria) to De Neve, December 16, Archives of The American College, Louvain. It is not clear in Seghers s letter which priests in particular he deemed most scandalous, though in the same letter he refers to priests who had previously worked on the island, some were bad and others were true saints, and they left the missions. Why? The bad ones because they had to do it, and the others nearly all because of difficulties with the bishop. Nor is it clear in this letter to which particular letters of De Smet Seghers judges... besides the truth having been written not by F. De Smet.... Interestingly, Seghers s concern about the authenticity of De Smet s writings was not mentioned by either of Seghers s biographers, De Baets or Steckler, though both had access to this letter.

193 164 Demers gave to Seghers the responsibilities of serving as curate of the cathedral in Victoria, secretary to the bishop and chaplain to the Sisters of Saint Ann. 21 With Demers experiencing increasingly serious illness as well as preparing for a major fund-raising trip to South America, it was not long before Seghers found himself serving as de facto rector of the cathedral parish and manager of the diocese s business affairs. 22 wrote to De Neve: Demers later My absence put my dear Seghers severely to the test; but he courageously bore up under the strain, always acted with great prudence, and gave evidence of uncommon ability. Despite his youth I placed him in charge of the cathedral parish and let him manage the business end of the entire mission.... My Seghers, for he is indeed mine now, did his work well during my absence; yes, he did it as if he were an old hand at it. The ordeal and novitiate inured him to hardships; they brought him into closer contact with the citizens and they made him more advantageously known. He is still kept very busy but work seems to be his life. Well, he is everybody s idol. 23 His chaplaincy of the sisters convent 24 further served... as a chain that binds me to Victoria, not leaving to me any prospect of missionary excursions up in the country. 25 Any hope of finding himself permanently stationed among the Indians became more and more unrealistic, but he managed nevertheless to exercise at least partially his desire for a missionary life among the natives by occasionally traveling northward on the primitive island where he visited the Saanich and Cowichan tribes. 26 By spring of 1864, Seghers was faced with a perplexing dilemma. The expansive territories of the Vancouver Island diocese had included British Columbia on the mainland but in December of 1863 the mainland territories were separated from Vancouver Island and erected as an apostolic vicariate in its own; the new vicariate was entrusted to the pastoral care of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate with Louis d Herbomez as its vicar apostolic. At the same time, a coadjutor bishop, Francis X. Morrison, had been appointed to Vancouver Island; it was expected that he would bring with him from 21 Maurice De Baets, "The Apostle of Alaska," The American College Bulletin III, no. 3 (1905): Ibid. 23 Ibid. 24 Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., Seghers to De Neve, (undated but possibly December 1864). Archives of The American College, Louvain. 26 Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D.,

194 165 Montreal additional priests to the diocese. 27 With the need for priests seeming to diminish on Vancouver Island, Seghers began considering the possibility of leaving Vancouver Island and incardinating himself in the new, even poorer, diocese on the mainland. He wrote to De Neve of the possibility,... Reverend Father Rector, I want You to cast a look on the more important question I am going to propose to be decided by Your well known wisdom He then proceeded to present to De Neve the various pros and cons of the matter in some detail. He stated the issue simply:... must I remain in Van Couvers island [sic], or undertake missions in British Columbia? This is the plan I have schemed and the execution of which I submit humbly to your decision: if R. R. Morrison arrives with two or more priests, I am quite useless in Van Couvers island, whereas the large ecclesiastical district of F. D Herbomez is almost void of priest; and then I engage myself as missionary into British Columbia. If not, I remain in this place. 29 Though he protested in this same letter that he was indeed content in Victoria, he also made it clear that he was feeling useless and unproductive. He wrote to De Neve: As for my situation her in Van Couvers island, I have no reasons to complain; and first, with regard to my ecclesiastical ministry, I had the happiness to reap some fruits from what others had sown: I had several fellows at confession, especially at Christmas, who had neglected a long time to cleans their consciences; but as for the good I have done myself, I may answer you that is He revealed other, more personal and introspective, factors at work behind the scenes as he considered his future in Victoria: But I may assure you that there is in our town a strong ill feeling against our Bishop; and this is 1, a great obstacle for our apostolic labors, and 2, a great danger for me; because people strive sometimes to excite me against my bishop, to engage me to swell separated from him... [ellipsis in original]. And if an Irish priest was here in my place, he would be a thousand times more entitled by his countrymen to act in that way... [ellipsis in original]. Now I keep here, as much as I can, in solitude, visiting people only to make collections, to attend public prayer and so on, and I hope, prayer will save me from yielding to all the temptations, which that behavior of our Catholics and my price expose me to Ibid., Seghers (Victoria) to De Neve, April 11, Archives of The American College. Louvain 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid.

195 166 letter. I could tell you much more about the dangers I am in, but it is impossible, unless I should expose to you the truth about persons whom I do not like at all to speak ill of. After all, I am quite satisfied here; and I did not yet lose my courage for half a day. I feel always as cheerful as I did in the old country. 31 Further frustrations with his situation are evident in later paragraphs of the same As for the English language, we have to deal here not with American people, but with a population that judges and acts in an English way. Hence people are here a great deal more severe in criticizing English speaking strangers concerning their language, than they are in America; and the authority to be followed in matters of pronunciation is not Webster but Walker: neither is pronounce neither, a is pronounced differently too, and people are here horrified at hearing some American expressions. I have been oftentimes laughed at, because I made use of the word Sir almost in every one of my sentences.... A priest ought to be a gentleman here: one day I preached and do you know what was the effect of my sermon? The reflection that I had scarcely combed my hair. Another day people had noticed in the ardor of their devotions that I had said mass with shoes scarcely polished. And in another circumstance, an Irishman presented me with a pair of dandy shoes because he could not see his priest walking with boots; yes he wanted me to accept a pair of white stockings, feeling indignant at seeing me wear black ones. O tempora! O mores! 32 Seghers experienced joys in his work as well. Taking advantage of his musical talent he took responsibility for expanding the range of the cathedral s liturgical repertoire. 33 His success was measured not only in the quality of the music he led but also in the number of non-catholics he involved in his choir; he described to De Neve at some length his Christmas mass: Yesterday was the festival of Christmas. Our midnight mass was a regular triumph. The decorations of the Church were splendid; and a magnificent illumination enhanced the beauty of the decorations, so as to dazzle the eyes of the spectators; F. Moloney preached a beautiful discourse; and our choir sang Mozart s celebrated 12th mass. The music was grand; and in spite of a heavy rain and a stormy wind, the church was so crowded that a good many persons had to return home, not being allowed by the storm to stand outside. The Jews were perhaps the majority. The singers were 13 in number; 4 protestants, 2 Jews and the others, Catholics. One of the ladies that sang the soprano part is a celebrated singer whose supple and powerful voice had been an object of 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid. 33 Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., 35.

196 167 admiration in almost all the stages and [undecipherable] of the States. On that day our choir has been acknowledged by everybody the best of the town and a great many people having been prevented by the storm from attending the church, we are requested to sing the same mass once more next Sunday. 34 The emotional mixture of both contentment and frustration, of hope and despair, of zeal in theory and failure in reality that Seghers s letters display are to be understood in a context of a serious case of missionary culture shock. The sense of displacement, of strangeness, of even disgust that often is the second wave of emotion after the first experience of enchantment with a new world would be a completely understandable response for a man so young who has so abruptly found himself so far from all that was once familiar and consoling in his life, the old country and the stable religion of Belgium. To have the social, cultural and even religious pins knocked out from under his idealized and idyllic view of the missionary enterprise was an experience it would take time to digest. The gross realities of life in Victoria with its prostitutes, materialism and inebriated priests, the feeling of being unappreciated by one s faithful, the disrespect openly shown to the bishop, the deepening sense that this life was not the pure missionary adventure he had longed for, all must have contributed to his active consideration of moving on to a more pristine mission in the new diocese on the mainland. As matters turned out, Morrison never came to Victoria, nor with him the expected Canadian priests so Seghers remained at Demers s side in Victoria, 35 though his hope of being sent out to the more primitive missions of the diocese continued to find a place in his heart. In a later letter to De Neve, Seghers shared as much: We have been told, (I do not know how far the rumor is true) that M. Morrison has refused to accept the charge of Coadjutor of His Lordship, Our Bishop: if so, I hope to stay in the islands and in that case I will be sent most likely to the missions either of Nanimo or Cowichan, two small places where lives a small number of white people with a great amount of Indians. Up to this time those missions were not supplied with 34 Seghers to De Neve, (undated, probably December 1860). Archives of The American College, Louvain. Some letters in the Seghers file were not dated by the author. Some have had dates appended to them in a foreign hand. All letters in the file have also had numbers appended to them in the same hand to keep them in order. When dates are not noted by in the writer s own hand, the letter will be further identified by this secondary number. The hand involved may be that of Joseph Van der Heyden. 35 Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D.,

197 168 a priest because His Lordship found himself incapable of supporting priests in these places. 36 In the same letter, Seghers s concern for his fellow American College priests as well as his own strong sense of propriety became evident. He reported to De Neve of strife in the Nesqually diocese between Mans and Junger on the one side and the Canadian clergy on the other: Dear Reverend Father Rector, I do not like to meddle with the affairs of others, but I think I am obliged to inform you of what followed: F. Mans and F. Jünger are getting along very well in Fort Van Couver; but, there is a kind of hard feelings between them on one side and the Canadian priests on the other; so much that one of these latter had declared to his Lordship, his bishop, that he had made up his mind to leave the place, if he was not sent to another mission: happily he has been appointed lately pastor of Steilacoom, on the Strait of Juan de Fuca. It seems that they are sometimes discussing, or rather caviling and quibbling about matters of rubrics or theology; and that F. Mans and F. Jünger keep together, whilst the Canadians keep together too on their side; in short they do not sympathize at all. Now, Dear Reverend Father rector, it is a fact that it is hard for priest to stay here, if they are not particular about keeping in concord and harmony with their Bishop. Down to this moment, F. Mans has been the object of all the kindness and favor of his Bishop; but if he goes on that way, I doubt very much whether this Bishop, being himself a Canadian, shall keep on favoring him; and if not, his situation will become perplexing and critical. 37 Knowing in retrospect that Mans would leave the Diocese of Nesqually for the Society of Jesus some few years later at least partially because of on-going difficulties with A. M. A. Blanchet, Seghers s concern for him seems well-placed indeed. What is of further interest, as in the previous letter, is the revelation that contrary to later biographers rather pleasant view on church life in these pioneer regions, priestly concord was lived as much in the breach as in the doing. The tensions and perhaps even competition among the various nationalities is discretely and charitably opened to our view in Seghers s writings. A further point of interest to the present study is the sense of fraternity in the field among the Louvain men that is revealed in this letter. That the Louvanists, Mans and Junger, formed themselves into a sort of team with their own theological, spiritual and pastoral outlook, over against the dominant French Canadian 36 Seghers to De Neve, undated, (appended number: 17). Archives of The American College, Louvain. 37 Ibid.

198 169 clergy and were willing to engage them in a sort of battle, as well as Seghers s intervention with their common rector in Louvain about their situation, make it clear that once out in the missionary field, these men looked to one another for support and cared about one another s well-being. It is also clear that for Seghers the relationship he maintained with the Louvain rector, John De Neve, was one the deepest importance to him. De Neve was a true spiritual father to whom Seghers looked for wisdom, advice and paternal consolation. Perhaps the death of his own parents and all his siblings in the years prior to his departure for North America contributed to the intensity of his dependence on De Neve. It also seems clear that from his side, De Neve played the paternal role with his own intensity as evidenced in the extensive correspondence he maintained over a lengthy period with so many of his former students working in the missions, including, of course, the young Charles John Seghers. Few of De Neve s letters to Seghers survive, but it is evident from Seghers s side of the correspondence that they were filled with counsel, advice and as much fatherly wisdom as he could possibly offer to his young missionary. A taste of this relationship is provided in a typical passage from one of Segher s many letters to De Neve: My first care is necessarily to thank You for the fatherly admonitions You have directed to me. You can scarcely realize how welcome and beneficial such words are to me; and I wish you never to let one oportunity [sic] pass by without addressing some of those encouraging words to me: they show me that I have still a place in your heart: and if You know what deep and lasting impression they make upon me, You would never neglect to favor me with those reasonable directions. 38 Even after two years on Victoria Island, Seghers offered a bleak picture of the interior desolation that at times would overcome him and from the midst of which he raised a poignant cry to his spiritual father not to neglect him and: Dear Reverend Father That You have quite forgotten me, is certain: I received no letter, no word of encouragement, no line of consolation during eight or nine months. Not that I mean to blame you; not at all: I fancy that You say that I am big enough, and old enough to go on by myself (I wish it were so!) and I presume also that You have already so many pupils or better children to foster with your paternal care that I have been crowded out of Your heart. I accept my fate with resignation, but not with inward feelings of sorrow and loneliness. In vain have I looked for some encouraging and animating 38 Seghers to De Neve, undated (probably December 1864, #21). Archives of The American College, Louvain.

199 170 letter from the old country (for I assure you, that I am more than ever an Old Country man: I hate American ideas and American notions of freedom and independence); but all my expectations have been frustrated and disappointment came upon disappointment. And do you know what I have done to [undecipherable word] myself? I have commenced to read the letters of S. Francis Xavier, and I found there plenty of what I wanted. So I have made up my mind that if Father Rector had forgotten me, I should look for somebody else to speak to my mind some language which so seldom rings in our ears in these hateful countries. I was telling You that I am not yet Americanized; and I hope I never will be. I ought to explain what I mean: I find in the American ideas and notions a spirit so opposed to eh Catholic spirit that I feel disgusted with it. To be a good priest, and be what they call an American is altogether out of the question. But I touch a subject which, if treated at length, would fill up pages and perhaps volumes: I wish I could have conversation with You on the matter; but I think that you understand me well enough and that a hint alone is enough to make you comprehend what I have in my mind. Don t fancy however, Dear Father, that I wish to return to Belgium. By no means! I am contended and happy; and with but one thing: that is to end my days without changing the spirit which I have been happy enough to inhale in our Catholic Belgium. 39 Seghers was not so strong physically either. Concern for his health had been a preoccupation of Demers since his arrival, thus his refusal to let the young man fast; to F. N. Blanchet, Demers wrote in January of 1864: I regret only that his health is not very good many of his family have died of consumption, and I fear very much that he will go the same way, sooner or later. 40 In his own letters, Seghers assured his readers that his health remained good; nevertheless, it is also clear that his pastoral responsibilities were taking their toll, a toll often expressed in spiritual terms: My business in the convent is to direct the sisters, who are ten in number, both in their spiritual and temporal affairs.... Besides I have to direct the girls of their school (about 120) with regard to studies, catechism, behavior administration and everything. What an amount of occupations!... Reverend Father, my new position viewed in the spiritual regard is not without danger, and I hope it will move you to pray for me and get other good souls to pray for me. I felt frightened in the beginning, but at present I trust in God; and I hope I shall feel settled altogether after a few months. 41 And some months further on, he wrote again of his work: 39 Seghers (Victoria) to De Neve (Louvain), August 1, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 40 Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., Seghers to De Neve, undated (probably December 1864, #21). Archives of The American College. Louvain.

200 171 To tell you the pleasure I felt when reading your letter is impossible; and the pious language Your have made use of has made a deep impression upon me: it is strange: we work for the salvation of others, we prepare sermons of their sanctification, we pray and apply to them the truths of our Religion, and we forget, we neglect ourselves! This is the way in which things go on and that I cannot account for. But yet it is so. I do not mean that I am turning to bad; but I must acknowledge that those purposes of improving every day, of getting more perfect, are very regularly [undecipherable word] to be forgotten altogether And in July of 1865, his concern over his spiritual life was expressed once again: My health is in a good condition; I feel sometimes some weariness; but I am going backwards in the path of virtue. Good heavens! I never thought that preaching to others does more harm that good to the preacher. Yet I am sure it is so. It is now two years since I made a retreat; and I feel an awful need of spiritual exercise. I barely dare ask His Lordship to allow me a few day of rest to think on my soul. 43 As his months in Victoria became a year and then two, the burdens placed upon him by Demers only increased. Again, he wrote to De Neve: I think I need not apologize to you for having put off writing so long, as you know very well by own experience what our ministry is like; in fact I can assure you that the work which presses on my shoulders at present [emphasis in original] would keep me busy during three months; and still it increase every day.... I am as yet priest in the Church of Victoria, along with F. Moloney, an Irish priest, I am still director of the convent and the school for girls; and I have these late six months to do all the bishop s business. And if I am not mistaken, after a few weeks I shall have more work than ever. Healthy and strong, I feel ever contented with what happens. 44 The work of the Sisters of Saint Ann whom he supervised and counseled continued to prosper, even to the point of establishing a new missionary school in the Indian village 42 Seghers to De Neve, undated (#23). Archives of The American College. Louvain. Two undated letters to De Neve in the Seghers file, #22 and #23 have both had foreign hands append the date, May 25, 1865 to them, yet they are clearly distinct and could not have been written simultaneously. 43 Seghers (Victoria) to De Neve, July 27, Archives of The American College. Louvain. 44 Seghers (Victoria) to De Neve, undated (probably May 25, 1865, #22). Archives of The American College. Louvain.

201 172 of Cowichan, some 35 miles north of Victoria. 45 pastoral care of Seghers with warmth; as Steckler notes: The sisters, on their part, observed the He especially loved the orphans and destitute children, so many of whom the Sisters lodged, clothed and educated free of charge and without regard to religious belief. He often joined them in their recreation. In school or at play they would crowd around him spontaneously. The remembrances were treasured years later. A gray-haired halfbreed was fond of telling how she used to sit on his knee to smooth his hair with saliva. Another recalled the young priest teaching her to make the figure six, laughing heartily at her persistence in turning the oval to the left. One day he came in with a case of oranges and the invitation to eat them at once, lest the cook serve them only for dessert. 46 His visit to the area and his support of the work of the sisters there kept alive his dream of leaving Victoria and dedicating himself to ministry to the Indians. That dream was not completely romantic but found roots in what he could see happening to the native populations of the island: I tell you confidentially that 3 murders have been perpetrated by them [the Native Americans] lately: in the last one 39 white people fell victims of their bloodthirsty proclivity, to take revenge. Poor people! Unhappy in this world and in the next, they are teased by white men, and when they show any propensity to avenge the wrong done to them, they are threatened with severe punishments; and no priest is there to teach them the heavenly doctrine and preserve them from the evil that they are going to draw upon themselves. His Lordship thinks that a war of extermination is about to take place between the Indians and the white man, just as it is going on in the eastern states: the death of the last Indian will be the conclusion of that murderous struggle. I hope, if the Irish priest that we are waiting for, arrives here, next fall, His Lordship shall send me to Cowichan mission to attend both that mission and the Church of Naniamo. 47 The challenges for Seghers in Victoria were unending. In late 1867, a letter from the Catholics located in Sitka, Alaska arrived on Demers s desk. They requested that a priest be sent to them as soon as possible to care for their spiritual needs. By February of the following year, Father Mandart was on board a ship to carry him the more than 700 miles to Sitka. 48 He returned to Victoria at the end of July and of course reported to Seghers (Demers being away on his fund-raising trip to South America) all that he had 45 Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., 43. Also: Seghers to De Neve, (undated, #23). Archives of The American College. Louvain. 46 Ibid., Seghers to De Neve, (undated, #23). Archives of The American College. Louvain. 48 Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., 65.

202 173 encountered and his desire to return. 49 The mission to Alaska would capture young Seghers s imagination as well. A more immediate problem arose to afflict Seghers as he attempted to guide the diocese during the prolonged absence of Demers. In October, 1867, Jules Villemard, one of the French Oblate priests working in a distant mission in British Columbia, arrived in Victoria and announced that he had become a Protestant. Both Seghers and Villemard s bishop, the Oblate, d Herbomez, attempted to convince him to remain in the Catholic Church, but their efforts were to no avail. Before the year had ended, he had become an Anglican priest and was stationed in Seghers s backyard, the town of Victoria. 50 Of the situation, Seghers wrote to De Neve in Latin, referring to cum incredibili animi commotione perlegi: Attendite a falsis prophetis qui veniunt ad vos in vestimentis ovium The effect of the stress from his work and situations such as this blow to the integrity and reputation of the church he was struggling so hard to build shows itself in a revealing admission to De Neve in the same letter: Dear Father, I don t know what I feel; it is as if I could actually weep; not for grief, neither for joy; for some feeling which I cannot tell; perhaps for gratitude. My heart is not in Louvain; my heart is here; and still, when I am sobbing, it is as if my whole [emphasis in original] soul were in my [undecipherable]. 52 Seghers s health would take a most threatening turn in Only five years after his arrival and under the weight of his unending work Seghers s old illness reasserted itself causing his lungs to hemorrhage seriously and leading him to the point of death. In a letter to De Neve dated May 11, 1868, he wrote: I beg You, Father Rector, to ask the students of the American College and as many pious souls as You can to pray for me: I had, last March, a bleeding of the lungs, 49 Ibid., Ibid., Strangely, Vincent McNally s recent history of the Oblate missions in British Columbia makes no mention of the Villemard affair; see: Vincent J. McNally, The Lord's Distant Vineyard: A History of the Oblates and the Catholic Community in British Columbia (Edmonton, Alberta: University of Alberta Press and Western Canadian Publishers, 2000). 51 With incredible condition of mind I read: Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheeps clothing.... Seghers (Victoria) to De Neve, December 13, Archives of The American College, Louvain. Translation by Denis Carlin. 52 Ibid. 53 Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D.,

203 174 (hémostysie) caused by preaching and singing. If it is God s holy will, I am ready to depart this life Seghers s request for prayers from the students in Louvain and his reference to his own death must have been made with a keen awareness of the manner in which the rest of his own family had passed away. Presumably, he must have felt, the same disease was now making its first moves to harvest the final member of the family. After a visit of several days for rest with his Louvain companion, John Brondel, then presiding over the mission of Steilacoom in the Nesqually Diocese, he recovered sufficiently to continue his labors. Some months later, he wrote to De Neve, My health is improving; but rest [emphasis in the original] is not in the Dictionary of British Columbia. 55 In fact the coughing of blood continued through most of the month of May, at which point the local doctor gave up hope of saving him to which Seghers responded that Mary would cure him. He wrote to De Neve in April: My health is improving, Dear Father Rector, and I am in hopes that the present summer season, which bids fair to be a beautiful one, will procure for me the blessing (if it is a blessing) of a radical change. Anxiety of mind and too much singing have brought on me the present ailments, which consists in a weakness of stomach and continual colds in the lungs. 57 Seghers s relative optimism was not shared by the recently returned Demers who wrote to F. N. Blanchet in September of 1869, My dear Seghers is not good. He seems to be threatened with consumption, if indeed it has not already begun its work. I fear the next winter will remove him from our midst. 58 And with that Demers decided to offer his young priest the salutary rest he needed by having Seghers accompany him to Rome to attend the First Vatican Council. They departed Victoria for the Eternal City on October 8, Before leaving for Europe, Seghers found yet one more thing to be preoccupied about: sometime in the spring of 1869, John De Neve, experiencing his own pressures, wrote Seghers that he was searching for a priest to return to Louvain as his coadjutor 54 Seghers (Victoria) to De Neve, May 11, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 55 Seghers (Victoria) to De Neve, January 20, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 56 Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., Seghers (Victoria) to De Neve, April 6, Archives of the American College, Louvain. 58 Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., 72.

204 175 rector. He clearly had his eye on Seghers or one of the other young Louvain priests who were so highly esteemed by their bishops on the North Pacific Coast. With all due respect but with directness, Seghers replied to De Neve s letter: Nobody calls in question the advisability of procuring for you some one to make lighter the burden that weighs on Your shoulders; but I do not see why You direct your attention to the distant shore of the Pacific where the number of priests is comparatively small, and not to some of the Eastern states where the only trouble consists in l Embarres du Choix [emphasis in original]. Among the priests out here, Father Brondel is undoubtedly best qualified to take charge of the American College, on account of his self-control, which I have not, and as for our Bishop, he will lend a deaf ear to your most urgent supplications, should you ask either F. Jonckau or me. To leave this country would be for me a great sacrifice and the loss of the Crown which I await by dying in our woods; and however ardently I wish to see you assisted and relieved, nothing but obedience will force me out of my dearly beloved Vancouver Island. 60 the subject: Before ending the letter, Seghers appended a more personal note to his thoughts on I return to what You said in Your last [letter] about Your wanting a coadjutor by all means; and I sincerely wish You may find one according to your heart. I hope at any rate You won t have as yet a successor; for a successor I may perhaps not be acquainted with him and not love him; but You I do know and love You. Allow me therefore to oppose my wishes to yours, and to desire things to remain in statu quo. 61 While in Rome with Demers, Seghers served as the bishop s secretary during the Vatican Council. From Rome he wrote to De Neve: Tomorrow I hope I shall offer the H. Sacrifice on the Altar of the Confession of S. Peter, and I won t forget You; and I expect from You also the help of your prayers. Both the health of my body and that of my soul are in want of some peculiar blessing which, through the prayers of pious friends, I presume to expect from heaven. 62 Less than three months later, still in Rome, he inquired about visiting Louvain: I have thought on you and on the American College when celebrating on the Confession of S. Peter, and I have a very great desire to spend a few days in Louvain, if 59 Ibid. 60 Seghers (Victoria) to De Neve (Louvain), May 17, Archives of The American College. Louvain. 61 Ibid. 62 Seghers (Rome) to De Neve, January 19, Archives of The American College, Louvain.

205 176 it does not inconvenience anyone. Tell me, might I not go through my retreat with the Ordinandi of the College this year? And, if so, when will the Retreat commence? 63 Only nine days later, Seghers was compelled to write anew to De Neve because of a situation that had just come to Seghers s attention in a letter received in Rome from John Jonckau. The poor diocese was faced with a crisis that threatened its ability to recruit new priests to its missions. Augustin Brabant had already arrived in Victoria from Louvain (see below), and his brother Prudent, was expected to join him soon after his own ordination in Belgium. As a guest at the ordination and celebration that followed, Bishop Louis Lootens, Vicar Apostolic of Idaho and formerly a priest of Vancouver Island, was invited to offer a speech at the dinner following Prudent s first Mass. Lootens roundly criticized Bishop Demers for his manner of handling diocesan finances and strongly suggested that there was no need for new clergy on the island. He claimed that he himself had left the diocese for lack of work. 64 The net effect was that Prudent Brabant changed his mind about his future mission field, but even more, back in Victoria, Augustin was considering leaving the diocese only very shortly after his arrival. Seghers reported to De Neve Jonckau s words: Dear Reverend Father, I am instructed by His Lordship to copy a few lines of a letter which I have received just now from Fr. Jonckau. It reads as follows: Father Brabant has just received a letter from home telling him to look for another diocese, because in a speech at the dinner for he First Mass of his brother, bishop Lootens (Vicar Apostolic of Idaho), said that he had been five years on Vancouver Island and had been forced to leave because there was no work, just as others before him had done; and that it was a shame to send priests there, etc., etc. Father Brabant s brother wanted to join his brother, and now he himself is going to leave. If Bishop Lootens keeps on making speeches of this kind in Belgium we will not be able to count on priests for very long Seghers (Rome) to De Neve, March 7, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 64 Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., Mr Brabant vient de recevoir une lettre de chez lui, l engageant à se chercher un autre diocèse, parce qu au dîner de la 1re Messe de son frère, l Evêque Lootens (Vicaire Apostolique d Idaho) dans un speech, a dit qu il avait été 5 ans dans d Ile Vancouver et qu il avait été forcé de s en aller faute d ouvrage, ce qu ont fait d autres après lui; que c était dommage d envoyer de prêtres là etc. etc. Or le frère de Mr. Brabant désirait rejoindre son frère et maintenant lui-même l engage à quitter. Si Mgr Lootens continue à faire des speech pareils en Belgique nous ne pourrons plus compter sur des prêtres pour longtemps. Seghers (Rome) to De Neve, March 16, Archives of The American College, Louvain.

206 177 Returning to English, Seghers added his own concerned comments: Speeches and toasts of that description are not unlikely to come to your ears and to the ears of the students of the College. All I ask of you, Dear Reverend Father, is to defer forming any opinion in the matter until I am in Louvain, which will be shortly; and then I shall make it my duty to give you the necessary particulars and explanations. 66 Seghers s next letters to De Neve were addressed from Meulestede near Ghent. He advised De Neve that Bishop Demers had finally rejoined him in Paris but did not receive his allotment from the Society of the Propagation of the Faith (a consequence of Lootens further lobbying against the diocese 67 ), and that, as a consequence, he and Demers no longer had funds to pay for their return home. 68 By September 5th, the issues with the Society of the Propagation of the Faith had been resolved for the most part with at least part of the allocated funds sent in their direction, enough anyway to get them home to Victoria. Demers and Seghers arrived back in Victoria on the 2nd of November, the months following their return, Demers grew increasingly frail; by the end of 1870, the bishop was incapacitated and Seghers was fully in charge of the diocese, though his own health would suffer under the strain of the work. In his final letters to De Neve, both written in January 1871, Seghers advised De Neve of the medical situation of Demers: A most afflicting trial has thrown us into grief. On Saturday, 31 of December, His Lordship the Bishop had a severe attack of apoplexy; and although partly able to move about a little, Our Bishop is but imperfectibly [sic] conscious and paralysis has taken away the use of his tongue. We are virtually without a Bishop. I need not tell you what my feelings are And only ten days later, he added: Our expectations however are unfortunately realized, and the Bishop seems to be from this out unfit for any service: he is not even able to dress by himself. May Divine Providence watch over and care for our sad condition! 71 In 66 Ibid. 67 Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., Seghers (Meulestede, Ghent) to De Neve, August 13, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 69 Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., Seghers (Victoria) to De Neve, January 5, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 71 Seghers (Victoria) to De Neve, January 15, Archives of The American College, Louvain. In this letter, Seghers also offered to De Neve something of a scolding for the behavior

207 178 Demers hung on in his disabled and slowly weakening condition for six more months. As Demers was approaching death, Seghers s own physical condition took a serious turn for the worse with renewed hemorrhaging in his lungs. He seemed to be closely following his bishop to the beyond. Even as Demers was dying the doctors declared Segher s death to be imminent as well. Demers s infirmities came to their inevitable end with his death on July 21, 1871, but not before he named the hemorrhaging Seghers as administrator of the diocese. Seghers, in turn, delegated his friend, John Jonckau, to fulfill the role while he struggled to survive. He was even too ill to leave his bed for Demers s funeral services. Seghers s health gradually improved but he was consigned to mostly administrative work in the two years following Demers s death. 72 Shortly after Demers demise Seghers wrote of his mentor and pastor: The Church has lost a good bishop, the Indians have lost a devoted friend, your Community has lost a disinterested benefactor, and I, I have lost a father. I am, I feel myself an orphan for the second time. 73 Seghers s pain at losing this spiritual father to death, a father whom he had assisted and supported so faithfully, mostly in hard times and with ample compassion for his faults, ever since his first arrival on Vancouver Island in 1863, was certainly deep. If in the wake of Demers s loss he felt himself an orphan for the second time, then all the more deep would be his sense of loss and being orphaned when he received the most troubling news from Louvain that his beloved rector, with whom for eight years he had entrusted his deepest feelings and counted upon for the wisest of counsel, had suffered something far more serious in Seghers s mind than death: a full mental collapse and even worse, a foiled attempt at suicide. 74 This event would make him feel far worse than an orphan for the third time, for the moral implications of the suicide attempt, for Seghers, of some of his new priests recently arrived in North America. It seems some among them were... spending their time in places and dioceses where they have no business to go and much less to stay, before going to their own bishop; F. Gibney arrived in Oregon 2 [emphasis in original] months after F. Brabant; F. De Smet was not yet in Detroit on my passing through that diocese and the priests were telling me that they expected their Bishop to send him neither more nor less than a suspensio a divinis until such time as it would please him to repair to the Diocese he belongs to. Such practices, he advises De Neve, risk injuring for ever the reputation of our College in the opinion of he Clergy of the United States. 72 Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., Ibid., This strange and sad event will be discussed in the following chapter.

208 179 would have been intolerable for him to consider with anything but full spiritual disgust. De Neve would no longer be his advisor, his intimate, his father. There are no further letters to De Neve in the archives of the American College, until De Neve s reinstatement as rector in January His letters to De Neve after that time are all professional, brief and possess little of the intimacy they had prior to In the letters from Seghers to his usual correspondents in Belgium during the next two yeas, he mentioned not even once the name of John De Neve. 76 A year and a half later, on March 21, 1873, Seghers would be named the second bishop of Vancouver Island by Pope Pius IX. Of his rumored appointment, he wrote to his uncle in April of 1873: It is bruited at San Francisco that I have been appointed Bishop. Pray for me! My shoulders are too young for such a burden! 77 With that burden accepted, a new era in his life and in the history of the Catholic Church on the North Pacific Coast would commence. As a postscript to this segment of Seghers s story, so personally entwined in that of the American College, one final quotation from his letters to John De Neve is worthy of note since it captures both the need of his lonely shores and the mission of the American College: To tell you the truth, Dear Father Rector, I am of the opinion that the American College has been called to do more good on our Pacific shores than in the eastern states. The reason is that these missions, as a rule, are not rich enough for Irish priests; French religious cannot master the language well enough to face our adversaries; and the spirit [emphasis in original] of All Hallows College is far from being that which is wanted here. The youthful ardor of Belgian Priests both shared and cheered by a Bishop in whom they have confidence will, humanly speaking, serve the Church a thousand times better here than any other element, be it Irish-English or American. Quod vidi oculis meis, quo perspeci amantio tibi.... Let then the aspirations of generous and selfforgetting [sic] Belgian priests turn towards our lonely shores; but a priest that comes out hither must be able to be himself a rule to himself; he must be able to act without being under the eyes of a superior. I think it my duty to tell you these things, because I am inclined to believe that you think too little of these countries and devote too much your attention and solicitude to more civilized countries. But I dare say priests will soon abound in those wealthy places where they will be a torment to their bishops and a trial to their well meaning fellow priests; but here, the clergy is still to be formed: the spirit of the clergy is to be created; it is allimportant [sic] to have in the beginning such clergymen as will, like formerly in 75 Sauter, American College, I am speaking here only of those letters held in the Archives of The American College, Louvain. 77 De Baets, "The Apostle of Alaska," 108.

209 180 the American College give a good direction to the aspirations and exertions of all. That is my [emphasis in original] wish; but I don t know whether it is the wish of God. If his will is contrary to mine, fiat, fiat. He knows better; he judges withless [sic] prejudice and partiality. 78 De Ryckere and Brondel Add to the Louvain Presence Having traced at some length the course of Charles John Seghers s first years on Vancouver Island, we must now step back in time to recount other stories of young missionaries arrival and first experiences on the North Pacific Coast. Remigius De Ryckere came to the American College from the Bruges seminary in October 1861 and was ordained a priest in Mechlin on May 21, John Brondel, also from the Bruges seminary entered with him and was ordained a priest a few months after De Ryckere, on December 17, both had been accepted by the Diocese of Nesqually. 81 On November 7th of the previous year they acceptance with a letter to his new bishop, boldly written in English: Brondel responded to word of his My Lord, A few days ago our good Superior has had the kindness to obtain for me my dimissorials from his Lordship the Right Reverend bishop of Bruges. Henceforth I belong to your Lordship, since my Superior has had the goodness to approve of my choice and pronounce my ardent wishes legitimate. Hoping that this is the holy will of God I no longer feel any anxiety concerning my future lot. I count upon your kind consideration for me, since I am yet young and stand much in need of learning and virtue and consequently should your Lordship think it proper to prolong my preparatory studies until I shall be sufficiently prepared to undertake the arduous task which is reserved for me, I shall entirely act in conformity to your commands. 82 After their formal acceptance, John De Neve immediately billed the bishop of Nesqually for the costs incurred in educating them over the previous three years but also 78 Seghers (Victoria) to De Neve, November 11, Archives of The American College, Louvain. The Latin text: What I have seen with my own eyes I had already perceived so much in my affection for you.... Translation by John A. Dick. 79 Album Alumnorum, Ibid., Ibid., Brondel (Louvain) to A. M. A. Blanchet, November 12, Archives of the Archdiocese of Seattle.

210 181 added a note to his invoice making it clear that what Bishop Blanchet was receiving in return would be of high value to the needy diocese, at least liturgically: Mr. De Ryckere is my organist in the chapel, and Mr. Brondel is one of my best cantors. 83 Brondel s departure to Washington Territory was delayed until 1866 so that he might remain in the American College to further improve his English. De Ryckere departed Belgium on the 30th of July, He landed in Vancouver in September where he remained with A. M. A. Blanchet until July of 1866, when his bishop assigned him to begin a new mission in Montana in the small village of Deer Lodge, 85 situated between the present cities of Helena and Butte. Deer Lodge was located in a river valley blessed by nature with a hot springs which kept the place verdant throughout the year, making it a natural spot for deer to feed, which also made it a place that attractive to the indigenous populations and later, the white settlers. The Jesuit missionary, Joseph Giorda, 86 had passed through the area already several times in the years prior to 1866, performing a number of baptisms as he did so. Newly opened gold mines were attracting more and more settlers and so with that reality on his mind but without a Jesuit available to begin a mission there, Giorda pleaded with A. M. A. Blanchet that a diocesan priest be sent for the purpose. 87 De Ryckere got the job. He made the difficult journey eastward from Walla Walla on horseback in the 83 Mr. De Ryckere est mon organist à la chapelle, et Mr. Brondel est un de mes meilleurs chanteurs. De Neve (Louvain) to A. M. A. Blanchet, November 13, Archives of the Archdiocese of Seattle. 84 Album Alumnorum, L. B. Palladino, S.J., Indian and White in the Northwest: A History of Catholicity in Montana (Baltimore: John Murphy & Co., 1894), 298. It should be noted that De Ryckere was still very much alive and at work in Deer Lodge when Palladino wrote the first edition of his history of the Montana missions. Palladino, who served as pastor in nearby Helena for many years, clearly knew De Ryckere well, so his account of the man is first hand. See: Wilfred P. Schoenberg, S.J., A History of the Catholic Church in the Pacific Northwest; (Washington D.C.: The Pastoral Press, 1987), Giorda, Joseph ( ), born in Turin, entered the Society of Jesus in 1843 at the age of 23, and came to the United States in He was assigned to the Coeur d Alene Mission in what is now Idaho then appointed Superior of the Rocky Mountain missions of the Jesuits in He founded several Indian missions in Washington, Idaho and Montana. See William N. Bischoff, S.J., The Jesuits in Old Oregon: A Sketch of Jesuit Activities in the Pacific Northwest (Caldwell, ID: The Caxton Printers, LTD., 1945), 222. Wilfred P. Schoenberg, S.J., Paths to the Northwest: A Jesuit History of the Oregon Province (Chicago, IL: Loyola University Press, 1982), 73 ff. 87 Palladino, Indian and White, 1st ed.,

211 182 company of three miners, and arrived at his destination in July 1866, after three months travel. 88 The young priest did not hesitate to get to work: Father De Ryckere arrived in his new mission in early July and held his first Sunday services at the house of Mr. John Grant, the present residence of Mr. Conrad Kohrs. In October he commenced the erection of a chapel on Main Street, between Fourth and Fifth, and the hewn log structure was ready for use by the 8th of December, the first mass being celebrated therein on that day. It was named after the Immaculate Conception, and is the first church building erected in Deer Lodge County. From Deer Lodge, where he made his residence, Father De Ryckere visited at stated times all the numerous mining camps within the County. Gold Creek, Pioneer, Pike s Peak, Blackfoot, Bear Gulch, and Bear Mouth, McClellan Gulch, German Gulch, Cable, Anderson, Butte, Silver Bow, Philipsburgh, and other places were attended and regularly visited by him at this time. 89 Palladino goes on to describe in summary form the character of De Ryckere s ministry in his new mission: The difficulties and hardships of his early missionary life can be more easily imagined than told, and if written, would fill a good-sized volume. Horse-back rides of 40, 60, 80 and more miles over impassable trails, in the dead of winter and through deep snows, or under the scorching sun of the summer, were weekly occurrences in the discharge of his missionary duties. Accidents to life in the mining camps were frequent, equally frequent being broils and shooting scrapes, and the good Samaritan had to be on the saddle whole days, and even nights, to reach the sick in time for the last comforts of religion. 90 De Ryckere would eventually build new churches in the various other settlements he tended from Deer Lodge, perhaps the most significant being the booming town of Butte City. The copper mines of Butte were filling with Catholic immigrant workers from Europe, especially Ireland; it would be the Flemish priest who would build for them their Saint Patrick Church, which would be dedicated in 1879 by another Fleming, 88 Cyril Pauwelyn, "The Beginnings and Growth of the Catholic Church in the State of Montana," Acta et Dicta: A Collection of Historical Data Regarding the Origin and Growth of the Catholic Church in the Northwest V, no. 1 (1917): 233. The author of this brief work himself played a significant role in the history of the Church in Montana; he was the first priest of the Helena Diocese to be ordained in Montana, November 29, 1885, by Bishop John Brondel. He will appear again in this study in a later chapter. See: Wilfred P. Schoenberg, S.J., A Chronicle of the Catholic History of the Pacific Northwest: (Portland, OR: Catholic Sentinel Printery, 1962), Palladino, Indian and White, 1st ed., Ibid., 299.

212 183 Charles John Seghers. 91 De Ryckere was effectively, then, founding pastor not only of Deer Lodge, but also the parishes that would grow up in what would become more substantial towns like Butte and Anaconda. In the ensuing years, De Ryckere would go on to build as well a larger church in Deer Lodge, a beautiful stone building at a cost of over ten thousand dollars, 92 the debt on which he would be able to pay down only over the course of the next fourteen years. 93 He also was responsible for the establishment of Saint Joseph s Hospital and Saint Mary s Academy, both of which were placed under the direction of the Sisters of Charity from Leavenworth, Kansas. 94 In one of those strange ecclesiastical complications that perhaps can only happen in remote missionary territories, the status of Montana and nearby Idaho took an important turn less than two years after De Ryckere s arrival in Montana. Both Idaho and Montana had been established as their own territories, each having its own territorial government in 1863 and This civil development set the stage for a similar ecclesiastical move: in 1868, both Idaho, including the Territory of Idaho and that of western Montana up to the Rocky Mountains) and Montana (including that portion of Montana Territory east of the Rocky Mountains) were erected as apostolic vicariates. 95 Louis Lootens, an early missionary priest on Vancouver Island, whom we have already met in another context, had already left Demers s diocese and been working in Sonoma, California, 96 when he was appointed vicar apostolic of Idaho while Augustine Ravoux of Saint Paul, Minnesota, was named to Montana as its vicar apostolic. Ravoux never accepted the appointment for health reasons, and so the Vicariate was attached to that of Nebraska. 97 For De Ryckere, of course, this meant that his relationship to the Diocese of Nesqually under the direction of A. M. A. Blanchet was over only a short time after it had begun; he would thereafter become a priest of the new Idaho Vicariate under his countryman, Lootens. Once the Territory of Montana was established, first, as a apostolic vicariate (1883), then, as a diocese (1884), he would become a Helena (Montana) priest, remaining 91 Ibid., Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, Pauwelyn, "Montana," Palladino, Indian and White, 1st ed., Ibid., Schoenberg, Chronicle, Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, Ibid.,

213 184 there almost to the end of his days. In fact, he would be recognized throughout his life as the very dean of Montana s secular clergy. 98 Some five years after his arrival in Deer Lodge, De Ryckere was looking back to Louvain for assistance; he wrote to a friend in Belgium (a letter he asked to have shared with John De Neve), relating the need stretching before him:... this here is a new country and in five or six years from now will look quite different and better than what it does now. As for this place, all the worst for a priest here is over and easier times seem in store, not abundance though. It is of absolute necessity that we should be two priests here, one would find enough to do in this city, and by remaining constantly here might obtain his support, whilst the other from here would go and visit all the camps around. There is a universal demand for sisters here but I cannot attempt it as long as I am left alone.... This is a strange place though: to the astonishment of all Catholics and protestants I have been here very near five years now, and though most of the best to do citizens are protestants, there is as yet no protestant church built, next spring efforts will be made and succeed the better for them if I am to be delayed in my purpose of building a convent, a thing which I suppose will alas be the case, if the bishop do [sic] not come back or sent another priest. 99 The longed-for second priest would not arrive in Deer Lodge until 1876, when the French-Canadian, A. Z. Poulin was assigned there. Unfortunately, he returned to Montreal only eighteen months later due to ill-health. 100 De Ryckere was for most of these early years the only diocesan priest working in Western Montana. Interestingly, his first bishop would be none other than his American College classmate, John Baptiste Brondel. John Brondel departed Belgium in September 1866, landing in Fort Vancouver on All Hallows Eve. 101 Like so many of the newly arrived young priests, A. M. A. Blanchet kept him in Vancouver for some months before sending him on to more distant 98 Palladino, Indian and White, 1st ed., De Ryckere (Deer Lodge) to L. De Monie, March 8, Archives of The American College, Louvain. This same letter makes several references to Rev. Guido Gezelle, the famed Flemish poet-priest, with whom De Ryckere seemed to have maintained some correspondence. Gezelle s younger brother, Joseph, entered the American College in October 1862 at the request of the elder Gezelle. Joseph Gezelle would have been resident in the college at the same time as De Ryckere. The Album Alumnorum indicates that he departed for the English missions. No other information has been found on Joseph Gezelle s stay in the American College. The younger Gezelle died in See: Album Alumnorum, Palladino, Indian and White, 1st ed., Joseph Van der Heyden, "The Rt. Rev. John Bapt. Brondel: First Bishop of Helena, Montana," The American College Bulletin II, no. 2 (1904): 77.

214 185 missions; he was assigned as assistant at the cathedral and teacher at Holy Angels College. 102 He also used those months in Vancouver to learn the Chinook jargon which would give him the capacity to communicate with virtually any Indian on the North Pacific Coast. 103 In 1867, A. M. A. Blanchet assigned Brondel to his first permanent mission, Fort Steilacoom, replacing a burned out priest, Charles Vary, as pastor. 104 The Steilacoom mission covered much of what is now the largest metropolitan region on the North Pacific Coast, a region including the Olympic Peninsula, the entire Puget Sound region and everything westward to the Cascade mountain range. A French-Canadian priest, Francis X. Prefontaine who had served for a brief period with Vary in Steilacoom had been reassigned to Seattle to establish the first mission there leaving Brondel with the remainder. Of his responsibilities and first experiences in Steilacoom, Brondel wrote to John De Neve in Louvain in 1868: Ten miles north of Steilacoom, at the mouth of the Puyallup, and ten miles to the south, on the banks of the Nesqually, are the Indian reserves bearing these names. There are scattered about throughout the country sixty families of white farmers. Twenty of these the nearest living five miles from my residence are Catholics. By dint of hard labor they eke out a poor but honest living. At Steilacoom itself but three families, of the forty making up the population, are of the Faith. A mile and a half from the town I have a few church members among the soldiers of the United States Fort established there. My church looms up in the middle of the woods. Connected with it there is no presbytery; but I rejoice in having a convent near by. Its community of three Sisters takes care of a few orphans and teaches the children of the town and of the surrounding country. On the first Sunday following my arrival, after three ringings of the churchbell, I celebrated Mass for a congregation filling one half of the seats of fifty people. Accustomed as I had been to seeing crowded churches, I said to myself: Was it worth my while to leave all that was dearest to me on earth, to bury myself in these solitudes, to expose myself to all sorts of dangers, for the sake of a handful of God s adorers who call for my ministrations? When later on, I was brought face to face not only with the indifference of many, but also with the scorn and hatred of not a few; when I came to apprehend the want of even the necessaries of life, I mused: What good is there in staying here, since, with the exception of three Sisters and a few children under their care, scarcely any one approaches the Sacraments? But I immediately answered my own question: I will do my work here, as God wills it; and, if it please Him, He will not fail to give the incrementum Ibid. 103 Ibid. 104 Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, Van der Heyden, "Brondel II-2," Van der Heyden does not offer a precise date for the letter. It is no longer to be found in The Archives of The American College.

215 186 If Brondel felt badly about his small congregation he could at least take some solace in knowing that Prefontaine was faring far worse in Seattle: of the six hundred habitants of the settlement, only ten admitted to being Catholics. His first mass had a congregation of two. 106 the Jesuits in Canada. 107 Charles Vary, by the way, left the region altogether and joined Brondel s assignment to Steilacoom was a boon to his life-long friend, Charles John Seghers, located just across Puget Sound in Victoria. Not long after Brondel s assignment to Steilacoom, Seghers wrote to John De Neve: Good news! F. Brondel has been stationed in Steilacoom, opposite Victoria, about 70 miles distant from my home. He sent me already two letters; we expect him here in about a week or two. I consider this as a grace of God both for him & for me. 108 In an 1870 letter to De Neve, Brondel reported some significant improvement in his mission; he had by then constructed a $200 presbytery in Steilacoom and a $420 church in Olympia, the first in the capital of Washington Territory, which served the five families that were the core of his church membership there. 109 It cost him a twenty-five mile journey on horseback to bring services to those five families. It is difficult to know if Brondel was aware during his early years in Steilacoom that John De Neve was writing to A. M. A. Blanchet about the possibility of bringing Brondel back to Louvain to assist him since, as De Neve had written,... my health is diminishing. 110 Of Brondel s qualifications, De Neve wrote, He is an excellent [emphasis in original] student, prayerful, docile, exacting, obedient and one day he will one way or another do much good De Neve s request was not received positively by A. M. A Blanchet, for the young priest remained in Steilacoom where, in the ensuing years, Brondel oversaw the construction of new churches in Tacoma and on the Puyallup and Nesqually Indian 106 Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, Ibid., Seghers (Victoria) to De Neve, September 24, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 109 Van der Heyden, "Brondel II-2," ma santé diminue. De Neve (Louvain) to A. M. A. Blanchet, August 28, Archives of the Archdiocese of Seattle. 111 Il est excellent [emphasis in original] étudiant, prieux, docile, exacte, obéissant et un jour il pourrait de l une ou l autre manière faire beaucoup de bien.... Ibid.

216 187 Reservations. 112 Brondel s life, of course, would take a major turn in a very different direction when in 1879 he would find himself called to the episcopacy and a new life on Vancouver Island, the replacement for his friend, Charles John Seghers who was being transferred by Rome to the Archdiocese of Oregon City. Leonard Haupts: Louvain s First Missionary Failure Only a few months ahead of Brondel and De Ryckere s arrivals on the North Pacific Coast, they had been preceded by one of their classmates, Leonard Haupts in whom both Demers and Seghers had been placing much hope. Haupts like his first cousin, Aegidius Junger, was a native of Burscheid near Aachen. He followed his elder cousin to the American College in 1861 but it was not until May of 1864 that he was formally accepted as a candidate for the diocese of Vancouver Island, 113 but only after De Neve had previously tried to sell him to A. M. A. Blanchet in Nesqually, perhaps indicating already that some problems were evident in the young man. 114 Be that as it may, Haupts remained in De Neve s seminary until his ordination to the priesthood in Mechlin on June 10, 1865, followed by his departure from the college to begin his journey to Vancouver Island on July 30 of the same year. 115 Demers, with Seghers at his side almost certainly giving advice in the matter, accepted Haupts and looked forward to his arrival because he would bring with him a very important asset to the struggling diocese: he spoke German. In December of 1864, Seghers wrote to De Neve on exactly this point: I hope, Reverend Father, that you will tell M. Haupts that I and all the Germans... are longing for his arrival. Germans grow careless in new countries; but several told me they would attend the church regularly if a German priest was here. 116 Haupts arrived in Victoria on September 24, 1865, several months earlier than expected; unfortunately, even from the beginning, the young priest soon proved himself 112 Van der Heyden, "Brondel II-2," Album Alumnorum, De Neve (Louvain) to A. M. A. Blanchet, November 13, Archives of the Archdiocese of Seattle. 115 Album Alumnorum, Seghers to De Neve, undated (probably December 1864, #21). Archives of The American College. Louvain

217 188 to be far less than what Seghers and Demers were hoping for. 117 days on the island, Seghers s wrote to De Neve: Of his arrival and first Dear Reverend Father I thank you for the few lines you have sent to me through F. Haupts. I suppose You want me to send down to you a few particulars about our new missionary. F. Haupts came quite unexpectedly: I was not at all aware that he was coming; and his arrival was looked for only about the latter part of November. As a matter of course we were glad to welcome him and I spent delightful hours with my fellow student of old. What amount of news he had to tell me! But, strange to say! I came once more to the conviction that I do not care a bit any more about Belgium, k en keere er myne hand niet voor om [ I could care less about it. ]. The reverend Father is stationed in an Indian mission on the Cowichan (op zyn vlaemsch Kawootsin) [ in Flemish: Kawootsin ] along with a Canadian priest: A few white settlers living in the neighborhood will afford him an opportunity to preach once in a while in English. But he needs the knowledge of chinook more that that of any other languages. I could not tell you how long he will remain there; but I have reason to suppose that he will be there only for a short time. It seems to me that he does not like much the Indian descendents of our grandfather Adam: Their language? What an abominable jargon! Their persons? What a smell! How dirty! And I can assure You, he is far from being wrong. Every body is not called to be a missionary among Indians. Pauci vocati et non multi. And yet we shall shortly want very holy Indian missionaries. The last news form Cowichan tells us that F. Haupts puts up very well with his new situation, which is far from being a very comfortable one. And if he knows all things like I know them in this poor, forlorn Van Couvers Island, he would feel delighted to live among the savages. 118 In his own letters to De Neve, Demers complained about Haupts s lack of initiative and drive, his disdain of learning Indian languages, and his fatal dislike of Indians in general. 119 Demers concluded: Vancouver Island could do without German missionaries in the future.... But give me Belgians, as St. Francis Xavier asked, give me some more Frenchmen, Bretons, 117 Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., Steckler s account is based on letters from Demers to De Neve that are no longer to be found in the Archives of the American College. They are dated as September 24, 1865 and December 22, Seghers (Victoria) to De Neve, November 14, Archives of The American College, Louvain. The context of Seghers s words would make one wonder if this letter s date has not been misread. A secondary notation on its heading reads Nov. 14, 1866, but the date appended after the signature in Seghers s own hand could also be read, November In this case, Seghers s narrative of Haupts s arrival seems to make more sense as something that is still a rather recent event rather than an event of a year past. 119 Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., 56.

218 189 Swiss, missionaries like... Seghers, Croquet, men of abnegation and devotion, qualities which make up the very being of a priest in lands like these. 120 Seghers concurred in his superior s thinking, and added some nuances: Irish priests live too much, German priests have no life, French priests cannot talk English. Therefore, Da mihi Belgas. 121 What young Haupts thought of his situation in the Vancouver Island diocese is unknown; his name barely finds mention in diocese s more recent histories. 122 That the concern among Demers, De Neve and Seghers as to what should be done with the young priest became a matter of some importance is clear from an April 1886 letter from Seghers to De Neve; Seghers wrote about the Haupts situation in their native Flemish language, (presumably to prevent any unwanted reading of the very personal comments Seghers was making about the man), F. H. is not a man to be a missionary among the savages. 123 Less than a month later, this time in English, Seghers wrote extensively of Haupts, doing so with concern for the young man s well-being as well as evident hope that an improvement in the situation might yet be possible: With regard to F. Haupts, I do not know what I could add to what I have written a few days ago.... Fr. Haupts got thinner and weaker in his new poor mission; he has more fish than meat for his meals; and the worst of it is that he don t [sic] like fish. Still he seems to be resigned and contented, but perhaps more by the anticipation of better days than by anything else. I hope that he will be one day a good priest in the diocese; but the trouble is that I cannot see him often enough: he lives 35 miles away from Victoria; if he was living with me, he would be more in state of receiving some directions which he needs to know what he has to do. However all this may soon change to the better.... About the kind of proposal You make to His Lordship concerning F. Haupts leaving for another diocese, be sure that His Lordship does not mean it when he writes in that manner, rather hastily; and for the sake of F. Haupts s peace of mind I have come to 120 Ibid. 121 Seghers (Victoria) to De Neve, November 14, Archives of The American College, Louvain 122 Haupts does not appear in: Patrick Jamieson, Victoria, Demers to De Roo: 150 Years of Catholic History on Vancouver Island (Victoria, BC: Ekstasis Editions, Ltd, 1997). Vincent J. McNally, "Surviving in Lotus Land: A History of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Victoria, , Unpublished manuscript, Archives of the Diocese of Victoria, Victoria, BC. He finds brief mention in Philip M. Hanley, "History of the Diocese of Victoria, 2002," Unpublished Manuscript, p. 6, Archives of the Diocese of Victoria, Vancouver, BC. 123 F. H. is geen man om missionaris onder de wilden te zyn.... Seghers (Victoria) to De Neve, April 18, Archives of The American College, Louvain. Translation by Joske Dick.

219 190 the conclusion that it will be better never to whisper one blessed word to F. Haupts about the whole concern. Fr. Haupts could not be of greater service to any other bishop than to ours. Give him a mission of Germans; if they smoke and fall asleep, he will smoke and fall asleep too; there is no mistake about it. But here he will have to attend to so many things that he will be compelled to live. I have already prevailed upon His Lordship to entrust to F. Haupts the mission of Nanaimo, which must be attended at least monthly. 124 By September of 1867, Haupts had been moved back to Victoria and appointed to St. Louis College... where he is teacher of the highest class Seghers added an aside to his comment about Haupts s new position in his September letter to De Neve: He is too lazy to write letters. 126 only hardened: And by December, Seghers s opinion of Haupts had As for F. Haupts, he is [emphasis in original] to be pitied. I dislike very much to say anything against the man; but I am very much afraid he will make himself very miserable. He has not the spirit which he ought to have; I do not say that he listens to nobody; I wish I could say so; but he is not able to do such a thing; he listens to people whom he should not listen to; and that is the evil; and when once his mind takes hold of a certain notion, there is no power either on earth or on hell that is able to divest him of it.... As far as I am judge of it, I think he is very much like a school boy, who is glad to be out of his college; and has but one wish: never to return thither again. Narrowmindedness! Forgive me, Father, to speak in that way of one of my fellow priests. 127 Seghers made one further mention of Haupts in a postscript to his letter to De Neve of August 18, 1868, Please pray for H... he commences to get fond of liquor. 128 Haupts left the Vancouver Island diocese on October 8, 1869, accompanying Demers and Seghers as the two began their journey to Rome for the First Vatican Council. Haupts headed south to Marysville, California to tend to German-speaking Catholics there. 129 Among his own people, he evidently succeeded as a pastor 124 Seghers (Victoria) to De Neve, May 11, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 125 Seghers (Victoria) to De Neve, September 24, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 126 Ibid. 127 Seghers (Victoria) to De Neve, December 13, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 128 Seghers (Victoria) to De Neve, August 8, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 129 Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., 72.

220 191 sufficiently well since he is recorded as having retired in 1902, broken down by continued sickness and returned to Lier, Belgium where he died in November Thibau and Glorieux s Arrival and First Years in Oregon City Louvain s star would shine brighter in the next two missionaries to leave the American College for the North Pacific Coast, Gustave Thibau and Alphonse Glorieux. Little is known of Gustave Thibau except that before he entered the American College he had already been ordained a priest of the Diocese of Bruges. He entered the American College in July 1866, spending only a few months at the college before departing for Oregon City on September 13th of the same year. 131 None of the histories of the region or of the Oregon City/Portland Archdiocese make mention of him, nor are there in the Archives of The American College more than two documents relating to him, both inconsequential. He is not completely lost to sight though; two letters of John Brondel indicate he served at the parish of St. Louis 132 on French Prairie and later as chaplain of the Catholic hospital in Portland. Brondel wrote to his sister in Belgium in 1872: After spending a day with this former seminary mate I repaired to St. Louis to spend a day with the companion of my transatlantic trip, Father Thibau, a native of Iseghem. St. Louis is like a Belgian village, witha church and presbytery as they have in Belgium. I found Fther Thibau at home. Though I had not seen him for five years, he seemed not to have aged. He has perfected himself in the English language. 133 In 1879, he was mentioned again in a letter from Brondel to his brother in Belgium: It is just thirteen years ago today that I said my first mass in Oregon. Yesterday I saw Father 130 Joseph Van der Heyden, "Necrology," The American College Bulletin VI, no. 1 (1908): Album Alumnorum, St Louis was founded in 1844 by the Jesuit missionary, Louis Vercruysse. See Patricia Brandt and Lillian A. Pereyra, Adapting in Eden: Oregon's Catholic Minority, (Pullman, WA: Washington State University Press, 2002), Ayant passé un jour avec cet ancien compagnon de étude je me suis rendu à St Louis pour passer une journée avec mon compagnon de voyage transatlantique, Mr Thibau d Iseghem. St Louis est comme un village de la Belgique avec une église et presbytère de ce genre, et j ai trouvé Mr Thibau chez lui. Il y avait cinq ans que je ne l ai pas trouvé vieilli mais perfectionné dans la langue du pays. Brondel (Steilacoom) to Soeur Marie Louise, July 25, Archives of the Diocese of Helena. Translation provided by Diocese of Helena.

221 192 Thibau, the chaplain at the hospital who gave me two lovely pictures of the Sacred Hearts. 134 There are as well very brief and very occasional references to Thibau in the pages of the Catholic Sentinel, such as the issue of November 19, 1885: Rev. Father Thibau was the recipient of a silver chalice from the St. Francis Church, East Portland a substantial proof of the kind services to that congregation to which he has endeared himself by his unrelenting services. 135 In July of 1878, a letter written by Thibau describing in considerable detail his recent visit to the Belgian mystic, Louise Lateau, 136 was featured in the Catholic Sentinel; in an introductory note, we are informed: The many friends of Father Thibeau throughout this Province will learn with pleasure that his health has greatly improved since his visit to his early home. 137 Other than such brief notices, the life and work of Gustave Thibau has been largely lost to memory. Alphonse Glorieux was to fare much better as far as finding a substantial place in the history of the church in the region. A native of Dottignies and the Diocese of Bruges, he entered the American College from the minor seminary in Kortrijk in October of He was ordained a priest in Mechlin on August 17, 1867 and departed for Oregon City on September 19th of the same year. 138 Having come to the North Pacific Coast via the Panama Canal he arrived in Portland on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, 134 Il y a aujourd hui 13 ans que j ai dit ici ma première messe en Orégon. J ai vu hier Mr. Thibau qui est chapelain à l hôpital et qui m a donné deux beaux tableaux des SS Coeurs. Brondel (Portland) to his brother, October 31, Archives of the Diocese of Helena. 135 Catholic Sentinel, November 19, Lateau, Louise ( ) was born in Bois d Haine (Belgium). She became well known for medically unexplained stigmata and regular mystical ecstasies. Reports of Lateau reached even Pope Leo XIII, who declared in 1873: "Le fait de Bois-d'Haine est un fait merveilleux. Vous pouvez dire pour ma part que jamais les médecins n'expliqueront ce fait-là". See: Bois-d Haine et son Culte, July 27, As there was a crowd of about forty persons, (mostly ladies) present at the holy Communion, we were allowed by turns to go closer and examine the bleeding stigmas of Louise, who lay there with hand folded. Some kissed her hands, others touched them with their beads, and others yet tried to get a picture or with their handkerchief get some blood running from her stigmas. Though the pastor would not allow this when he perceived it, yet I succeeded with my handkerchief in cleaning away some blood from her hands. I have cut to pieces my blood stained handkerchief, a piece of which is enclosed, together with a photograph of Louise s house. Catholic Sentinel, July 4, Album Alumnorum,

222 193 December 8, Schoenberg reports that F. N. Blanchet assigned him to the new parish in Roseburg almost as soon as he got off the boat from San Francisco. 140 The speed of the assignment, Schoenberg suggests, was perhaps due to the archbishop s wish to tend to the spiritual needs of the family of Oregon Territorial Governor Joseph Lane, who in October 1867, had been received into the Catholic Church by F. N. Blanchet himself. 141 Glorieux arrived in Roseburg a few weeks later, whence he purchased a blacksmith shop, moved the building onto property previously purchased by F. N. Blanchet; Glorieux dedicated the former blacksmith shop as St. Stephen the First Martyr Church. 142 In 1869, he was transferred to Oregon City where he served for only six months then to St. Paul, the original Catholic parish of the Oregon Territory. 143 Only four years later, in 1871, F. N. Blanchet called Glorieux to Portland to serve as president of his newly established St. Michael s College, which had been pushed into existence by fellow Louvanist, John Fierens, vicar general of the archdiocese and pastor of the cathedral. Fierens had the building for the Portland school constructed in only three months; under Glorieux s direction, the college was an immediate success. 144 Soon after its opening, it boasted of a brass band, telegraph apparatus, physical laboratory and a printing office. 145 Schoenberg speculates that in taking two of his sixteen priests for this initiative, the archbishop was betting that the school would become a fertile garden for the fostering of vocations to his diocese; 146 in his mind it was an investment in the future of the church in Oregon. In placing young Glorieux in charge of the enterprise, F. N. Blanchet was yet again expressing his confidence in the remarkably adept, hard-working and zealous priests coming to him from the American seminary in Belgium. John Brondel wrote his sister of visiting Glorieux at the school: 139 Cyprian Bradley, O.S.B. and Edward Kelley, D.D., Ph.D., History of the Diocese of Boise: , 1 vols., vol. I (Boise, ID: Roman Catholic Diocese of Boise, 1953), Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, 205. Roseburg is located in southwestern Oregon. 141 Ibid. 142 Ibid. 143 Bradley and Kelley, Boise, Brandt and Pereyra, Eden, Edwin V. O'Hara, Pioneer Catholic History of Oregon (Portland: Glass & Prudhomme Company, 1911), 216. Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, 235.

223 194 On my arrival at Portland I had the pleasure of meeting for the first time in America Father Glorieux of Dottignies, President of St. Michael s College. I had not seen this gentleman since I had left him in Belgium. I visited his college, which is kept very clean and provided with all necessities. There are about seventy pupils. Father Glorieux has as assistant Father Heinrich. These gentlemen began last year this first college for the Catholic boys of Oregon. 147 Glorieux s career as a school president and principal would last thirteen years until 1884, when he would be named vicar apostolic of Idaho. 148 Jonckau and Brabant Begin Long Lives on Vancouver Island Through his animating letters back to Louvain, Charles John Seghers was instrumental in motivating other young Louvanists to look to impoverished Vancouver Island as their missionary field of choice. Certainly, John De Neve encouraged them in this, for the three dioceses of the North Pacific Coast were, after all, his favorite portion of the Vineyard. 149 Two among Seghers s American College companions responded affirmatively to his encouragement: John J. Jonckau and Augustin J. Brabant. Jonckau entered the American College on the 1st of August 1865 and was ordained to the priesthood two years later on August 17, 1867, departing for North America on October 13th of the same year. 150 In October of 1866, Seghers had written his good friend a lengthy letter written primarily in Flemish offering him a picture of what he could expect to find both in his journey and in his new diocese once he arrived. Of life in Victoria he wrote: In general, I can assure you that, if we lived in brick houses and had everything Belgium has, then would Victoria be the best, the most beautiful, the most comfortable place, anywhere in the world. Cool winds in the summer and little biting cold in the winter, and surroundings so beautiful, so lovely that we can compare it to paradise on 147 Arrivé à Portland j ai eu le plaisir de rencontrer pour la première fois Mr. l abbé Glorieux de Dottignies, Principal au collége de St. Michel. Je n avais plus vu ce Monsieur depuis que je l avais quitté en Belgique. J ai visité son collége qui est trés propre et pourvu de tout le nécessaire. Il y a à peu près 70 élèvès. Brondel (Steilacoom) to Soeur Marie Louise, July 25, Archives of the Diocese of Helena. Translation provided by the Diocese of Helena. 148 Bradley and Kelley, Boise, 204. The appointment, Bradley and Kelley make clear, was the result of Seghers s appeals while in Rome for the initiative. 149 Sauter, American College, Album Alumnorum, 239.

224 195 earth, and it is much more beautiful than what I have seen or heard about other places. 151 Seghers advised Jonckau to bring with him such practical things as... a good supply of underclothes but of course far more importantly, he should come with... courage and bravery enough to last your lifetime; the fire of devotion to tackle any job; and the steel of constancy and the energy to persevere Still prior to Jonckau s departure from Louvain, Seghers wrote to De Neve with more advice for the new recruit: Fr. Jonckau, however, at least if I have to say anything in the matter, will be charged with a beautiful mission where he will have to direct sisters and lead men to the height of perfection, to attend a small number of Catholics to convert heretics & infidels, & to attend to numerous Indian Camps. If it be otherwise, it will be because I cannot help it; and because the Bishop thinks differently. And if I say this, it is that, there is time enough, F. Jonckau should know to what he ought to prepare himself. But it is possible that this letter shall be received after the departure of F. Jonckau. May God bless him & grant him a happy & successful voyage. 154 Jonckau arrived in Victoria on the 4th of December and was met with the highest of expectations of both Seghers and Demers. The first impressions were most positive; on December 13th, Seghers wrote to De Neve: I hate to be overhasty in making up my opinion concerning F. Jonckau; but I have great reasons to believe that he will be the [emphasis in original] man. 155 Jonckau had previously received business training, 156 skills which he would put at the service of a bishop notably lacking in such. He served in 151 In het algemeen mag ik U verzekeren dat, indien wij hier in steenen huizen woonden, en alles hadden wat men in Belgenland heeft, dan zou Victoria de beste, de schoonste, de aengenaemste plaets zyn die er ergens op de wereld te vinden is: koele windekens in den zomer, en weinig bytende koud in den winter, en omstreken zoo schoon, zoo schoon dat men ze aan het Aards paradys mag vergelyken, al dat overtreft al wat ik van andere streken gezien of gehoord heb. Seghers (Victoria) to Jonckau, October 1, Archives of The American College, Louvain. Translation by Joske Dick een goede provisie van onderskleederen... Ibid. Translation from Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., eene levens-lang durige provise van couragie en kloeke moed; le feu de l ardeur om te ondernemen, et l acier de la constance et de l énergie om te volherde. Ibid. Translation from Steckler, Ibid. 154 Seghers (Victoria) to De Neve, September 24, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 155 Seghers (Victoria) to De Neve, December 13, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 156 S.S.A. Sister Mary Theodore, Heralds of Christ the King (New York: P.J. Kenedy & Sons, 1939), 234.

225 196 the ensuing years mostly in the cathedral parish in Victoria but he also... substituted on the missions far and near, even in Alaska, with zeal and humility. 157 Little is written of Jonckau s ministry and none of the typical letters to De Neve reporting on his mission are to be found in the archives of The American College; perhaps with a more business-like character than others such use of his time seemed unimportant. As previously noted in this chapter, from his position as vicar general for much of his priestly ministry, he not only managed much of the diocese s business but when any of the three bishops he served under was absent he acted as the trusted and capable administrator of the diocese in their absence. As temporary administrator, he was the one to warn Seghers in Rome of the serious troubles with Bishop Lootens at the ordination festivities of Prudence Brabant. Seghers s own letters made little mention of Jonckau, which is in itself an indication that he was, at the minimum, not a problem priest and his competencies were presumed. That such was the case is indicated by the fact that, years later, after Seghers found himself transferred from the episcopacy of Vancouver Island to that of Oregon City in 1878, and his successor in Victoria, John Brondel had been moved to Montana in 1883, it was John Jonckau to whom Seghers s eyes and eventually those, too, of the pope, would turn as the next bishop of Vancouver Island. Jonckau s rejection of his appointment to the see is a story for a later chapter. 158 Steckler notes that, John Jonckau s work never disappointed three bishops of Vancouver Island. 159 This may be altogether true, except for Charles John Seghers once: he was furious with Jonckau for his rejection of the Vancouver Island miter. Augustin Joseph Brabant, born in Rollegem in the Diocese of Bruges in 1845, grew up as an orphan, having lost his father in 1847 and his mother the following year. Of his six siblings, three were dead before he left Belgium for North America. Augustin together with his sister and brother were raised by their maternal uncle and aunt in Walle near Kortrijk. Augustin and his brother received their higher education at the St. Amandus College in Kortrijk, where they were classmates with fellow American College students, Alphonsus Glorieux and Camillus Maes, later bishop of Covington, Kentucky. Both Augustin and his brother Prudent chose upon graduation to follow seminary studies for the priesthood. According to Van der Heyden, both wished to become missionaries to 157 Ibid. 158 See Chapter VII of the present work. See also Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, 293. Sister Mary Theodore, Heralds, Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., 62.

226 197 the natives of North American having read Peter John De Smet s letters from the Rocky Mountain mission. 160 While Prudent remained in Bruges, Augustin chose to enter the American College on September 30th. 161 He came to Louvain with the recommendation of his former college officials in hand, being commended for his irreproachable conduct and piety 162 By the end of November, he had already been released from the Diocese of Bruges for service to that of Vancouver Island. 163 In his first year of studies in Louvain, he witnessed the final class given by Gerard Casimir Ubaghs, 164 who had been forced to resign from his teaching post by opponents within the University of Louvain who challenge the orthodoxy of his philosophical and theological teachings. 165 Brabant was ordained to the priesthood in Mechlin on December 19, He departed Antwerp on August 28, 1869, traveling with fellow Louvanists, Julian (Jules) De Craene, headed for Oregon City, and Matthew Schaeken, destined for Detroit. The three new missionaries journeyed by sea to New York, then overland to Detroit, where Brabant and De Craene left Schaeken; they then traveled to San Francisco by the newly opened transcontinental railroad. They were the first from Louvain to travel across North America in this manner; 167 their railroad journey marked an important advancement in the ease with which the missionary enterprise to the North Pacific Coast could be accomplished. The distance between Louvain and Victoria, Oregon City or Vancouver, measured in time, was now very much less than ever before. Even with the 160 Joseph Van der Heyden, Life and Letters of Father Brabant: A Flemish Missionary Hero (Louvain: J. Wouters-Ickx, 1920), Album Alumnorum, irréprochable conduite et sa piété [Undecipherable name, College of Kortrijk] (Kortrijk) to De Neve, August 26, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 163 Dimissorial Letter, Diocese of Bruges, November 28, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 164 Ubaghs, Gerard Casimir ( ), professor of philosophy in Louvain and editor of Revue Catholique, promoted ontologism, eventually censured by Rome and for which he was forced to retire from teaching. Thereafter he lived until his death in retirement. See Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon, s.v. Ubaghs, July 19, Also see Roger Aubert and others, The Church in the Age of Liberalism, ed. Hubert Jedin and John Dolan, trans. Peter Becker, History of the Church, vol. VIII (London: Burns & Oates, 1981), 43-44, Van der Heyden, Father Brabant, 12. Some years later Brabant and other student s exposure to Ubaghs would effectively keep their names off of the list as candidates for the rectorate of the American College. 166 Album Alumnorum, Van der Heyden, Father Brabant,

227 198 modernization taking place in travel to and from the mission fields, life for the young travelers was still not without its problems and wonders. In a letter to friends in Belgium, now lost to us but recorded in part by Van der Heyden, Brabant described an incident that displays both his vigor and his ability to deal with adversity with geniality: At Council Bluffs they had to cross the Mississippi over to Omaha towards eleven o clock at night. It was storming and raining furiously, and as there was some half a mile distance from the station to the boat-landing, there was a general rush for carriages. Fathers Brabant and De Craene entered the contest somewhat late, got left, and stood in the rain and wind of a pitch-dark night with no alternative but to foot it to the River. The road was such only in name, muddier, says the narrator, than the muddiest of mud roads round about Courtrai [Kortrijk]. Having no one to point out the way to them, they exerted themselves to follow as closely as possible the receding carriages and to direct themselves by their lights. To struggle ankle deep through mud with a heavy valise upon the shoulders, the rain pouring down in torrents, and a bare possibility of reaching the boat on time and of perhaps being left to muse at for the nonce invisible stars, was a situation that with the most of us would have stirred up anything but merriment. Father Brabant, however, enjoyed it hugely, so much so even, that, after having rolled down a fifteen-foot embankment, he had a hard tussle in getting up, not because he was hurt, but because of a fit of laughter. This way of looking at the bright side of things must have helped considerably throughout his missionary career to bear with its hardships and trials without being overcome by them. 168 Even after boarding the new train to San Francisco, a certain amount of awe and fear was still part of the journey. The experience of seeing and then passing over the newly constructed trestles spanning deep valleys and gorges left its impression on the young man: Do you know how they look like? Like a long set of sawhorses aligned one alongside of the other over which to rails fastened on beams are thrown. Across you go! Everything cracks and shakes. It is frightful to look at, especially when the train gets to a standstill in the midst of one of these trestle-bridges some three or four hundred feet in length, because the motion of the frail structure is greater than is good for safety. 169 From San Francisco he traveled again by ship up the coast to Portland where he laid over for some days while he waited for the next ship to Victoria. There he visited with Gustave Thibau in St. Louis on Oregon s French Prairie, supplying for him there while 168 Ibid., According to Van der Heyden, the letter was published in Dutch in Rond den Heerd, vol. V, p , Bruges. 169 Ibid., 15.

228 199 Thibau took the opportunity to say Sunday mass in nearby Saint Paul. According to Van der Heyden, the experience of saying mass in the church founded and built by his fellow Kortrijkzaan, Father Louis Vercruysse, S.J., 170 left him in tears. 171 Brabant arrived in Victoria on the 18th of October, 1869, the fourth man from Louvain to have done so. His fellow Louvanist, Charles Seghers was not there to greet him since he and Bishop Demers had just set sail ten days earlier for Rome and the First Vatican Council. 172 Brabant joined John Jonckau at the cathedral and as a teacher in the Saint Louis College, the Catholic school for boys in Victoria, 173 which had been turned over to the diocese by the departing Oblate Fathers in Of his work in the cathedral parish, Brabant related his astonishment at the cultural variety he was encountering in Victoria; he noted later that... the first child he baptized was a half Indian, the second was a Mexican and in one of his classes he had two full-blooded negros and two Indian halfbreeds. 175 He remained stationed in Victoria until the direction of his diocese received new life and direction with the consecration of a new bishop in Victoria, fellow Louvanist, Charles John Seghers in June of Only months later, Seghers... took Brabant to Barclay Sound, one hundred fifty miles up the west coast of Vancouver Island, and installed him with the reputedly fierce Hesquiats to do the best he could with them. 176 On March 22, 1875, once Brabant was settled on the west coast ofvancouver Island, 170 Vercruysse, Louis (Alois), S.J. ( ), was born in Kortrijk and as a Jesuit, accompanied Peter John De Smet, S.J. to North America in December 1843 and four other members of the Society of Jesus. He arrived in Fort Vancouver in August He served as a missionary in a number of localities and regions in the United States but especially in the Jesuits Rocky Mountain missions. He returned to Belgium in 1865 for reasons of health. See Antoine De Smet, Voyageurs Belges aux États-Unis du XVII siècle à 1900: Notices Biobibliographiques (Brussels: le Patrimoine de la Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, 1959), Concerning Vercruysse s work in Oregon see Bischoff, The Jesuits in Old Oregon: A Sketch of Jesuit Activities in the Pacific Northwest, Van der Heyden, Father Brabant, Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., 72, Mary Theodore, S.S.A. Heralds of Christ the King (New York: P.J. Kenedy & Sons, 1939), The issue of the diocese s takeover of St. Louis College from the Oblates was a painful chapter in the life of Bishop Demers and the Oblates. The issue of contention was compensation by the diocese for the investment already made in the college by the Oblates. See McNally, Vineyard, Van der Heyden, Father Brabant, Mary Theodore, Heralds, 235.

229 200 Seghers presented him with a Charter for the Establishment of the First Mission at Hesquiate ; it began with the words: First, let the Missionary devote himself chiefly and directly to the salvation and spiritual progress of the Indians. 177 Thereafter, the Charter was pure Seghers: directions to the missionary to tend to the civil organization of the Indians, to celebrate the liturgy... with utmost solemnity and impressiveness..., 178 and this: The Missionary shall not expect to realize the solid fruits of his labors until after long years of toil Seghers had sized up his man well; Augustin Brabant was a sturdy, steady and long-suffering individual who was, in a sense, an ideal missionary by nineteenth century standards. The story of his life and work on the west coast of Vancouver Island will be continued in the following chapter. De Craene and Gibney The first decade of young missionaries coming from Louvain to the dioceses of the North Pacific Coast came to a conclusion with the arrival in Oregon City of the alreadymentioned Jules De Craene and an Irishman, Patrick Gibney, the sixteenth and seventeenth of their number to begin ministry in these mission fields. The young priest who happily trudged through the rain and the mud of Council Bluffs with Augustin Brabant, Julian De Craene, also hailed from the Ghent diocese. A native of Waarschoot, he entered the American College a few days ahead of Brabant, on September 22, By the end of November the bishop of Ghent had released him for service elsewhere and on December 2nd he was formally accepted by the Archdiocese of Oregon City. Tragedy marred his life in 1867 with the death of his mother in Waarschoot. 180 He was ordained to the priesthood on May 22, 1869 in the cathedral of Mechlin and left the American College for his new mission on August 22nd of the same year. 181 He arrived in Oregon City on October 10th Primo, principaliter et directe incumbet Missionarius saluti et profectui spirituali sylvicolarum. Charles Moser, OSB, Reminiscences of the West Coast of Vancouver Island (Victoria, BC: Acme Press, 1926), 1, 4. The translation into English is provided in Moser s text. 178 Ibid., Ibid. 180 De Craene (Waerschoot) to De Neve, November 7, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 181 Album Alumnorum, Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, 793, f.n. 133.

230 201 He was assigned respectively to Portland, Oregon City and Salem. Little is recorded of De Craene s work in those parishes, perhaps since his time in the archdiocese was so limited. His only claim to fame in the Catholic history of the region is that he was the first diocesan priest to die on the North Pacific Coast, at the age of thirty, on September 12, While Schoenberg writes that he died, unexpectedly, and for no known reason, 184 the contemporary report of his death attributed the cause of death to inflammation of the brain. 185 well attended by his confreres from Louvain: The same report recorded that his funeral services were A solemn Requiem Mass for the repose of his soul was celebrated on Monday morning at St. John s Church [Salem]. Most Rev. F. N. Blanchet, Celebrant; Very Rev. J.F. Fierens, Assistant Priest, Rev. P. Hylebos, Deacon; Rev. P. Gibney, Sub-deacon, Revs. L. Schram, A.J. Glorieux, S.Goens, P. McCormick, G.C. Thibau, and B. Orth were present in the sanctuary. Very Rev. J. F. Fierens preached an eloquent sermon upon the solemn occasion the effect of which was apparent from the suffused eyes of nearly all present. 186 After a twenty-two mile cortege to St. Paul, De Craene s remains were laid to rest in the west wing of the first church in Oregon.187 Patrick Gibney was a native of Meath, Ireland, and had been a student at All Hallows Seminary until he entered the American College on September 9, He was attached to the Archdiocese of Oregon City and was ordained a priest on July 17, 1869 in Meath. 188 The date of his departure from Belgium is not recorded in the Album Alumnorum of the college. After his arrival in Portland, he was assigned to Astoria, the first permanent white settlement in Oregon Territory, founded at the mouth of the Columbia by John Jacob Astor s Pacific Fur Trading Company. 189 By September 1874 Gibney had founded a Catholic school in Astoria, (though lacking the assistance of religious sisters; he took the initiative to hire a lay woman, Miss Nancy O Brien, to lead 183 Album Alumnorum, Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, "Death of Father De Craine," The Catholic Sentinel, September , 4, col Ibid. 187 Ibid. 188 Album Alumnorum Collegii Americanum Immaculata Conceptionis Lovanii, No 2, Archives of The American College, vol. II (Louvain: ), Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, 237.

231 202 it 190 ). This was not his only accomplishment in a few short years; a month after opening his school he was able to welcome F. N. Blanchet to Astoria for the dedication of his newly built church, Mary Star of the Sea. 191 He was later pastor of Saint Patrick Parish in northwest Portland where he built a new church for the Irish community that had been settling in that part of the city. Schoenberg writes, His life as a pioneer priest was never dull. He moved like the good shepherd, seeking new pastures to and fro, wherever the archbishop sent him. 192 In 1884, while stationed at St. Patrick parish, Gibney joined forces with Louis Verhaag, also from Louvain, in purchasing the, by then, defunct Catholic Sentinel and reopening the publication under their combined management : An Historical Snapshot Yet more young men in Louvain were on the threshold of boarding ships to cross the Atlantic and then proceed across the North American continent as the decade of the 60 s came to an end and that of the 70 s was already commencing. As yet unknown and untried fellows with family names like Hylebos, Schram, Orth, Verhaag and Conrardi would soon enough be joining their elder confreres on the North Pacific Coast and making their own contributions to the building of the Catholic Church there. Their presence and work would further solidify the growing dominance of the Louvain men in the presbyterates of the dioceses and apostolic vicariates of the region. That dominance would only deepen as the first generation of French Canadian bishops, the Blanchets and Demers, would be replaced by the men from Louvain. Seghers, Junger, Brondel, Lemmens, Glorieux and Orth would all find themselves leading these same dioceses, all but one with distinction Ibid. 191 Ibid., Wilfred P. Schoenberg, S.J., Defender of the Faith: The History of the Catholic Sentinel (Portland, OR: Oregon Catholic Press, 1993), Ibid., Bertrand Orth would be forced to resign as Archbishop of Vancouver Island in 1908, ostensibly for health reasons, but it is clear the real reason was because of accusations made against him by two women. The Orth resignation will be discussed in the final chapter of this work. See McNally, Vineyard,

232 203 If we use the year 1870 as an arbitrary point to take an historical snapshot of the scene on the North Pacific Coast, the significance of the Louvain mission in John De Neve s favorite portion of the vineyard 195 is clear; in 1870: The Archdiocese of Oregon City had fourteen priests including its archbishop; nine came from Louvain s American College, (Croquet, Fierens, De Craene, Thibau, Glorieux, Gibney, Vermeersch, Dieleman). The Diocese of Nesqually had twelve priests including its bishop. Of these, four were religious (Oblates and Jesuits), while among the eight diocesan clergy, three were Louvanists (Junger, Mans, Brondel). The Apostolic Vicariate of Idaho, which included western Montana, had only four diocesan priests, one of whom was Louvain s Remigius De Ryckere, the only diocesan priest in western Montana. The Diocese of Vancouver Island counted only eight priests including its bishop serving within its boundaries (which included all of Alaska). Two were Oblates, four of the six diocesan priests were Louvanists (Seghers, Haupts ((already or about to departed for California)), Jonckau and Brabant). 196 As we have seen in Part Two of this work, this first decade of the men from Louvain s ministry on the North Pacific Coast was marked, for the most part, by energy, competence and the highly appreciative approval of the three French Canadian bishops who had brought them to their impoverished region. They were busy not only honing their English-language competencies, but were adapting to Anglo-American culture as it was lived in the region and accommodating themselves to their new proximity to Protestantism and American secularism. They were putting hammer to wood and setting stone upon stone as they built new churches and schools. Some were living in the heart of indigenous communities, doing their best as true missionaries to bring their religion to the native populations. They were caring for newly arriving Catholic immigrants, displaced by the American Civil War or those coming from Europe with their own linguistic and cultural challenges, many of whom would have been lost to the Catholic religion had not priests been at the ready to welcome them and form them into parish- 195 Sauter, American College, Sadlier's Catholic Directory, Almanac and Ordo: 1870 (New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co., 1870). The figures provided by the Catholic Directory are not always internally consistent. These statistics and names represent the author s best resolution of those inconsistencies.

233 204 based communities. Others had already become key administrators of their dioceses, assisting their aging bishops with all manner of official duties and responsibilities. To put it concisely, the infrastructure of an institutional and missionary church was being constructed almost from the ground up. Perhaps more than any other, this decade from 1860 to 1870 was the most significant in the Catholic Church s history in the region for the sheer amount of building and development that occurred; the church moved in a single decade from a loose and unmanned pioneer operation to a fairly well-tooled organization dedicated to its religious purposes. The energetic clergy from Louvain were an essential component in all of this. Without them, the three dioceses of the North Pacific Coast would have languished in their wilderness status even as the society around them developed at remarkable speed. There was much more to come; more young priests, of course, but also something entirely new: in the next decade, a number of them would rise to the episcopacy and offer a new level of leadership to the church they could not have imagined during the earlier years of the Blanchets and Demers.

234 PART THREE THE LOUVAIN BISHOPS

235 206 CHAPTER VI THE COAST S FIRST LOUVAIN BISHOP: Founding and Building As one decade ended and another was beginning, the first breezes of hierarchical change were beginning to rustle the leaves of ecclesial life on the North Pacific Coast. Demers and the Blanchet brothers were all obviously suffering from increasing frailty. Not least of the signs that significant change was not far off was the fact that Nesqually s A. M. A. Blanchet had not been able to attend the proceedings of the First Vatican Council in Rome due to his weakening condition. Who would be the first to fall was an open question but what was certain was that the era of the Quebec bishops was slowly coming to an end and something very new would have to take its place. That something new would have a decidedly Louvanist flavor. Demers, in fact, was the first to pass on, dying in July 1871, leaving behind the first open see in the region in twenty-five years; his episcopal chair would soon carry the escutcheon of Charles John Seghers, the first of the American College bishops to lead the church on the North Pacific Coast. For those that might have hoped for stronger winds of change to also blow out the rest of the old Quebecois order, the Blanchet brothers were not going to be sent to the grave anytime soon; despite their increasing decrepitude the Blanchet brothers would hold on for something less than another decade before abandoning their thrones to others. Even if change at the top of the ecclesiastical ladder was coming in fits and starts, the work of building the church s basic infrastructure in the dioceses of the North Pacific Coast was charging ahead. February 5, 1870 marked an important milestone in the life of the Catholic Church on the North Pacific Coast. On that day, as noted briefly in a previous chapter, two Catholic laymen, parishioners the cathedral parish, H. L. Herman and J. F. Atkinson, with the essential support and encouragement of their pastor

236 207 and vicar general of the Archdiocese of Oregon City, John Fierens, published the first issue of The Catholic Sentinel, 1 the first Catholic newspaper to be established in the region. In a letter to Herman and Atkinson, two months prior to that first issue Fierens expressed his approval: In the confident hope that the Catholic journal which you have in contemplation to issue, will be highly serviceable in aiding to promote the cause of truth and in disseminating in this far Northwestern province more widely a knowledge of our holy faith and the principles of sound morality, we give it heartily our full approval and wish to recommend it warmly to the Catholic Clergy and Laity of this Archdiocese.... We judge the time most desirable and opportune for a Catholic publication in this State, now when in Oecumenical Council the Catholic world is assembled in the eternal city of Rome, when undoubtedly our Church, by sectarian and infidel newspapers, will be assailed, misrepresented and abused, it behooves us more than ever to defend her and to enlighten and disabuse so many deluded and misguided people. 2 As is clear from Fierens s words, the rationale for such a journal in the far reaches of North America was one founded in a spirit of defensiveness and self-protection for a church living in a hostile environment. Two great issues of the day made that defensiveness all the more pronounced in the Catholicism of the North Pacific Coast. (1) The on-going debate over the culpability or non-culpability of the Catholics in the Whitman tragedy near Walla Walla some twenty-three years before; the enduring accusations of the Protestants against the Catholics in the matter were still very much a source of friction between the religious groups. (2) Administrative control of the various Indian reservations of America based on supposed majority membership of the tribe would be unjustly settled in many cases against the interests of the Catholics and in favor of the Protestants. 3 A Catholic newspaper to document these injustices and slanders as well as to project the Catholic understanding of truth, Fierens understood, could become a most important tool for the Church. In retrospect, for later historians the newspaper would become a most important resource of historical information about what was happening in this far-flung region of the church across the decades. By early 1874, the Sentinel had been adopted by the bishops of the region as their official organ. 1 Wilfred P. Schoenberg, S.J., Defender of the Faith: The History of the Catholic Sentinel (Portland, OR: Oregon Catholic Press, 1993), 16. See also: Wilfred P. Schoenberg, S.J., A History of the Catholic Church in the Pacific Northwest; (Washington D.C.: The Pastoral Press, 1987), Schoenberg, Defender, Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest,

237 208 During these early years of the 70 s, the steady construction of church and school buildings of the previous decade had turned into a veritable flood of such brick and mortar activity. Vermeersch put up a new church for the Umatilla Indians and dedicated it on February 25, Dieleman was appointed pastor of St. Francis de Sales Mission in Baker City in March of and dedicated his new church there on October 29th of the same year. And as mentioned in the last chapter, Louvain s Irishman, Patrick Gibney, opened his school in Astoria in September of the same year and completed Astoria s new Mary Star of the Sea church in October of Again because of the tireless efforts of John Fierens, Portland saw the opening of St. Michael s College in August of 1871, which would be led by Alphonse Glorieux and John Heinrich. Adrian Croquet would finally have his Grand Ronde school in April of Interestingly, the priests of the Society of Jesus founded only one school in the region in 1856, St. Ignatius in Montana, 6 but it closed the following year due to poverty. 7 Even as all this founding and building was going on, even more young men from Louvain continued to arrive on the shores of the North Pacific Coast. Hylebos and Heinrich Take Up Their Posts Peter F. Hylebos, was a native of Geraardsbergen (Grammont) near Ghent, one of twelve children. 8 He was admitted to the American College on May 10, 1867 and was ordained a priest on June 11, In September he was already on his way to his new American diocese, Nesqually, accompanying Modeste Demers and Charles John Seghers as they returned to North America from the Vatican Council in Rome. John Heinrich was admitted to the American College on July 24, 1867; a native of Nicolsburg in Moravia, the Album Alumnorum made special note of the fact that he 4 Wilfred P. Schoenberg, S.J., A Chronicle of the Catholic History of the Pacific Northwest: (Portland, OR: Catholic Sentinel Printery, 1962), Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, Ibid., Schoenberg, Chronicle, "Biography of the Rt. Rev. Father Hylebos, V.G.," The Tacoma Catholic Citizen, February , 1. 9 Album Alumnorum Collegii americani Immaculatae Conceptionis B.M.V., Pars 1, Archives of The American College (Louvain: ),

238 209 spoke Bohemian. He left for America a few months after Hylebos, on October 22, 1870, destined for Oregon City. 10 A. M. A. Blanchet wasted no time in taking young Hylebos for himself. His first assignment in the Nesqually diocese was to remain in Vancouver as the bishop s secretary and as president of Holy Angels College. 11 He remained in Vancouver for three years during which time he built two churches, one at St. John and the other, St. Mary s, at Lewis River, both in Clarke County. In September, 1873, he was assigned to Cowlitz Prairie where he remained six and a half years, giving him time to build St. Francis Xavier Church as well as a parish house and a sisters school. In his diocesan (self-prepared) Record of Priest, Hylebos also made mention of a curious incident in 1875, when he... fenced in the Mission Claim in Cowlitz Prairie in 1876, built farmer s house and applied for government patent, which was obtained on account of these improvements for which I paid. 12 On the reverse of the Record, he explained in detail and seemingly with some pride how he thwarted a plan by some local men of Cowlitz Prairie... to jump the St Francis Xavier Mission claim and take 160 acres of it as a homestead, because they had heard that for nearly twenty years the Rt Revd Bishop Blanchet had been trying to get patent and had been so far unsuccessful. 13 added: I personally reported the matter at once to Rt Revd Bishop, who stated that he had already spent enough of time and money on that mission claim, applying for a patent and paying for legal advice, [indecipherable word] he could not and would not spend another cent and that I could do just as I pleased in the matter. Before the end of that same month I had eight men cutting and spitting rails and two teams hauling them. During that winter I got twenty two thousand rails split and placed around the mission claim, and over two hundred acres of new ground broken. This entirely upset the plans of the intending claim jumpers, and after building two farmhouses, I applied for a government patent, and sent along with the application the affidavits of Augustin Roochan and Joseph St. Germain to prove that the mission claim had been duly taken up and properly fenced in and was being cultivated according to all legal requirements.... Timothy Lynch was so enraged over his failure that he jumped the Mission claim in Yakima at the end of 1874 and succeeded in getting one hundred sixty acres of it. 14 He 10 Album Alumnorum Collegii Americanum Immaculata Conceptionis Lovanii, No 2, Archives of The American College, vol. II (Louvain: ), Record of Priest, Diocese of Nesqually: Peter F. Hylebos. March 12, 1900, Tacoma. Archives of the Archdiocese of Seattle. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid.

239 210 Clearly, Peter Hylebos was a young man who was not to be cheated just as he was a young man with the gumption and energy to do what had to be done to protect church interests and build what needed building. The efficient building of parish churches and the development of committed parish communities around them would be one of the hallmarks of his long life in the Nesqually diocese. At the end of the decade, when John Brondel was appointed bishop of Vancouver Island in 1879, it was Hylebos who was entrusted with Brondel s former mission in Steilacoom, which at the time included the towns of Tacoma and Olympia. Like his predecessor, he was the only priest in the expansive region, requiring him to travel up and down the length of his territory, often by boat, so much so that he was never for three days at a time in any one place. 15 During this period he built a church and school in Olympia and completed the first St. Leo s Church in Tacoma that had been initiated by his predecessor, John Brondel. At the time Steilacoom was the larger of the three towns he was tending; Tacoma, where he would eventually center himself, boasted only eighteen Catholics. At his first Sunday mass in Tacoma in 1880, only eighteen people were in attendance. Undaunted by small numbers, by 1884 Hylebos was builing a new Saint Leo s Church for the Catholics of Tacoma, a building that seemed so large for the small town at the time that people wondered if it would ever be filled. In five years, this church too was too small to accommodate the growing congregation of his parish so he built a third church for the parish large enough to seat 2,200 congregants. 16 In 1903, he built yet another St. Leo s even as the community was suffering from a severe economic depression. He accomplished this and every other institution he built without leaving any debt. By that time, his congration in Tacoma numbered 7,000. Not only an accomplished builder and manager, Hylebos was an extroadinary pastor to the people he served and did so without regard for ethnic or economic differences. The case of Salvatore Picani makes the point well. The Italian immigrant, barely able to speak or understand English, was accused of the stabbing death of a fellow Italian in He was charged with first-degree murder, tried, found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. An appeal to the state supreme court was bungled and rejected. The date of death was scheduled and to the hanging the local sheriff invited the public, even sending out engraved invitations to the occasion. In the meantime, Hylebos had become the accused man s spiritual advisor, spending long hours with the poor man. Being confident of his innocence, Hylebos organized a large meeting of 15 "Hylebos," Ibid.

240 211 important people in Tacoma who joined him in protesting the immanent hanging. Under the pressure brought by Hylebos and his friends, the state legistlature passed a special law giving Picani a new appeal. That appeal was successful and Picani lived his remaining days a free man due to the pastoral care and political acumen of Peter Hylebos. 17 Over the years, Hylebos was instrumental in bringing to Tacoma the Sisters of St. Francis, the Sisters of St. Dominic, and the Sisters of the Visitation, each of which founded and established hospitals and schools in the Nesqually diocese. Hylebos took a deep interest in the welfare of the native population within his territory, building St. George s Indian School on 140 acres of land he had purchased. In 1883 he was named to the Indian Commission of the Catholic Indian Bureau in Washington, D.C. by Cardinal Gibbons and was instrumental in restoring... an amicable entente between the government and the Catholic bishops who had charge of Indian schools in the different dioceses in the Untied States and got an appropriation of $319,000 from the government for th support of these schools. 18 In February of 1911, Hylebos finally retired from the pastorate of St. Leo s in Tacoma, a position he had held most of his life as a priest in Washington; he had been the longest serving priest north of California and was noted as... the remaining link between the first Catholic missionaries who came to this country.... Hylebos died on Thanksgiving Day, November 28, John Heinrich s pastoral career began by being assigned by F. N. Blanchet as assistant to Alphonse Glorieux at Saint Michael s College in Portland. 20 Bohemian Heinrich, Fierens wrote to De Neve: Of the Rev. Mr. Heinrich is a fine, clever young man; he will, no doubt, do well, he has a good disposition; you may send us half a dozen more of that stamp and quality, for I think we will need them very soon, if the hopes and prospects of the country are realized Nelson R. Hong, "Strange Murder Case of Tacoma is Recalled," The News Tribune, March 5, "Hylebos." 19 Hylebos Memorial Card, Archives of the Archdiocese of Seattle. 20 Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, Fierens (Portland) to De Neve (Louvain), January 25, Archives of The American College, Louvain.

241 212 Little more is known of Heinrich s ministry in Oregon, though he finds mention in the Catholic Sentinel of August 22, 1883, where it is noted in an article almost certainly written by Heinrich himself, (though signed with the pseudonym, Pacifica ), that he accompanied then-archbishop Seghers on a pastoral tour of the Roseburg area, visiting towns such as Looking Glass, Fairview, Sumner and Coos City. The pair then traveled by steamer, primitive steam engine train, and flat-bottom skiff to Bandon, which boasted the only Catholic church on the Oregon coast south of Astoria. 22 It was this church that Seghers dedicated to St. Mary, Refuge of Sinners, an event witnessed by... nearly two hundred persons of all denominations. 23 Of the blessing ceremony and confirmation of five persons thereafter, Heinrich (presuming he was the author) wrote: There was neither organ nor choir; but the billows of the ocean and the surf of the beach fulfilled the command given to them to praise the Lord, and the roaring of the seas supplied in low, majestic tones the music of the human voice with was wanting. 24 Heinrichs s lengthy description of his travels with Seghers on this particular tour is a reminder that even through the early 1880 s he and many of his contemporaries were still working in very remote areas under quite primitive conditions. He was named rector of the Baker City parish in the fall of 1887 where he remained until December of In October 1896, Heinrich was made director of St. Mary s Home for Boys near Beaverton, just south of Portland, where he served for three years seemingly without distinction; it was an assignment he evidently regarded with some reason as a punishment. 26 By 1903 he was again in Baker City where he played a role as one of the protagonists in the curious story of the establishment of the Diocese of Baker. When the newly consecrated bishop, Charles Joseph O Reilly, arrived at his rectory in the city to claim it as his cathedral and episcopal residence, Heinrich and another priest, John Schell, both of whom had felt they had been sent to Eastern Oregon as if to the Gulag, met the bishop at the door with a gun indicating in no uncertain terms that the new 22 Catholic Sentinel, (Portland), August 22, Many of the articles in the Catholic Sentinel are signed with pseudonyms; in some cases, it is not difficult to determine the identity of the author while in others there is little hint. In this case, the article itself reveals the author to be the very priest accompanying Seghers. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid. 25 Dominic O'Connor and Patrick J. Gaire, A Brief History of the Diocese of Baker, 2 vols., vol. 1 & 2 (St. Benedict, OR: Benedictine Press, 1930), Wilfred P. Schoenberg, S.J., These Valiant Women: History of the Sisters of St. Mary of Oregon (Beaverton, OR: Sisters of St. Mary of Oregon, 1986), 164.

242 213 bishop was not welcome in Baker. 27 The relationship between priest and bishop was seemingly restored with relative speed for Heinrich is recorded as having served as assistant priest at the solemn mass enthroning the new bishop on August 25, At the time of his death on January 5, 1908, Heinrich was serving as Vicar General to the young bishop. 29 Crisis in The American College Even as so much was happening in the lives of the Louvain missionaries in North America, disturbing developments were taking place back in their alma mater in Belgium. Since taking over leadership of the American College, John De Neve had proven himself to be an extraordinary rector who in hindsight could be credited with stabilizing and building up the fragile institution handed him by the prickly Peter Kindekens. Without his direction, the seminary would surely have perished early on; with De Neve at the helm, it flourished. Sauter s estimation of his work is a well-stated summary of De Neve s value to the American College: During those years John De Neve had built the American College from practically every angle. With his winning personality he gained more benefactors as well as greater benefactions, he purchased and rehabilitated most of the property which the college owns today; by his propaganda efforts he multiplied the number of students, having received at least 185 and having sent at least 132 missionaries to America; he equipped the seminary with a faculty of professors for the main subjects, then added administrative help; he was a rector to his students as well as like a father, and his seminarians returned the affection; he held and attracted more Belgian people to his aid while also winning the favour of more American Bishops. 30 The quality of De Neve s leadership of the American College could not sustain itself over the course of a decade of service. Responsibility for the seminary and intense involvement in the lives of his missionaries led to the serious decline of De Neve s physical and mental health. Already by 1870, his instability resulted in a sharp drop in 27 Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, Patricia Brandt and Lillian A. Pereyra, Adapting in Eden: Oregon's Catholic Minority, (Pullman, WA: Washington State University Press, 2002), Schoenberg, These Valiant Women: History of the Sisters of St. Mary of Oregon , 186. The incident and its background will be discussed in more detail in Chapter VII of this work. 28 O'Connor and Gaire, Baker, Ibid., 35.

243 214 the number of new students coming to the college. 31 As 1871 began, he became bedridden and his mind continued to deteriorate. In October of the same year, he asked to be relieved of his duties and shortly thereafter, a broken man, he reached the depths of his illness by attempting to take his own life. His knife-wielding hand was stopped by a seminarian, young Louis Schram; De Neve succeeded only in inflicting a slight physical wound to himself. 32 The event itself was described in a letter written nearly four decades later by a student who witnessed it, A. J. Pennartz: Your tale of the happenings of that awful night when Msgr. De Nève attempted suicide is not correct in all particulars. It was not Peter but the terrible shriek of a woman s voice coming from the Rector s room that aroused the students. The first man in the room was Mr. Brincke, but the man who disarmed the insane man was Mr. Schram. No artery was severed and all that Prof. Michaud had to do was to put in a few stitches and to send for a Brother and a straight jacket. You mention Extreme Unction and thereby hangs a tale; whilst the Msgr. was lying across the bed held down by a number of students, Father Dumont in the sitting room was urging Father Pulsers to go in and anoint him. Now the Msgr., having the idée fixe that he was a reprobate and that to anoint him meant a sacrilege, would kick and bite as soon as Father Pulsers came near him and Father P. who was no hero would run back to Father Dumont who sternly would drive him back again. (I was in the room looking on). At last Father P. came back to Father D. all smiles calling out to Father D. I have touched him, I have touched him. But as it happened Mr. Schram was on the Rector chest to chest and head to head and as he, Mr. Schram, told me next morning, Father Pulsers had rubbed his nose, instead of the Rector s forehead. 33 The wound to the life of the American College would be critical, though not, in the end, mortal. It is almost impossible to know what life in the seminary must have been like during the months of De Neve s decline. Penartz letter indicates that even before De Neve s final collapse, not all was well: I sometimes wish I could start life over again with conditions so much more favorable at the seminary as they are now. 30 John D. Sauter, The American College of Louvain ( ), Recueil de Travaux d'histoire et de Philologie (Louvain: Publications Universitaires de Louvain, 1959), Ibid., Ibid., Pennartz (Sigel, Ill.) to Van der Heyden (Louvain), January 3, Archives of The American College, Louvain. The Pennartz letter was not used by Van der Heyden and a notation on the pages in his hand duly notes as much. It was cited by Sauter but to the best of my knowledge, the present work represents the first time the content of Pennartz s first-person account of De Neve s suicide attempt has been made public.

244 215 I have known Msgr. De Nève only in his decline, 69-72, and my impression of him was decidedly unfavorable. He was no judge of character, narrow-minded, and what is worse, devoid of the sense of justice. 34 Certainly, the events of that night sent Dumont, Pulsers and Leroy, De Neve s confreres in the college, into a frenzy of activity as they took over administration of the institution and attempted to limit the damage as news of the crisis spread to America. To Bishop A. M. A. Blanchet alone, they wrote at least seven letters between September 1871 and the end of December 1872 advising the bishop of De Neve s condition, the affairs of the college and the progress of his students. 35 One can only presume that similar correspondence was being regularly sent to the other bishops associated with the American College. Edmund Dumont, 36 acting rector, shared in one such letter the simple declaration: moment the situation of the college is very precarious at this The search for a new rector was a frustrating and lengthy process. Dumont 34 Ibid. 35 Leroy (Louvain) to A.M.A Blanchet, September 23, Archives of the Archdiocese of Seattle. Leroy (Louvain) to A. M. A. Blanchet, October 6, Archives of the Archdiocese of Seattle. Dumont (Louvain) to A. M. A. Blanchet, November 30, Archives of the Archdiocese of Seattle. Dumont (Louvain) to A. M. A. Blanchet, February 1, Archives of the Archdiocese of Seattle. Dumont (Louvain) to A. M. A. Blanchet, May 25, Archives of the Archdiocese of Seattle. Dumont (Louvain) to A. M. A. Blanchet, November 4, Archives of the Archdiocese of Seattle. Pulsers (Louvain) to A. M. A. Blanchet, December 20, Archives of the Archdiocese of Seattle. 36 Dumont, Edmund ( ), was born in Chassart, Hainaut. He studied in Mechlin s minor seminary before continuing his theological studies in Tournai and completing them in Rome. While serving as a young priest in the Diocese of Tournai, he met Peter Kindekens in 1856 who was then searching for priests for the Diocese of Detroit. Dumont accompanied Kindekens and De Neve to Detroit in October 1856, where he served as pastor. He returned to Belgium to assist De Neve at the new American College in Louvain in January He taught dogma and served as vice-rector for the next eleven years. In 1871, with De Neve s incapacitation, he was made acting-rector. He was appointed bishop of Tournai in His years as bishop were marked by his extreme ultramontanist views and the vehemence with which he proclaimed them agains the liberal Catholics. His own mind failed under the pressure of this obsessive preoccupation. He ended his career as bishop in disobedience to the pope and was removed from office in See Sauter, American College, Also see Antoine Dumont de Chassart, Monseigneur Edmond Dumont, , La Famille Dumont de Chassart, December 30, que la situation du collége est très précaire en ce moment. Dumont (Louvain) to A. M. A. Blanchet, May 25, Archives of the Archdiocese of Seattle.

245 216 had the support of some American bishops but was appointed bishop of Tournai in November of One priority in the search was that the new rector be in no way associated with the recently censured philosopher of Louvain mentioned in an earlier chapter, Casimir Ubaghs, further limiting the options since many of the American College alumni had sat in Ubaghs s lectures. 38 Former students, John Fierens and Charles Seghers were considered, but not pursued. Finally, everyone settled on Father Francis Janssens 39 of the Diocese of Richmond. Pulsers explained one of the considerations in the recommendation: For this reason also he [Janssens] will be very acceptable to the bishops of Belgium, who are determined to have every thing thoroughly orthodox at Louvain. Most of them would certainly object to a Rector, who has been, even in the slightest degree, connected with those who formerly taught the doctrines of traditionalism, ontologism and liberalism at the University. In the present circumstances we would not dare present anyone to the office of Rector of the American college, who though free from errors, is still on familiar terms with some of he old Professors of the University whose doctrines have been censured. 40 Their theological precaution did not win them their man. refused to release him from his diocese: Janssens s bishop To our great sorrow and disappointment I have to state to your Lordship that Rev. Father Janssens has not accepted the office of Rector of our College. His bishop, R.R. Gibbons has persuaded him to take that step. The Bp. does not want to let him go. Meanwhile we don t lose courage and will keep up the College. We have 41 students, all excellent young men. 41 As it would turn out, J. J. Pulsers would remain as Pro-Rector from 1873 until 1881 when much to Pulsers s consternation and against his will, John De Neve would 38 Pulsers (Louvain) to A. M. A. Blanchet, December 20, Archives of the Archdiocese of Seattle. 39 Janssens, Francis J. ( ), was born in Tilburg, ordained a priest in Louvain for the Diocese of Richmond, Virginia. He was appointed bishop of Natchez in 1881 and in 1888 archbishop of New Orleans. See Annemarie Kasteel, Francis Janssens, : A Dutch American Prelate, (Lafayette, LA: The Center for Louisiana Studies, University of Southwestern Louisiana, 1992) 40 Pulsers (Louvain) to A. M. A. Blanchet, December 20, Archives of the Archdiocese of Seattle. 41 Pulsers (Louvain) to A. M. A. Blanchet, Februaray 13, Archives of the Archdiocese of Seattle.

246 217 return to reclaim his title as rector and thereafter rule over the college for another ten years. 42 Schram, Orth and Verhaag Take up the Missionary Mantle Though having suffered through the calamitous experiences associated with De Neve s demise, and in Louis Schram s case, having been intimately involved in actually saving the man s life, Schram, Bertrand Orth and Louis Verhaag did not lose their interest in becoming missionary priests in the dioceses of the North Pacific Coast. Each would spend lifetimes there and would be long remembered for their priestly service; one would sadly end his years of ministry being labeled by a fellow American College alumnus:... his disgrace: B. Orth. 43 Louis de G. Schram was a native of Bruges; he first studied for priesthood in the minor seminary of Saint Louis in Roeselare in West Flanders then transferred to the American College in Louvain, arriving in October By the middle of May 1870 he had been adopted by the Diocese of Nesqually. His ordination in Belgium was delayed two months because of his youth; 44 nevertheless, he was ordained to the priesthood on August 6, 1871 in Brussels by the Apostolic Delegate to Belgium, Giacomo Cattani. 45 He departed Belgium on February 21, and arrived in Vancouver on May 24th The story of these transitions in leadership are documented well in: Sauter, American College, Van der Heyden (Louvain) to De Strycker, August 10, Archives of The American College, Louvain. The full quotation is: I received a very indignant letter from Father Verbeke [emphasis in original] on account of the little article in The Bulletin anent Bishop Orth. He writes, among other things: It is utterly impossible for me to find words to express the feelings of indignation that have taken possession of me by the reading of your hypocritical and lying article on his disgrace B. Orth. Take my name from the subscription list and discontinue to send me copy for the remainder of the year. 44 Leroy (Louvain) to A. M. A. Blanchet, September 23, Cattani, Giacomo ( ), born in Brisigella, was ordained a priest in 1845 and bishop in He served as the Apostolic Nuncio to Belgium from 1868 to 1875, when he returned to Rome to serve in the Curia and at the Vatican Council. He later served as Nuncio to Spain and in 1879 was appointed archbishop of Ravenna where he served until his death. See Catholic- Hierarchy.org.; February 22, Album Alum. II, Jubilee Address on the Occasion of the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of Very Reverend Louis de G. Schram s Ordination to the Priesthood. Archives of the Archdiocese of Seattle.

247 218 Prior to entering the Louvain college he had been led to consider the American College by his friend John Brondel and that before officially being admitted he had had the opportunity of visiting the college:... after the visit which I made to the house which fron now on I will call my house I know that I have felt affirmed inthe resolution which I had taken to bear the light of ht egospel to my brothers plunged into thedarkness of error. I have written in my ownheart like my well beloved brother John Brondel: Yes, here is my place! It is here that I will come! 48 His journey across the Atlantic and then overland to the west coast was marked by an event that let him know he was already a long way from Belgium. While on his journey he was introduced to the open handed generosity of our wild frontiersmen. At one of the stations on the Union Pacific Railroad some men, armed with revolvers and knives, their belts full of ammunition, boarded the train; the poor pater thought he had arrived at a pretty hard place; he wondered if the people to whom he was going would look as fierce. One of the men, noticing the father s dress, asked him if he was a Catholic priest; receiving an affirmative answer, he said that it was many years since they had seen a priest, and they must celebrate the occasion in the only way in their power; what that way was he demonstrated by at once taking up a collection and presenting the Rev. Father with his first donation of American gold: $ He thought they were not so fierce. 49 On the very day of Schram s arrival in Vancouver, A. M. A. Blanchet appointed the new priest as professor at the city s Holy Angels College and chaplain to its hospital. In 1874 he was given responsibility for the mission stations around Vancouver. In 1879 he was made pastor of Saint James Cathedral in Vancouver. 50 Five years later he completed construction of the new cathedral church that nobly stands in the center of town to the present day; on August 16, 1885 he said the first mass on its high altar, a gift to the parish from his parents in Belgium (along with the stations of the cross that adorned the walls of the new church). 51 Schram remained in Vancouver all his adult life. In the same year he was appointed administrator of the diocese by his depuis la visite qui j ai faite à vous à la maison que desormais j appellerai ma maison [emphasis in original] je me sais senti affirmé dans la résolution que j avais prise de porter la lumière de l évangile à mes frères plongés dans les ténèbres de l erreur. Dans mon coeur je me suis écrié comme mon bien aimé compatriote Jean Brondel: Oui, c est ici ma place! C est ici que je viendrai! Schram (Roeselare) to De Neve, December 31, Archives of The American College, Louvain. Translation by Denis Carlin. 49 Jubilee Address: Schram. Archives of the Archdiocese of Seattle. 50 Ibid. 51 Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, 311.

248 219 life-long friend, Aegidius Junger, while the bishop was in Rome for several months. In 1888 he was named vicar general of the diocese but it was not to be a position he held long; he died on September 30, Betrand Orth 52 came to Louvain from the town of Oberheister in the diocese of Cologne. He entered the American College on October 3, He was ordained a priest in Brussels on July 25, He left for his mission in Oregon on October 12th of the same year. 53 His first assignment in the Archdiocese of Oregon City was to spend nine months at St. Michael s College, as so many of F. N. Blanchet s new priests were required to do. He was next asked to leave the damp and green of the western side of the archdiocese and settle instead in the dry, brown and lonely reaches to the east of the Cascade range; F. N. Blanchet sent the new priest as replacement to Vermeersch at the Saint Anne Mission among the Cayuse Indians on the Umatilla Reservation. His pastorate among the Cayuse did not last long; a dispute with the Catholic-appointed government agent on the reservation, Mr. Cornoyer, led F. N. Blanchet to yank both of the men from their posts, reappointing Cornoyer a short time later but leaving Orth out of the picture. 54 A disappointed Orth was reassigned to Canyon City (as successor to Dieleman who had been reassigned to the Dalles). In Canyon City Orth took the initiative in founding his own school with himself as its only teacher. 55 From he served as editor of the Catholic Sentinal, (at least nominally), 56 and in 1883 he was named by Archbishop Seghers as founding pastor of St. Lawrence Church in the southwest corner of Portland. 57 In the late 1890 s, he would serve a second time as the editor of the Catholic Sentinel, 58 and finally be raised to the episcopacy at the beginning of the new century as bishop of Vancouver Island (shortly thereafter raised to the status of archdiocese and renamed Victoria ) Orth s first name is variously written Bertram or Bertrand. 53 Album Alum. II, Brandt and Pereyra, Eden, Ibid., 28. Orth was replaced in Umatilla by Louis-Lambert Conrardy, See: Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, 251. Schoenberg, Chronicle, Schoenberg, Defender, Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, 294. Schoenberg, Chronicle, Schoenberg, Defender, Vincent J. McNally, "Victoria: An American Diocese in Canada," The Canadian Catholic Historical Asssociation: Historical Studies 57 (1990): 27. See also: Vincent J. McNally, "Surviving in Lotus Land: A History of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Victoria, , Unpublished manuscript, p , Archives of the Diocese of Victoria, Victoria, BC. Vincent

249 220 Louis Verhaag hailed from Grubbenvorst in Limburg (Netherlands) and the diocese of Roermond. He entered the American College on 24th of August, Together with Orth he was ordained to the priesthood on July 25, He departed for his mission in Oregon on October 12th of the same year. 60 Once arrived in Oregon he was appointed assistant at the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Portland where he remained until 1876, 61 at which point he was made founding pastor of St. Francis of Assisi Parish in east Portland and charged with the responsibility of building for the parish its new church, duly dedicated on September 24, His appointment to the new parish east of the Willamette River effectively cut in half the cathedral parish of John Fierens, which did not please the cathedral rector in the least. The church he built didn t stand the test of time: it blew down in a windstorm in January Shortly therafter, he found himself reassigned to the distant Vicariate of Idaho. 64 Whether Fierens had something to do with Verhaag s move about as far from Portland as imaginable, is unknown but once in Idaho, Verhaag was not one to sit on his haunches. He was stationed in Boise City, having responsibility for a wide area that included the Boise basin, Upper and Lower Payette country, Rocky Bar and Owyhee County. To many of the small and isolated towns, later abandoned as ghost towns, Verhaag traveled, saying mass in halls, boarding houses and private homes since there were as yet few, if any, church buildings in the area. His cycle of visitation was so expansive that it brought him round to these towns no more than once a year. 65 In 1880, he was joined in Boise by another priest, E. M. Nattini, who took responsibility for Boise City while Verhaag continued to care for the surrounding towns and settlements basing himself in Granite City. Verhaag s difficulties with church buildings followed him to Idaho; the small church he managed to build in Granite City and dedicate to Saint Thomas became the victim of a temporary resurgence of gold mining in the town; J. McNally, The Lord's Distant Vineyard: A History of the Oblates and the Catholic Community in British Columbia (Edmonton, Alberta: University of Alberta Press and Western Canadian Publishers, 2000), Album Alum. II, Cyprian Bradley, O.S.B. and Edward Kelley, D.D., Ph.D., History of the Diocese of Boise: , 1 vols., vol. I (Boise, ID: Roman Catholic Diocese of Boise, 1953), Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, Schoenberg, Defender, Bradley and Kelley, Boise, Ibid.,

250 221 the placer mines dug so close to his building that they compromised its foundations leading to its collapse. 66 In 1883, Verhaag was recalled to Portland by Seghers and made assistant to his old competitor, John Fierens, in the cathedral parish. Once in Portland he was instrumental in refounding the Catholic Sentinel. As mentioned in the previous chapter, he partnered with fellow Louvanist, Patrick Gibney, and a local businessman, Joseph Wiley, to purchase the recently closed newspaper. According to Schoenberg, Wiley served as editor, the well-mannered Gibney served as front man while Verhaag was the bulldog of the lot, the bouncer. Subscribers paid, or else. 67 The arrangement didn t last long: Verhaag left the paper after a year but retained his portion of its ownership until it was purchased for the archdiocese by Archbishop William Gross in Seghers Becomes Bishop of Vancouver Island There would be no further arrivals from the American College until By the time Louis-Lambert Conrardy, John Leroy and Gerard van Lin landed on the North Pacific Coast in that year, a new era would already have begun in the development of the Catholic Church in the region. The men from Louvain, now twenty strong (not counting De Craene who died in September 1873 and Haupts who had moved to California in 1869), had already founded or taken possession of many of the parishes and missions of the region and some among them had already been entrusted with significant diocesan positions of leadership as vicar generals, bishops secretaries, principals or professors in the nascent Catholic schools. With the death of Demers in July 1871, Charles John Seghers was named administrator of the diocese of Vancouver Island, as was noted in a previous chapter. With one of his spiritual fathers dead and the other deranged and under the care of the Alexian brothers in far-away Diest, 69 Seghers found himself taking on responsibility for the diocese of Vancouver Island without the guidance and support of the two men he had most respected in his adult life. Even more, his own physical health was seriously compromised with the return of the consumption that had plagued him for so many 66 Ibid., Schoenberg, Defender, Ibid., Sauter, American College, 136.

251 222 years. Coughing up blood, he was too sick himself to participate in Demers s funeral liturgy. 70 At first he had Jonckau cover the administration of the diocese on his behalf but with some time Seghers gained strength enough to lay the cornerstone of a new school and convent for the Sisters of Saint Ann in March 1872 as part of his administrative responsibilities. 71 With the hope of freeing up his priests for his parishes and missions, he undertook in August 1872 a strenuous two-month journey to eastern Canada via San Francisco in search of teaching brothers for his two colleges, one for boys and the other for girls. 72 The process of choosing the second bishop of Vancouver Island was delayed, according to De Baets, due to the curious political status of the island civilly and ecclesiastically. The Canadian bishops were demanding that Vancouver Island be returned to the province of Saint Boniface and placed under Canadian ecclesiastical control rather than that of Oregon City; it was Canadian territory, after all, not American. The haggling delayed the selection process for eighteen months. 73 The long wait for a new leader came to an end on March 23, 1873 when Pius IX named the young but frail Seghers as the second bishop of Vancouver Island. By early April he was hearing rumors of the appointment and referred to them in a letter to his uncle: It is rumored in San Francisco that I have been named Bishop. Pray for me: my shoulders are too young for such a burden! 74 Almost certainly with this rumor in mind, but without mentioning it, he suggested that a friend perform a special favor for him back in his homeland: If you are ever going to Brugge [Bruges] be so good as to remember me when yo venerate the relic of the Holy Blood. 75 To his cousin, a member of the De Baets family, he wrote on May 6th: 70 Gerard George Steckler, S.J., Charles John Seghers, Missionary Bishop in the American Northwest: (Doctoral Dissertation, University of Washington, 1963), Ibid., Ibid., Maurice De Baets, Mgr. Seghers: l'apôtre de l'alaska (Gand: A. Siffer, 1896), In fact the odd status of the diocese, ecclesiastically pertaining to the Province of Oregon but civilly pertaining to the English crown would endure through the remainder of the century. See: McNally, "American Diocese," Le bruit court à S. Francisco que je suis nommé Evêque. Priez pour moi: mes épaules sont trop jeunes pour un tel fardeau! De Baets, Apôtre, 37. This letter to M. J. B. Seghers is not found in the Archives of The American College, Louvain. 75 Indien gij ooit nog naar Brugge gaat, wees zoo goed van eenen bijzonderen memento van mij te maken als gij de relikwie van het H. Bloed vereert. Seghers (Victoria) to J. De Baets (Drongen), April 7, Archives of The American College, Louvain.

252 223 Thank you for the congratulations you have expressed. If you only knew how much the burden of the episcopacy caused to groan our good and beloved departed Pastor, you would pity me the task of carrying on my shoulders, still young, alas, the heavy cross.... However, it is God s will. It is with this phrase, they say, that one carries the cross; and would you be so kind as to teach your children to pray for me every day (I set great store by the prayers of children). I am sure that God will give me the grace to persevere to the end. 76 The feast of Saints Peter and Paul, Sunday, June 29, 1873, was set as the day for his consecration to the episcopacy; present for the grand celebration in Saint Andrew s Cathedral were F. N. Blanchet, by then 78 years of age, who in his role as provincial archbishop would serve as the consecrating bishop, his brother, A. M. A. Blanchet (then 75), D Herbomez, the Oblate vicar apostolic of British Columbia as well as Seghers s fellow Louvain alumni, Goens, Thibau, and De Craene; 77 Jonckau, and Brabant were on hand as well to witness the elevation of their brother priest to his new role as their episcopal pastor. The consecration ceremony itself took four hours, 78 which, as if not enough, was followed at four in the afternoon by yet more preaching: Then Bishop Seghers went to the church of the College of St. Louis, whre many Indian Catholics were assembled. The Bishop gave one of those talks of which he had the secret, and which went right to theheart of these simple primitive men. Then towards evening after solmn vespers and benediction, Father De Craene, a Belgian priest, in a brilliant talk, said how happy Vancouver was to have Bishop Seghers, a bishop according to its heart. 79 On the 29th of June 1873, Seghers took on not only the mantle of episcopal shepherd, he also became a sort of pater familias to the Catholic Church on the North 76 Je vous remercie des félicitations que vous m adressez. Si vous saviez combien de fois le fardeau de l Episcopat faisait gémir notre bon et bien-aimé Pasteur défunt, vous me plaindriez de devoir porter sur mes épaules, encore bien jeunes hélas, la lourde croix.... Enfin, Dieu le veut. C est avec ce mot, dit-on, que l on prend la Croix; et, si vous avez la bonté d enseigner à vos enfants à prier pour moi tous les jours (je fais grand cas des prières des enfants) je ne doute pas que Dieu m accorde la grâce de persévérer jusqu au bout. Seghers (Victoria) to P. De Baets (Ghent), May 6, Archives of The American College, Louvain. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB. 77 Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., Ibid., Ensuite, Mgr Seghers se rendit à l Eglise du Collège S. Louis, où étaient réunis de nombreux Indiens catholiques. L Evêque leur fit une de ces allocutions dont il avait le secret, et qui allaient droit au coeur de ces hommes simples et primitifs. Puis, vers le soir, après les vêpres solennelles et le salut, M. De Craene, un prêtre belge, dit, en un brillant discours, combien

253 224 Pacific Coast and, in particular, to its pastors and missionaries, especially those from Louvain. Almost immediately he became the central figure, the moral backbone, the inspiring general, the wise dispenser of advice and counsel, the zealous missionary, the mover and shaker in the church as it defended itself and extended itself in most challenging of times. If anyone wanted to know what a priest or a bishop should be like and what they should do, they had to look no further than to Charles John Seghers, that is if they could catch sight of him as he moved with speed, determination and singlemindedness to accomplish his mission for the church before another bout of consumption might take him from this world to the next. On July 21st, less than a month after his consecration as bishop, Seghers was already on board a ship heading for Alaska. 80 His intention was to scout the vast country for Catholic mission sites. 81 This he did with some success, purchasing a mission site in Sitka after his return to Victoria in early October and formulating plans to send two priests into southeast Alaska and two others into the Aleutians. 82 Steckler summarizes the challenges and resources available to the young bishop as he looked over his diocese in 1874: Two of his priests were working in the cathedral, and one of these had to teach all week long in the college in addition to ministering monthly in Nanaimo. A third priest living in Victoria taught in the college, watched over the convent with its dozen nuns, directed the girls, and took care of Esquimalt where there was an Indian camp and a hundred Irish Catholic sailors of Her Majesty s Navy. The same priest ministered to the whites near Sooke, spread out twenty to thirty miles from Victoria. Joseph Mandart, though relieved of the task of building a church on San Juan Island (since that island had become a United States possession and hence the spiritual responsibility of the Bishop of Nesqually), still bore the burden of caring for the San Juan Indians for his mission post at Saanich among four camps of Indians and a score of whites. Rondeault was looking out for his 2,000 Catholic Cowichans, and a convent of three nuns ands some Indian girls. The missionary long promised from Louvain, Joseph H. Leroy, had not yet arrived because of the delay in naming a new rector for the Louvain College. The bishop was nursing plans to build a new church for the Saanich Indians and a house for Rondeault. And then, there was Alaska, where everything was as yet inchoate. 83 Vancouver était heureux d avoir, en Mgr Seghers, un Evêque selon son coeur. De Baets, Apôtre, 38. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB. 80 Ibid., Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., Ibid. 83 Ibid., 99.

254 225 By April of 1874, Seghers was ready to take on a new mission; though closer to home than that in Alaska, it was no less dangerous. He made plans to visit the dangerous west coast of Vancouver Island and the Nootka Indians who had a (almost certainly exaggerated 84 ) reputation for... cruelty, internecine warfare, and general savagery. 85 He decided he would be accompanied on the journey by Louvanist, Augustin Brabant. Before setting off for this perilous journey, Seghers decided some divine assistance was in order, not just to protect them on their journey but to graces and blessings for his impoverished diocese as a whole. On Easter Sunday, April 5th, he solemnly consecrated the Diocese of Vancouver Island to the Sacred Heart. The following day he wrote to Benoît and Joseph Van Loo: I write to you on the day after a great celebration. Yesterday we solemnly consecrated the poor Diocese of Vancouver to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. My little wooden cathedral could not contain the crowd that responded to the invitation I made to them: their faith and their fervor filled me with an ineffable consolation. The three priests whom I have in the missions at Esquimalt, at Saanich and at Cowichan took part in this solemn act with the whites and the natives in their charge. 86 Of his upcoming journey to the west coast of the island, he continued: This summer, God willing, I shall visit the west coast, inhabited exclusively by the natives who have not yet been evangelized, unless, perchance, at another time by the priests attached to the Spanish ships which plied the Pacific Ocean. If they kill me, all the better. 87 Seghers s traveling companion, Augustin Brabant, described the situation he and Seghers were facing by taking on this mission up the coast: 84 McNally argues forcefully that such widespread characterizations of the native peoples were nothing more than undeserved prejudice. See McNally, Vineyard, Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., Je vous écris le lendemain d une grande fête. Hier nous avons solennellement consacré le pauvre Diocèse de Vancouver au Sacré Coeur de Jesus. Ma petite Cathédrale en bois ne pouvait contenir la foule qui rendit à l invitation que je leur avais adressée: leur foi et leur ferveur m ont rempli d une ineffable consolation. Les trois prêtres que j ai dans les missions à Esquimalt, à Saanich et à Cowichan ont pris part à cet acte solennel avec les blancs et les Sauvages confiés à leurs soins. Seghers (Victoria) to Benoît and Joseph Van Loo, April 6, Archives of The American College, Louvain. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB. 87 Cet été, s il plaît à Dieu, je visiterai la côte occidentale de notre île, habitée exclusivement par des sauvages qui n ont pas encore été évangélisés, si ce n est, peut-être [emphasis in

255 226 On the west coast of Vancouver Island, between the entrance of he Strait of Juan de Fuca and Cape Cook, there live eighteen different tribes of Indians, forming, as it were, only one nation, as they all speak the same language. Their manners, mode of living, in one word, all their habits are so much alike, that to know one tribe is to know then all. This coast, at the time of our taking possession of it, was exclusively inhabited by Indians. Four trading posts had, however, been established and were each in charge of one white man. But besides these four men there are absolutely no white settlers to be found on this extensive coast of nearly two hundred miles. 88 Seghers and Brabant departed Victoria on the 12th of April, even in spite of the concerned protestations of a number of his white parishioners who feared for their wellbeing. 89 Brabant recorded the details of this journey with extraordinary precision from beginning to end. His account gives today s reader an incisive look into the character of the missionary enterprise at that moment and place in history; the life and culture of the indigenous peoples as seen through western eyes, the techniques used to evangelize, such as they were, and the immediate results of their labors, all become clear to us through his words: We left Victoria on Whit-Sunday at 8 o clock in the morning on the schooner Surprise, twenty-eight tons, belonging to Capt. W. Spring & Co.... We left Victoria harbor with a strong southeasterly wind, and were at Race Rocks before 10 o clock a.m. Here the wind failed and our schooner began to drift about, and working with the oars was required to keep her off the rocks. However, we got safely at anchor about 2 o clock in Beeche Bay, where we went on shore and visited the Indians, from whom we received a good reception. After an address, made by His Lordship, I baptized two of their infant children.... April 15. We went on shore about 7 a.m. The Indians were sitting outside. They were startled to see us in our cassocks, to them an unusual kind of garment. The Bishop asked to see their chief and was soon shown in the presence of a fine looking man Kwistog who, as we noticed at once, was then leading the life of a bigamist. His Lordship asked the chief s consent to assemble the natives of that locality and he at once consented. Here I was suddenly compelled to make room for a blind horse, original], autrefois par des prêtres attachés aux vaisseaux Espagnols qui parcouraient l Océan Pacifique. S ils me tuent, tant mieux. Ibid. 88 Charles Moser, OSB, Reminiscences of the West Coast of Vancouver Island (Victoria, BC: Acme Press, 1926), 9. Pages 9 through 131 of this small book are exclusively Brabant s reminiscences. 89 De Baets, Apôtre, 44.

256 227 which was led into the house by a young Indian and was then, as we noticed, stabled in the chief s house. The Indians withal behaved very well and, upon allowing us to baptize their children, requested as a favor that we continue to look after them. The number of baptisms was forty-three.... April 17. Said Mass in the house of Mr. Andrew Lang, the storekeeper, at 5 a.m. The chief was already there addressing the Indians from the other side of the stream, exhorting them to rise, wash and clean themselves and children, announcing to them our wish to see them and telling them that great things were in store for them. The Indians arrived from Keehan and the camping places and assembled at 8 o clock in the house of an Indian called Jenkins, the chief having no house large enough at this place to contain all his people. The savages paid great attention to the Bishop s instruction, given in Chinook and interpreted into the Indian language by Harry and his brother Jenkins. In this and in every tribe on the coast instruction was begun by stating who we were, what was our object; then followed a history of the creation, the fall of man, the deluge, the multiplication of languages, the redemption of mankind; after which, if agreeable to the natives, baptism was administered to their little children. And, if time was left, a few hymns and songs were taught. But in all cases the teaching of the Sign of the Cross and the making of that sign by the Indians was the great thing and caused real excitement. We had in this camp eighty baptisms of young children. We left at 6 o clock in the evening and went to our anchor at Clarkkonikose, Village Island, Barclay Sound, where we passed a very comfortable night in smooth water.... April 20. At sunrise we were already at sea and beating against a strong westerly wind, but we did not reach Clayoquot till April 21, at 9 a.m. Sitakenin and half a dozen of his Indians came out to meet us at sea. We went on board of his canoe and he took us to the chief s house, where two new Indian mats were laid on the floor, forming a path to the end of the lodge, where boxes and trunks covered with fine mats were prepared to be used by us as seats and footstools. His Lordship addressed the Indians on the usual topics, the I baptized ninety-three children, after which we went to our schooner which was at anchor off Captain Stubb s Island, Warren s store (Chat-chat-tits). April 22. We went early in the morning to the camp (Echa-chisht), Village Island, where we had met the Indians the day before. Strange to say, the Indians seemed quite indifferent and his Lordship concluded to leave them, not, however, before giving them a good scolding. Then we went to the schooner about noon and preparations were at once made to continue our voyage. After sailing a short distance we got on the sand bank off Opitsat, but as the tide was rising, we got off about 1.20 p.m. Then with a light breeze we took the direction of Ahousat, but about 3 p.m. we saw a canoe in the distance. The Clayoquot chief and six young men! They wanted us to return. The Bishop at first refused, but their request was so earnest and their promise of taking us to Ahousat the next day so favorable, that His Lordship at last concluded to return. The Indians who came to fetch us had only just then arrived in the schooner from Ucluliat, where they had seen us for a few minutes two days previously. They had tried to meet us at their own home, but were doubly disappointed to find us gone and to hear that heir friends had not shown more zeal

257 228 and had failed to learn the canticles and songs now repeated by every tribe which we had visited. 90 They party returned to Victoria on May 15th, their ship... having run before a fine westerly wind and arrived in Victoria at 8 p.m. 91 Seghers and Brabant considered the tour up the west coast of the island to have been a great success; Brabant offered to his brother in Belgium, Prudent, a summary and an explanation: If you take the trouble to sum up our baptisms you will find that we poured the regenerating waters upon 884 small children, during a voyage that lasted thirty-three days, along a coast line of 150 miles. Our instruction profited to four thousand savages belonging to twenty different tribes. These four thousand savages make today the Sign of the Cross, say the Lord s Prayer and the Hail Mary in their own language. Moreover they know several pious songs conveying lessons about the cardinal points of our faith. We feel that God s blessing rested upon our work, a blessing which we may attribute perhaps to the ceremony that took place in our cathedral on Easter Sunday, to the ceremony of the consecration of the diocese of Victoria to the Sacred Heart, perhaps also to the prayers which pious souls offer daily for us, especially in dear old Belgium. 92 It can only be surmised how the native peoples themselves actually experienced and understood the significance of the visits, lectures and infant baptisms of Seghers and Brabant. Steckler presumes that... the bishop looked to them no more, or better, no less, than a great medicine man or sorcerer. 93 Vincent McNally, always deeply sensitive to the oppressive aspects of such enterprises, scorns with purposeful understatement the Seghers and Brabant journey as, Demonstrating a naïveté common among most missionaries Unaware of the concerns that would trouble later historians, Seghers and Brabant found themselves encouraged enough by their first effort up the west coast that they began making plans for a second tour of the coastline to follow-up on the good 90 Moser, Reminiscences, A second account of the same voyage by Brabant is contained in a letter to his brother Prudent, which was translated in its entirety and included in Van der Heyden s biography of Brabant; see: Joseph Van der Heyden, Life and Letters of Father Brabant: A Flemish Missionary Hero (Louvain: J. Wouters-Ickx, 1920), Moser, Reminiscences, Van der Heyden, Father Brabant, Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., McNally, Vineyard, 109.

258 229 work already accomplished. Seghers s new roles as bishop allowed him to finally feed his missionary longings with action; his pastoral attentions were focused not so much on Victoria as on the mission fields he had for so long desired to tend: the wilderness areas of Vancouver Island itself and looming beyond that, the last dark corner of the world: Alaska. John Leroy Comes to Vancouver Island John Joseph H. Leroy came to the American College only after already having served in his own diocese of Liège for seven years. After his ordination in 1863 he taught in the minor seminary of Sint-Truiden; as early as January of 1864 he was already writing to John De Neve about his desire to come to the American College. He was next assigned as assistant at Genk, his own bishop being most hesitant to release him for the missions, complaining of a lack of clergy for his own church. 95 He finally received his bishop s permission to go to Louvain in November 1869: I have often approached my worthy and very zealous bishop to obtain the authorization to enter your dear seminary; but His Grace objected, at first many times, his scarcity of priests in his own diocese, and then once more my poor health. However, last year he gave me hope, and lately, having noticed my improved appearance, he said to me: I can no longer oppose your departure; it is still true that I am short of priests, but after all... I believe you are called, and you can go to Louvain during the Easter vacation. That s my decision, to which I must add a condition: you must continue in good health through the winter. Those are, more or less, his words. I am happy, Father President, to be able to send you this bit of news, that a favorable response will soon tell me that a little place (the smallest corner would be enough) is waiting for me in your house Theodore (Liège) to De Neve, January 3, Leroy (Sint-Truiden) to De Neve, January 6, Archives of The American College, Louvain. Also see Sauter, American College, Bien de fois depuis, je me suis adressé à mon digne et très-zélé Ếvêque, pour en obtenir l autorisation d entrer dans votre cher séminaire; mais Sa Grandeur m a objecté d abord maintes fois, la disette de prêtres dans son propre diocèse, et ensuite encore l état assez faible de ma santé. Toutefois l an passé Elle me donna de l espoir, et dernièrement me trouvant assez bonne mine, Elle me dit: Je ne puis plus m opposer à votre départ; il est vrai que j ai encore trop peu de prêtres, mais enfin... je vous crois appelé, et vous pouvez vous rendre à Louvain aux vacances de Pâques. Voilà ma décision, à laquelle je dois cependant mettre une condition: c est que vous continuez durant l hiver, à jouir d une bonne santé. Ce sont à peu près ses paroles. Je suis heureux, Monsieur le Président, de pouvoir vous communiquer cette nouvelle espérant qu une réponse favorable m apprendra bientôt, qu une petite place (le plus petit coin me suffit)

259 230 Leroy s father was not nearly so happy. In a final, brief note to De Neve prior to his arrival, he shares that his departure from home is not going so smoothly: My father, who is almost 73 and who is pained at the prospect of my departure, is annoyed with those who dare to complain about and criticize my course of action. God be praised. More soon. 97 Leroy arrived at the Louvain college on May 17, just as John De Neve was casting about for administrative help prior to his mental breakdown. 99 He was appointed by De Neve as Procurator and Prefect of Students, duties that he held through the pro-rectorship of Edmund Dumont and for a brief time under J. J. Pulsers. 100 He finally departed for Vancouver Island on June 28, 1874, ten years since he first expressed his desire to go to the North American missions to John De Neve. 101 Once in Victoria, Seghers assigned him to the cathedral parish and to teaching classes at the boys school, St. Louis College. 102 Perhaps the bishop s concerns about his frail health should have been more attentively considered for Leroy offered less than eight years of service to Vancouver Island before his death on the 18th of February The cause of death was stomach cancer; on his deathbed he requested that not having had the privilege of having served among the Indians in his years on Vancouver Island he might at least be m est encore réservée dans votre maison. Leroy (Genk) to De Neve, November 10, Archives of The American College. Louvain. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB. 97 Mon père, qui a près de 73 ans, et qui envisage avec peine mon éloignement, s indigne contra ceux qui osent le plaindre, et critiquer ma conduite. Dieu en soit béni. A bientôt le reste. Leroy (Peer) to De Neve, May 13, Archives of The American College, Louvain. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB. 98 Album Alum. II, Sauter, American College, Ibid., Album Alum. II, S.S.A. Mary Theodore, Heralds of Christ the King (New York: P.J. Kenedy & Sons, 1939), Jonckau (Victoria) to De Neve (Louvain), February 18, Our dear fellow-priest piously departed this life this afternoon at 1 o clock after 38 hours agony. His sickness was in duration and intense sufferings a regular purgatory, and a subject of edification to all. I am satisfied his poor soul will be prayed for by the students in whose behalf he has spent several years of his life. I need not opine you, Monseigneur, that he fostered a tender affection for you and the College.

260 231 buried with them. His wish was granted; he was buried in the Indian cemetery on the Saanich Reserve. 104 Brabant Goes to the West Coast of Vancouver Island Leroy s presence in the diocese in 1874 and the years thereafter, gave Seghers a bit more room for tending to his far-flung mission fields. With Leroy in Victoria, Seghers could begin considering the stationing of a priest on the almost virgin west coast of the island where few missionaries had ever spent any substantial time among the natives. He and Brabant embarked on a second missionary journey up the coast, setting sail in the first week of September on the same boat with the same captain as the previous expedition. As recorded by Brabant, the first days were marked by dangers other than those offered them by the forces of nature: The first few hours were spent pleasantly, but when we got to the straits our skipper began to make frequent calls down in the cabin. At last we discovered that he was getting very drunk. This rather alarmed us, as Frank, our Greek mate, had never been on the coast and our Indian sailors could not be relied upon. His Lordship advised me to try and find out where the captain kept his liquor and throw it overboard.... Although the measure adopted had the effect of keeping the old man from greater excess, still he was far from being sober when we entered Pachena Bay. The wind was blowing fresh form the west when we entered the harbor. Our schooner was supposed to go up the river to discharge at the store kept by Neils Moos. We were going full speed when she suddenly struck on the sand bank; the channel had shifted, or rather our captain was out of his reckonings through whiskey! Every wave took her up higher and higher. A few more dashes and she was gone. But Neils Moos coming on board saved her from ruin. We took charge without heeding our drunken skipper, and an hour later she was at anchor before Capt. Spring & Co. s store. 105 After arriving on September 7th in Barclay Sound, the two clerics continued their journey across open sea in an Indian sealing canoe accompanied by two Kyuquot and one Ehattisat Native Americans. Brabant later wrote, The sea was heavy and no 104 Mary Theodore, Heralds, Moser, Reminiscences,

261 232 wind. An occasional wave broke over our bows and did considerable damage to our stock of provisions, especially to our biscuits and our sack of flour. 106 That evening they arrived late on the shore of Flores Island and made camp: It was not a good camping place, and the hour being rather late and the night dark, we felt compelled to stretch our weary limbs without even taking a warm drink of tea. We were enjoying our sleep as best we could when all of a sudden, some time after midnight, an Ahousat Indian came to wake us up. He was sent by the tribe; they were all up and expected us to go over. But His Lordship prevailed upon him to let us enjoy our camping out rather than go two miles across the sound in the middle of the night and avail ourselves of the Indians hospitality. When at last the Indian concluded to leave us, he went away saying that we were very lazy! 107 On the 9th of September, they were invited aboard an English man-of-war, the Boxer, and continued their trip for two more days up the coast as guests of the captain of the ship. Thereafter they returned to their canoe in Kyoquot Sound. On the 17th they landed at the Indian village of Newchatlat, but there experienced only disappointment:... we did very little or no good, the dispositions of the Indians being very indifferent, and it cost us quite an amount of trouble to get a crew to take us to the next tribe. Finally three old men volunteered, and that night we were amongst the Nootkas camped at Tashis. We found these Indians in full glee a dead whale had drifted on their land and the houses were full of blubber, which the women were boiling and reducing to oil. I do not think that anything that we could have said under the circumstances would have had much effect, as the whale was uppermost in their minds. 108 The two missionaries would find more edifying success in their next encampment among the Heskiats: We began our work at once; taught the Lord s Prayer, Hail Mary, Creed, The commandments and Seven Sacraments, all of which the Indians learned with much zeal. Here it struck the Bishop that this tribe would be a good place to start a Mission, being the most central and the Indians of the best good-will. He mentioned the matter to the chief, asking of him to assemble the other chiefs of the tribe en propose to them the matter in question; which having been done, we were informed in presence of the whole tribe, that land would be given for mission buildings and other purposes; that we could have our choice as to locality. At the same time a spot was mentioned on the hill according to the Bishop not desirable, being too much exposed to the northerly wind. As to the objection that the spot was surrounded by Indian 106 Ibid., Ibid. 108 Ibid., 29.

262 233 houses, the Indians were willing to evacuate the village site and grant it for Mission purposes. During our stay at Hesquiat, as well as at Machelat, we said Mass every morning at 5 o clock, at which all the Indians were present, and during which they recited the Holy rosary. We here noticed every morning and, in fact, whenever we assembled the Indians such zeal and fervor that old men unable to walk were carried on the backs of the young men to the chief s house, and some of them came on hands and feet. 109 Some days later, the two priests gained passage through the coastal wilderness between Calyoquot and Ucluliat by foot, a journey that left them hungry, weak and in very low spirits: We took as breakfast the last piece of meat we had left, and we also made slapjacks with our last flour. After this we began to walk with renewed courage. However, about nine o clock the Bishop took a fainting fit. He lay down on the rocks and asked if I had any food left. I took down a satchel which I had on my back, and after careful examination I found in a paper a few grains of sugar and a little flour in the corner of an old flour sack; this I gathered in a spoon and presented to His Lordship; he would not, however, take any of it except after I had taken my share, saying that he did not know what would become of us in case I should give out. We next noticed that the Indians were gathering mussels on the rock and ate them with great relish. This we also did and raw mussels and salal berries were the only food which we took till we reached Captain Francis place in Ucluliat next morning. The captain could hardly recognize us; seeing our condition and hearing of our long compulsory abstaining from food, he advised us, and we followed his advice, not to take any full meal till we had by eating very little at a time prepared our stomachs for its usual functions After the six week journey with Brabant had ended and they had safely returned to Victoria, Seghers focused his attention on the two missions he felt compelled to follow up on as soon as possible: that among the Heskiat Indians up the west coast where he had just visited and the one dearest ot his heart: Alaska. Shortly after their return to Victoria, Seghers wrote to his cousin, P. De Baets, of his recent trip up the coast: I crossed the Island on foot, I lived for 24 hours at a stretch on uncooked mussels fished on the waterfront for lack of othe provisions; I slept several times not on dry land, as they say, but in the Cove under driving rain, and (as the good Lafontaine would say) I came back a strong fellow Ibid., Ibid., J ai traversé l Ile à pied, j ai vécu, l espace de 24 heures, de moules crues pêchés sur le rivage à défaut d autres provisions; j ai couché plusieurs fois non pas sur la dure, comme on dit, mais dans la Cove sous une pluie battante, et (le bon Lafontaine dirait) je suis revenu gaillard.

263 234 Even more importantly, Seghers was looking ahead to an even greater challenge: that of bringing the light of the gospel to Alaska. This greatest dream of his life was one that he clearly viewed through an apocalyptic optic: I am about to take measures to establish definitively a Catholic mission in the Territory of Alaska, formerly Russian America. I will probably transport myself, God willing, next year. To do that I will have to cross the sea and the Behring Strait, navigate in the Artic Ocean, go up a river, the Youcon, which neither maps nor geographies know.... Will I succeed in my enterprise? I hope so, if the prayers of pious person join themselves to my efforts; and if I succeed, will it be the case that in converting the Esquimaux, the Gospel has finally arrived in fines orbis terrarium. Will that be then the time of the last judgement? That is the question [this sentence written in English]. 112 As we shall see, Seghers s desire to go deep into Alaska was profound and his will in the matter was not to be disputed. No obstacle would dissuade him from continuing. It was, in a very real way, much more than just another challenge, it was a religious passion, a mental fixation, and a spiritual obsession. Both his contemporaries and later historians have wondered why he was so driven in the matter. It seems that the above words to De Baets offer the best explanation of his extraordinary fervor in the matter. As with many missionaries through the centuries, he understood in a quite literal way Christ s words in the gospel of Matthew to make disciples of all nations 113 Seghers (Victoria) to P. De Baets, November 3, Archives of The American College, Louvain. Translation by Denis Carlin. 112 Je suis à prendre des mesures pour établir definitivement une mission Catholique dans le Territoire d Alaska, autrefois Amérique Russe. Je m y transporterai probablement moi-même, Deo dante, l année prochaine. Pour cela, il me faudra traverser la mer et le détroit de Behring, naviguer dans l Océan Arctique, remonter un fleuve, le Youcon que ni les cartes ni les geógraphes ne connaissent.... Réussirai-je dans mon entreprise? Je l espère si les prières des personnes pieuses se joignent à mes efforts; et si je réussis, ce sera bien le cas de dire qu en convertissant les Esquimaux, l Evangile est enfin arrivé in fines orbis terrarum. Sera-ce alors l époque du dernier jugement? That is the question. [Final sentence written in English in original text] Ibid. Translation by Denis Carlin. 113 And Jesus came and said to them, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age. Matthew 28:18 20, Revised Standard Version.

264 235 and those of the Acts of the Apostles to bring salvation to the ends of the earth 114. Once the light of the Gospel had been brought to the last dark corner of the world then the eschaton would come. As a missionary charged with the responsibility of bringing the Gospel into Alaska, in his mind the last corner of the world, Seghers saw for himself the possibility of being the agent who might actually bring to the world the final judgement and the end times. It seems a brazen presumption but it must be remembered that Seghers was formed in a spiritual and intellectual world where a literal eschatological understanding of the church s mission was not uncommon. 115 The words he wrote to De Baets reveal the motivation behind his push into Alaska even at the cost of his life: the salvation of the world was at stake. He would, in the end, give his life for this grand end. Seghers had Vancouver Island on his mind as well. There were many dark corners there too that needed the light of the gospel. In February 1875, Seghers advised Brabant that he was to return to Hesquiat to found the Catholic mission there. A 114 For so the Lord has commanded us, saying, I have set you to be a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the uttermost parts of the earth. " Acts 13:47, Revised Standard Version. 115 As noted in an earlier chapter, such thought was part of the Belgian intellectual and spiritual landscape that formed Seghers s mind and heart. See Vincent Viaene, Belgium and the Holy See from Gregory XVI to Pius IX ( ): Catholic Revival, Society and Politics in 19th Century Europe, KADOC Studies, vol. 26 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2001), 573. Viane mentions some of Victor Dechamps s work as typical of this preoccupation: Victor Dechamps, Le Christ et les Antechrists dans les écritures, l'histoire et la conscience (Tournai: H. Casterman, 1858). Books like that of Dechamps could easily have been among Seghers s reading material. He was a voracious reader and collector of books as witnessed by the personal library he left in Victoria, considered by some to be the single most valuable personal library in North America at the time. His collection belongs now to the Diocese of Victoria but is held by the Library of the University of Victoria. The Library s web site summarizes the contents of the collection: Present in the Collection are all the major works of the Church fathers, some in very early editions: the complete Patrologiae in both Greek and Latin (166 and 121 volumes respectively); the Acta Sanctorum (66 volumes); a large collection of Bibles dating from (1699 to 1855); a smaller collection of prayer books and hymnals; treatises on Catholic theology and doctrine; sermons, disputations, church councils (including three pre-confederation councils in Quebec); papal documents; commentaries on the Old and New Testaments, Latin, Dutch, German and French, dating from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries; a large number of histories of the Catholic church; lives of Christ and of the Virgin Mary; theological dictionaries, biblical geographies, concordances and thesaurae; expositions of canon law; histories of missions; and the Vedas (1870). Aristotle's works in 10 volumes (1574), and 16th and 17th century editions of works by Valerius, Maximus, Justinus, Tacitus, and other classical authors represent the Bishop's scholarly pursuits. See

265 236 carpenter was hired and Fr. Rondeault was assigned to travel with him up the coast and assist him in putting up the mission buildings. 116 Brabant s small company set sail on the feast of the Ascension, May 6th, carrying with them, three calves, a bull, two heifers and a Newfoundland dog, which was to be my only domestic companion after Noel Leclaire, the carpenter and Rev. Fr. Rondeault would have finished the work for which they were sent. 117 Seghers s orders to them had indicated that he wanted his 60x26 ft. church and small residence for the priest to be put up as cheaply as possible,... as the establishment of a Mission was only an experiment: later on, say after five years, if the Mission was successful, more substantial buildings would be put up. 118 The previous year a ship carrying lumber to Australia had disastrously wrecked in the straits taking the life of the captain s wife and two children among others. Brabant took advantage of the tragedy; it was from the lumber of the wrecked ship that Brabant, Rondeault and Leclaire built their cheap church and parish house: Immediately after landing, we set to work. We began by building a small shed, where we had our beds, our stove, provisions and where we took our meals our dog slept under the bed, and our calves alongside the stove. Although this was the best season of the year, the weather was most unpropitious, and before long our carpenter complained of being sick; afterwards he tried to make a row and when told that we could do without him he managed to get better, but for whole days together we could not get him to speak a word. Everything considered, the first Mission buildings on this coast were put up amidst much unpleasantness. The first Mass was said in the new church on the fifth of July, it being the Feast of the Most Precious Blood. All the Hesquiats were present; also, the chief and crowd of Machelat Indians. Mass was said by Rev. A. Brabant, and the sermon preached by Rev. P. Rondeault. Next morning a canoe took Rev. P. Rondeault and Noel Leclaire, the carpenter, to Victoria, and I as left alone in this place and in charge of all the Indians from Pachina (included) to Cape Cook. 119 Brabant s isolation would last only a few weeks; Seghers would call him back to Victoria on the 20th of September for a couple weeks, but not before Brabant had taken stock of the difficulties before him: 116 Moser, Reminiscences, Ibid. 118 Ibid., Ibid.,

266 237 I soon discovered that the work before me was an uphill undertaking, and, to mention one fact only, there was not one Indian in Hesquiat who could act as interpreter. However, I managed to teach the tribe the Catholic Ladder, and I made up my mind to study the language, which I found no easy matter, as I had no books to consult and there was no one who could give me any information about it. 120 Upon his return to Hesquiat, Brabant had his first encounter in his mission with a disease that would prove devastating to the indigenous populations of the island just as it had wherever native cultures had come into contact with Europeans: smallpox had been felling natives and weakening their cultures since Columbus s first arrival in the New World in The Hesquiat tribe would not escape the plague: Upon landing I was told that an Indian woman, a doctoress, had died during my absence, after a few days sickness. Next I heard that a large number of Nootka Sound Indians were sick and that several had died. The report arrived that the sickness was small-pox; that the whole tribe was wild with excitement; that they would come to Hesquiat and kill as many of the tribe as had died of the disease! I spurned the threat and persuaded the Indians not to be uneasy. On the eighteenth of October the wife of Matlahaw died rather suddenly at Hesquiat. As I suspected that everything was not right, I assembled the Indians on the hill, and told those who were living in the chief s house to quit, and also if there was anybody else unwell to come and give me information. Upon arriving home, I was met by Charley, whose mother had died during my absence. He reported that his father was sick. I went to his house and found the old man very sick, evidently with small-pox. He was lying in one corner of the room and in the other corner was his sister, an elderly woman, also in the last stages of the fatal disease. I baptized both of them, saw them well provided with food and water, and went home convinced that a very trying time was before me.... Upon entering my house and about to go and ring the bell for Mass, Matlahaw came into my house and asked me for the loan of my gun, which upon handing to him I stated to be unloaded. He simply remarked that he had powder and shot in his shanty, which was made of a few Indian planks and which with my permission he had constructed behind my little barn.... When the Mass was over, and just as I was about finishing my breakfast, Charley came into the my [sic] room and said, Look out, Leplet; Matlahaw is sick. You had better take your gun from him. I made one or two inquiries, and after saying a few words jokingly, to give heart and courage to the messenger, who looked alarmingly excited or downhearted, I went out, my pipe in my mouth, to see the would-be patient. When I arrived inside of his 120 Ibid., 38.

267 238 shanty I noticed in the middle a small fire, before which he was squatting down. He had his chief s cap and also the coat presented by the Superintendent of Indian Affairs and an Indian musket. I asked what the matter was, when, smilingly, he looked up, and pulling the skin of his leg, he answered, Memeloust small-pox. I reassured him, saying that I would give him medicine and that by evening he would be all right. Again he looked up, his face being very pale and the sinews of his cheeks trembling, and pulling at the skin of his throat he repeated memeloust. Once more I repeated that I would give him medicine and that he would be well before evening. Then I asked him to hand me over my gun, which he took without getting up; then pointing it towards me he explained, as I understood, that one of the barrels was not loaded. The fact of the muzzle of the gun being pointed straight to my face and noticing caps on both nipple and the cocks pulled up, caused me instinctively to turn away my head, when lo! The explosion took place and I noticed the blood spurting from my hand. The smoke was so thick that I could not see the would-be murderer, and thinking the whole affair to be an accident, after calmly remarking that I was shot in the hand, I walked down to the little river where I bowed down to bathe my wounds in the stream. Just then he shot again, this time hitting me in the right shoulder and all over my back. I now knew the man wanted to kill me and I ran off to my house, where I found no one. Thence I ran to the ranch and was met by nearly all the men of the tribe, to whom I told what had happened.... After a few moments a film came over my eyes and thinking that I would not survive, I knelt down and said my acts of faith, hope, charity and contrition. Then I got up, went to my house and wrote on a piece of paper the name of the man who had shot me, put the paper in my bureau, locked it and put the key into my pocket. 121 Brabant s account of the events of that day and those following continues over several pages; his wounds became infected and in fact he would have died from the infections if the Indians caring for him had not sent word to Victoria of his extreme situation. A week later, on November 9th, a man-of-war sailed into the harbor carrying on board both a doctor and Bishop Seghers. 122 wrote: Of Seghers at that moment, Brabant I can see him now, a picture of sadness. With tears in his eyes he told me how happy he felt to find me alive.... I could hardly utter a word! My strength was gone, for I had not tasted food or drink for several days Ibid., The account given here coincides in its details with a letter written on March 17, 1876 to Sebastian Goens, by then back at The American College in Louvain; the text of the letter is preserved in: Van der Heyden, Father Brabant, The bloodstained note written by Brabant as well as his other notes calling for assistance are held in the Archives of the Sisters of St. Anne, Victoria. Photostatic copies are available in the Archives of The American College, Louvain. 122 Moser, Reminiscences, Ibid., 45.

268 239 The infection in Brabant s hand was so serious by then that the doctor proposed its amputation, a surgery Brabant refused: However, I was not going to part with those necessary members of a priest s body to allow him to say Mass, without an objection! And object I did! And asked them to allow me to die rather than have me become a useless man in the world, such as a priest would be if he cannot say Mass.... They all left me with the expectation of returning a couple of days later to perform the amputation; but prayer had the best of them. Two days later one of the doctors made his usual call, and seeing that the blood began again to circulate he could not conceal his astonishment and went away wondering how this unexpected change could have occurred. 124 Brabant remained under the doctor s care for five months, then returned to Hesquiate on April 5, The incident was widely reported, and initially misreported with headlines that screamed, Shocking tragedy on the west coast! A devoted priest shot and mortally wounded while engaged in performing his Holy Office! A firstclass medalist [sic] the assassin...! 125 Of the incident s effect on the white community in Victoria, McNally writes:... Brabant not only survived, but the incident resulted in his lionization by many in the Euro-Canadian community on Vancouver Island. 126 The effect was not limited to Vancouver Island; Van der Heyden in Louvain many years later would entitle his rather hagiographic book on Brabant: Life and Letters of Father Brabant: A Flemish Missionary Hero. 127 itself, Van der Heyden rhapsodizes: Of the shooting Such is the simple yet vivid account of the great trial in our missionary s career. He met it like a hero as he was: and when he was well again, his one wish was to return to the work he had begun and which at its very inception had received in blood a baptism which augured favorably for the future Brabant returned to his lonely post, was warmly welcomed back by the Indians with a grand celebration, the elements of which he barely understood, and returned to 124 Ibid., "Shocking Tragedy on the West Coast," Daily British Colonist, November T. W. Paterson, "Hesquiat Tragedy," The Daily Colonist, January McNally, Vineyard, Van der Heyden, Father Brabant. 128 Ibid., 81.

269 240 work. One of the first things he set about was the establishment of a kind of police force among the Indians. And with that he began the slow process of almost singlehandedly changing a civilization that had not changed in centuries. 129 Brabant remained among the Hesquiats until 1908 when he was brought back to Victoria to serve as adminstrator of the diocese after the resignation of Archbishop Bertrand Orth. He died there in Missionary Hero or Destroyer of Native Civilization? For a hundred years, Augustin Brabant and Charles John Seghers were hailed among Catholics as brave, heroic and self-sacrificial missionaries, the likes of whom the rest of the faithful should emulate at least in spirit if not in deed. The biographical accounts of Brabant and Seghers s lives by men like Van der Heyden and De Baets live with complete comfort within this point of view. It is understandable, for the authors had no theological, historical or sociological foundations that might provide them with an alternative, more culturally and missiologically enlightened, point of view. It was not as if they had to deliberate between a view that held Brabant s missionary efforts to be noble and one that saw them as incompetent, tragic or even perhaps agents of an holocaust among the native peoples of North America. 131 To the missionaries themselves and to those who later wrote about their lives there was only one point of view: they possessed in Christianity the truth and this truth was light for the nations; the indigenous peoples lived in darkness, ignorant of this truth, so with the evangelical commission of Christ himself as their charter, they dedicated themselves to bring the light of Christian truth to the native peoples. For the missionaries, it was, by its very nature, a good and necessary project, a moral imperative, something pertaining to God and God s will. Such a missionary worldview remained in place well into the twentieth century. 129 Charles Lillard, Mission to Nootka: ; Reminiscences of the West Coast of Vancouver Island (Sidney, BC: Gray's Publishing Ltd., 1977), Van der Heyden, Father Brabant, McNally, Vineyard, 77.

270 241 In more recent decades, an alternative point of view has come to the fore. New respect and sympathy for native cultures has developed among Europeans and Euro- Americans, the result, at least in part, of the great strides made in anthropological and sociological studies over the course of the past century. Taking these new sensitivities to heart, the operative missiologies of many Christian churches, including that of the Roman Catholic Church, have become much more nuanced in the respect they show towards native peoples. By the same token, it has allowed the present generation to be much more critical of past missionary practices and attitudes. The encounter between European missionary and indigenous tribe can now be seen from the side of the native peoples and the consequences for them of that encounter can now be appreciated with new insight, compassion and remorse. 132 So it is that priests like Brabant and Seghers, who for a hundred years were considered by Catholics of North America and Europe as missionary heroes can now come in for extremely severe criticism, even by a historian who himself is a Catholic priest. Vincent McNally s critique of both Seghers, Brabant and other missionaries on Vancouver Island as euro-centric, incompetent, disease-sowing, arrogant, paternal and patronizing agents of a colonizing civilization dominating and ultimately destroying another has to be taken most seriously. 133 It is an important critique, if not of the men themselves, then certainly of the social and religious culture of which they were inseparably a part, a culture which was certainly racist, oppressive, and took part in the systematic destruction of a centuries-old native culture. Certainly, the encounter with the new, dominant culture represented by the European-American missionaries led directly and inevitably through disease to the decimation of indigenous populations throughout the Americas and elsewhere. The latter occurred, however, as a result of the very fact of encounter and was not, in itself, a product of racism; the new viruses and 132 The 1991 apology of Rev. Doug Crosby, O.M.I. to the Native peoples affected in particular by the Oblate missionary schools is just one example of recent efforts to address the disaster brought to America s indigenous peoples. He said in part: "We apologize for the part we played in the cultural, ethnic, linguistic and religious imperialism that was part of the European mentality and, in a particular way, for the instances of physical and sexual abuse that occurred in these schools. We recognize that in spite of the good that came of them, the residential schools have caused pain to so many. For these trespasses we wish to voice today our deepest sorrow and we ask your forgiveness and understanding. We hope that we can make up for it by being part of the healing process wherever necessary." Douglas Crosby, O.M.I., "Canadian Oblates Statement: An Apology to Native Peoples," Origins, August 15, 1991.

271 242 bacteria brought into a world without immunity would have led to mortal pandemics no matter what the attitudes or sensitivities of the European newcomers. 134 McNally does, however, make his critique personal to the men. Regarding Brabant in particular, McNally faults him on many counts: for his efforts to impose a haphazard reduction system, an inability to communicate in the native language, and for being an incompetent educator. 135 One specific charge brought against Brabant by McNally deserves special consideration. McNally seals his negative judgment of Brabant by attributing to him personal culpability for the introduction of fatal disease to the tribe he was supposed to be saving : Initially, as the first European to live among them for generations, his major contribution to the Hesquiat, the Nootka tribe with whom he spent most of his time, was to introduce smallpox. Like many Oblates, he tried to treat the terrible disease with vaccine, but he also saw it as God s curse upon these poor people for their lack of interest in and/or continued resistance to the Catholic faith. 136 That Brabant himself brought smallpox to the Nootka tribes as his only contribution is, at best, a supposition rather than an historical fact. McNally s reference for his charge is Brabant s account of the Matlahaw shooting and a newspaper article contemporaneous to the event, the already cited Daily British Colonist, November 6, In Brabant s account, the smallpox disease indeed began to afflict the tribe shortly after his settling in Hesquiate, but there is no suggestion in Brabant s account, as McNally suggests, that the missionary was aware of himself as having brought the disease into the community. As evidence to the contrary, a Daily British Colonist report attributed the arrival of the disease as having come from Native Americans who had recently visited Victoria and brought it back with them from the city. 137 It is possible that Brabant was the first carrier of the disease but it is just as 133 McNally, Vineyard, 73-78, For an extensive discussion of such pandemics arising from the meeting of formerly isolated societies, see: Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1997; reprint, 1999). See especially Chapter 18, Hemispheres Colliding, McNally, Vineyard, Ibid., Another clan whose ranch was at no great distance, visited Victoria lately and returned with the small-pox amongst them. These unfortunates wished to consult a woman belonging to the Hasquiats [sic] who had some renown on the coast as a doctress [sic]; but were warned to go

272 243 possible that any number of other Europeans or Natives might have brought it into the community as well. In either case, the arrival of the disease was inevitable, sooner or later it would have come; there simply was no way to isolate the tribe from Europeans or other natives who had had contact with Europeans. Once it had arrived, Brabant, to his credit, did all in his power to ameliorate the suffering of those afflicted. 138 Was it an uncommon fit of cultural arrogance 139 for Seghers and Brabant to erect a cross in the mostly unmissionized area or a rather common practice among Christian missionaries and one that expressed not so much an attitude of cultural conquest as a spiritual victory over the forces of darkness? Clearly, from the point of view of the common missiology of the times, Seghers and Brabant were simply being good missionaries and faithful servants of the gospel. Though not a murderer or a conquistador, neither was Brabant an enlightened missionary by today s standards. He did not have access to subsequent advances in anthropology, sociology, psychology or even missiology that have since enriched both society and church. He unreflectively shared the Euro-centric and racist missionary vision of his times and had very limited tools available to him to accomplish his mission, as McNally notes. 140 incomprehensible to him. 141 The Native culture was almost completely Yet he remained in this isolated and difficult mission for a lifetime; and unless his own words are to be dismissed as only self-serving propaganda, there are signs in his writing that many of the Natives of the place cared for him. 142 McNally sums up the life work of Augustin Brabant in these terms: Brabant did experience some success in his work, yet it was neither orderly nor permanent.... Except for a handful of dedicated followers, most Hesquiat were away, and they left. One kloochman belonging to the infected Indians returned, and in spite of everything contrived to get amongst Father Brabant s neighbors, and the disease broke out amongst them also. "Tragedy." 138 Moser, Reminiscences, McNally, Vineyard, Ibid., Witness Brabant s bewilderment at the welcome home dinner afforded him by the Natives upon his return after the shooting: There were dancing and shouting and gesticulations and many other extravagant things, which no one can fancy who has not seen wild men and women, covered with feathers and with painted cheeks, giving free expression to the feelings of their savage heart and nature. Moser, Reminiscences, It seems the very fact that they gave Brabant such a party as that described in the previous note indicates they held the man in some esteem. Ibid.

273 244 either never baptized, or if they were, only when they were near death. Infant baptism was quite common, but did not guarantee that the recipient would continue to practice the faith as an adult. 143 The only reference for McNally s grim summation of Brabant s life work is a general one to Brabant s own Reminiscences. Yet, it is also clear that McNally has not used the full text of those Remininiscences as his source material, but the edited version published by Lillard in That version, according to the author himself, has removed overtly religious references where they are a reflection of the author s state of mind. 144 Excised from Lillard s text is the final entry in those Reminiscences, which gives a somewhat different picture of how Brabant saw his life s work. It both confirms McNally s critique of the missionary vision of the times and allows us to see that Brabant was, in the end, if not a missionary hero by today s standards, nevertheless an extraordinary man, dedicated to his mission, attentive to those he sought to serve, and perhaps, not as completely ineffective as McNally proposes : Twenty-five years have now elapsed since I first set foot on the western shore of Vancouver Island. When I first met the inhabitants of that desolate coast, they were savage, immoral and treacherous. Their dwellings were hovels of filth and misery; their attire a blanket of cedar bark, dog s hair or other inferior article; they were addicted to witchcraft and innumerable superstitious practices. All alone in the wilderness, deprived of the company of friends or white men, with no mails except once or twice a year, I have spent many mournful seasons without seeing any encouraging results of my arduous labors. But God has been kind to me and has granted me the grace to persevere, and has rewarded my labors by the conversion of many of my poor people. With Christianity, they have adopted civilization. The people immediately under my charge are now, as a whole, docile and law abiding. The have used their earnings to improve their material conditions. They have built neat and clean dwelling houses; they dress well, both men and women, after the fashion of civilized people; they are regular at church and the Sacraments. Visitors are edified to see them at church and do not cease praising them for the spectacle they present when at their devotions. They look more like a congregation of white people than one of native Indians McNally, Vineyard, Lillard, Nootka, Moser, Reminiscences, 130. This passage was omitted in Lillard s edition of Brabant s Reminiscences, the edition relied upon by McNally. See Lillard, Nootka, 116. Would familiarity with the full text have softened McNally s harsh judgement of Brabant? It doesn t seem likely but the missionary s own words offer a view of the man and his work that ismore substantially more positive.

274 245 With the clarity that comes with one hundred years of hindsight, we who study the lives of missionaries such as Augustin Brabant, are privileged to be able to know the compunction and sorrow at the epidemic consequences of our ancestors contact with the indigenous peoples of the Americas. It is a compunction that they did not know, and, could not have known. Perhaps the life-work of one of next American College missionaries to come to the North Pacific Coast, Louis Lambert Conrardy, is a reminder that even in the absence of a modern missiology, respect, care and great self-sacrifice were still very much possible among the Europeans who came to bring their religion to the indigenous of North America. Conrardy and Van Lin Join the Mission As the decade of the 1870s continued to unfold so too did the arrival of more missionaries from the American College. The next to set foot on the North Pacific Coast were traveling companions, Gerard van Lin and Louis Lambert Conrardy. Van Lin s story is, for the most part, now lost to the historian; that of Conrardy is still well known and stands as a highwater mark of missionary care for the Native American and, later, the isolated leper. Gerard van Lin was a native of the Limburg region of the Netherlands and affiliated to the diocese of Roermond. The Album Alumnorum of the American College does not mention the date of his arrival in Louvain but it could not have been long before June 6, 1873 when he received his first minor order of tonsure in Mechlin. He was ordained in Mechlin in 1874 and departed for his mission in the Oregon City diocese in October of the same year. 146 Scant mention of Van Lin is found in any of the histories of the region. He was founding pastor of the Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish in Portland (1888), and was responsible for the erection of the parish church there. 147 In April of 1889, he is mentioned in the diary of the Sisters of the Holy Names as being present for the laying of the cornerstone of St. Mary s Academy in Portland and 146 Album Alum. II, Mary Grant (Portland) to W.H. van Lin, c.m. (Afferden, Netherlands), December 31, 1998, photostatic copy of electronic mail. Archives of the Archdiocese of Portland. Schoenberg does not attribute construction of the church to van Lin. See also Schoenberg, Chronicle, 128.

275 246 identified therein as rector of the Church of the Sacred Heart of Mary, Albina. 148 No further references to Van Lin have been found in the usual sources, though his tombstone in Portland s Mt. Calvary Cemetary makes it clear he remained in the Oregon City archdiocese until his death in Much more is known of Van Lin s traveling companion to Oregon, Louis Lambert Conrardy, 149 perhaps best remembered today as a co-worker of Damian De Veuster 150 in Molokai, Hawaii. Born in 1841 in Liège, Conrardy received his seminary formation and was ordained in Liège in Thereafter he served as vicar of the parish in Stavelot until Of his first years of priesthood, he was later remembered as one who, in the face of a contagious epidemic among the population of Stavelot,... the vicar Conrardy distinguished himself by his tireless devotion to the poorest of the sick whom he cared for personally and to whom he gave up everything, even his own bed. 151 Something of the man s character can also be seen in the further detail in the same remembrance: Happy, energetic, without doubt he was also very original and hardly conformist in suggesting, a century ahead of time, chanting vespers in French on the grounds that 148 Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, The most recent and most complete account of Conrardy s life is Werner Promper, L'Abbé Conrardy, apôtre des lépreux: Vie et documents, Bulletin de la Société d'art et d'histoire du diocèse de Liège, vol. LXIV (Liège: Diocèse de Liège, 1999). Details of his biography can also be found in: Patricia Brandt, "Conrardy, Louis Lambert ( )," in The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, ed. Michael Glazier and Thomas J. Shelley (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1997), 374. Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, 251, O'Connor and Gaire, Baker, William N. Bischoff, S.J., The Jesuits in Old Oregon: A Sketch of Jesuit Activities in the Pacific Northwest (Caldwell, ID: The Caxton Printers, LTD., 1945), Ronny Bair, Conrardy, Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexicon, Band XXII (2003) Spalten , January 4, De Veuster, Damian (Joseph) ( ), born in Tremelo, not far from Louvain, he entered the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts ( the Picpus Fathers ), in In 1863, Damian volunteered to replace his older brother, Pamphile, also a Picpus priest, in a mission to Hawaii. He served in Honolulu until May 10, 1873, when he sailed for Molokai and the leper colony located there. He served the lepers there until his death from leprosy on April 15, He was beatified by Pope John Paul II in See Albert H. Ledoux, "Damien, Father/Joseph De Veuster ( )," in The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, ed. Michael Glazier and Thomas J. Shelley (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1997), le vicaire Conrardy se distingua par son inlassable dévouement aux malades les plus pauvres qu il soignait personnellement et auxquels il cédait tout, même son propre lit. Promper, Conrardy, 33. Translation by Denis Carlin.

276 247 people got bored hearing them chanted in Latin without understanding anything of them. 152 Having had a desire for a missionary life since his youth, he was able to finally actualize this calling in 1872 by entering the Séminaire de la Société des Missions Etrangères in Paris and then to depart for the mission fields of India where he was assigned to serve in Pondichery. It was there that he encountered for the first time in his life the malady of leprosy. The hot climate of the region took its toll on his health and after only a year, he asked to be sent to a mission more appropriate for his constitution. 153 He hoped at first to be sent to China, then was inclined towards Japan, but finally, in the end, settled on the missions of North America, having been moved in his seminary years by the conferences given by John Peter De Smet, S.J. and later having read of his life in the Annals of the Propagation of Faith. 154 Conrardy came to know of the American College in Louvain through his classmate, Joseph Leroy, who had already entered the new seminary. 155 His stay at the college was just long enough to allow him to improve his English. He was assigned to the Archdiocese of Oregon City and is recorded in the Catholic Sentinel as having arrived in Portland on November 20, 1874, together with van Lin. 156 Almost immediately after his arrival in Oregon, Conrardy was assigned to the St. Anne Mission for the Umatilla Indians in eastern Oregon, succeeding fellow- Louvanists, Bertrand Orth and Adolph Vermeersch. recorded in the parish register on February 1, Conrardy s first baptism is Thus began thirteen years of service to both the Indians and the White Catholics of a region that included most of Eastern Oregon. 158 Being well to the east of the Cascade Mountains, not far from the present city of Pendleton, Conrardy found himself in a semi-arid region, the land 152 Joyeux, énergique, sans doute était-il aussi très original et peu conformiste en s avisant, en avance d un siècle, de chanter les vêpres en français sous prétexte que les gens s ennuyaient de les entendre chanter en latin sans y rien comprendre. Ibid. Translation by Denis Carlin. 153 Ibid., Ibid., Ibid. Conrardy s admission to The American College in October 1874 is noted in Album Alum. II, Catholic Sentinel (Portland), November 20, Promper, Conrardy, Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, 251.

277 248 marked by sage-brush, bunch grass and occasional pine. He took upon himself the task of learning the Nez Perce language, and was soon covering four large counties in eastern Oregon on horseback (Umatilla, Morrow, Wheeler and Gilliam 159 ) teaching whites as well as Indians, with whom he was particularly popular. 160 Because of his substantial beard (remembered as being at least 25 cm in length), he became known among the Indians as Himtuken, the bearded one. 161 Conrardy took up residence in a one-room shanty, described in the October 8, 1885 issue of the Catholic Sentinel:... his kitchen consists of one small cooking machine with scant utensils is in one corner; his library, with a few indispensable books, in another corner; his parlor, with piano and smallest possible amount of furniture in a third; his bedroom with a simple cot in the fourth, and his dining room in the middle, the furniture of which we may, perhaps, gather some idea of from a somewhat amusing account the reverend gentleman gives of a dinner given by him on the occasion of a visit, some time since, of Archbishop Seghers and Bishop Brondel. His Grace the Archbishop had a cup and saucer; his Lordship the Bishop had a cup without saucer; the reverend Secretary had a tin cup, and he himself had a tin preserved fruit can to drink out of. 162 Whatever the condition of his own housing, he was not one to stand still when it came to providing suitable buildings for the faithful of his mission and parishes. He constructed the first church in Pendleton and celebrated the first baptism in the town on January 1, In 1883 he moved the St. Ann s mission from where Vermeersch had first established it to a new site and built a new church and a boarding school there (see below). In June 1883, he traveled with the, by then, new archbishop of Oregon City, Charles John Seghers, to Heppner where they met with the local community and decided to erect a church; Conrardy had it finished in 1887 and dedicated it to St. Patrick. 163 In 1886 he constructed a church for the Irish immigrants of the town of Vinson 164, arranged for another in the town of Fossil, but the mill preparing the timbers burned before it was completed, ending the latter project Promper, Conrardy, Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, Promper, Conrardy, 66. Also mentioned in: Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, Catholic Sentinel, (Portland), October 8, Schoenberg, Chronicle, Promper, Conrardy, Schoenberg, Chronicle, 122.

278 249 Besides Conrardy s travels and church-building activities, he also served as teacher for the Umatilla Reservation day school from 1877 to In this capacity he was a federal employee and was accountable to federal authorities on the reservation, with whom he was not always on the best of terms. 166 In 1881, the Indian Commissioner closed Conrardy s day school... because the Indian children were continually absent on hunting or food gathering trips. 167 Conrardy, together with Archbishop Seghers and the local federal agent, Richard Fay, proceeded to press for the establishment of a boarding school on the Umatilla Reservation to be operated by Conrardy, though under federal supervision. The plan met with local opposition by those who wanted a purely secular school to be established. The protesters were assisted by an Army lieutenant, Melville Wilkinson, who was building his own, overtly Protestant, Indian school in Forest Grove, Oregon. Just as Conrardy and Fay s boarding school was getting off the ground, Wilkinson appeared and demanded to take for his own school Conrardy s best students, Catholics included. Despite Conrardy and Fay s opposition, they were unable to impede Wilkinnson. With Seghers s support, the Conrardy project proceeded in spite of the setback. 168 Eventually, with the great assistance of Seghers, a small group of Mercy sisters were brought to Umatilla to teach at the new boarding school. 169 In 1882, opposition from local non-indians to the Umatilla agent, Richard Fay, over his development of an Indian police force on the reservation, led to his being replaced as agent by the U.S. government with Edward Sommerville,... a Protestant and loyal party man. 170 Conrardy and Sommerville clashed mightily over all manner of issues relating to the Indians and the Catholic Church s role on the reservation, including the setting aside of ground for a new mission church, Conrardy eventually gaining from Sommerville the concession of eighty acres of land for the new mission. Conrardy was not above taking his concern for the welfare of his Indian faithful and his opinions about the inadequacy of the federal agents assigned to the reservation to Washington, D.C. and the highest levels of governmental power. In 1885, Conrardy 166 Promper, Conrardy, Brandt and Pereyra, Eden, Ibid. 169 Ibid., Ibid., 50.

279 250 traveled to the federal capital to present to the Secretary of the Interior, Lucias Q. C. Lamar, 171 a plan for civilizing Indians. 172 The Catholic Sentinel of October 1, 1885 reprinted a report from the Catholic Review (Baltimore) on Conrardy s visit to the capitol. The anonymous reporter for the Catholic Review commented first on his impression of Conrardy s character: Father Conrardy is evidently a man of marked ability and sound judgement, and he is inspired with a noble enthusiasm and disinterested devotion to the interests of his dear Redskins. 173 The article then shared Conrardy s bold objections to the present situation: He says the reason why no great advance has been made in civilization among them with all the efforts of the Government and the large sums of money spent for the last twenty-five years, is the want of a system and the go-as-you-please manner in which the business of the Agency is conducted. From $300,000 to $400,000 have been spent in experiments, and he says not $12,000 worth of valuable assets can be shown as the result. He does not hesitate to charge the fault upon the agents, and though he has often been threatened with dire consequences for exposing their rascality, he is determined to speak out and show them up in their true colors. They really do not care for the Indians. They have no sympathy with them, and have no idea of making any great effort to civilize and enlighten them. They go there to make money, and they are perfectly unscrupulous in taking advantage of their position to make the most money possible. The Umatilla Indians thus far have not been willing to settle down and go to work on farms which they are to own in severalty because they have no confidence that the Government will fulfill the vague promises made by their agents in regard to furnish them with the necessary supplies and practical instruction in the science of agriculture in order to give them a fair start. 174 The reporter continued then with the details of Conrardy s plan for reforming the system on the Umatilla Reservation and establishing a model for others: Father Conrardy s plan contemplates a remedy of this evil by asking the Government to appoint a committee of three honest and reliable persons to act with the agent and see that he carries out the plan in good faith. That plan is to form a little community of farmers, selected from the best and most promising young men of the agency, with their wives and families, who shall be helped by he Government till they get a good start, and thus form a nucleus around which the rest of the tribe shall gradually be attracted as they become convinced of the great advantages of a settled mode of life. This will involve the necessity of not only giving each a sufficient quantity of land in 171 Lamar, Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus ( ) served as Secretary of the Interior under President Grover Cleveland from 1888 to See 8 July, Catholic Sentinel, (Portland), October 1, Ibid. 174 Ibid.

280 251 severalty, but also of building their houses and barns, and furnish them with all the necessary supplies and implements of husbandry. It also implies the necessity of constant and careful supervision and direction for a sufficient length of time for them to form habits of industry and become sufficiently familiar with the routine of farm life to become independent. Father Conrady [sic] also contemplates the supervision of the housekeepers by the Sisters, of whom there is a community connected with the mission. They are to visit the houses regularly and give instruction in cooking and in all the details of housekeeping. He says the Indians are apt scholars, and he is entirely sanguine of the complete success of his scheme in comparative short time if he can have the sanction of the Government and the right kind of men to aid him.... He does not claim originality for his plan. It is simply the plan of the Jesuits.... In fact, he says, it might more properly be termed the Catholic plan, as it is the same in all essential features that is, and has been, universally adopted by Catholic missionaries in all their efforts to civilize and convert the heathen. 175 Finally, the reported noted that... the plan is received with favor by Mr. Lamar, Secretary of the Interior, and though the President was absent at the time of Father Conrady s [sic] application, he was told that his plan was the one which the President most highly approved of Antoine Massange in Stavelot: A year later, Conrardy wrote to Madame The Government has recognized the usefulness of my Plan and has appointed me to carry it out. As formerly in Europe the Church civilized our fathers by showing them how to work, thus the missionary has to do with Indians: work the land, labor and build cabins, etc. 177 Unfortunately, the success of Conrardy s plan to civilize the Indians would be compromised by a series of events that would lead to his departure from Umatilla and dramatic move to a new mission in 1888, working side-by-side with Damian De Veuster in Molokaii. 178 The movement to force Indians to give up communal land in favor of privately owned plots ( severalty ), with the remaining land to be sold to white settlers was gaining influence at the national level. By 1886, the Indians on the Umatilla 175 Ibid. 176 Ibid. 177 Le Gouvernement a reconnu l utilité de mon Plan et m a nommé pour le mettre à exécution. Comme au temps jadis en Europe l Eglise a civilisé nos pères en leur montrant à travailler, ainsi doit faire le missionnaire avec les Sauvages: travailler la terre, labourer et bâtir des maisons en bois, etc. Promper, Conrardy, Already in the aforementioned letter to Madame Massange Conrardy revealed that he was considering a move away from Umatilla to a new mission among the lepers of Molokaii. Ibid., 107.

281 252 Reservation, backed strongly by Conrardy, were resisting the efforts and refusing to agree to the new arrangement. Conrardy continued to be the focal point of the land predators animosity because he outspokenly advocated fair treatment for the Indians. 179 The white locals inundated Washington D.C. with petitions against Conrardy resulting in government agents being sent from the capital to investigate rumors about Conrardy and work towards securing the severalty agreement. The agents determined that the best way to secure Indian agreement was through a show of power and the best way to do that was to strike at the Church and the Native Americans primary defenders. Father Constant De Latte, the boarding school s principal, and the Catholic sisters who taught there were terminated, then the cross atop the school building was torn down. These actions resulted in the Indians submission to the government plan. Further pressure was applied to have Conrardy removed from the scene. 180 The Jesuits were brought in to take over the mission and by May 1888, Conrardy had arrived on Molokaii to work with Damian De Veuster among the lepers of Hawaii. 181 Described by Schoenberg as high-handed, impatient, and irascible as well as a loner, 182 he adds: On the other hand, in his relations with the Indians, Conrardy was one of the most successful missionaries on record. Like Adrien Croquet, he was absolutely selfless. 183 Conrardy remained at Molokai six years beyond Damian s death in April 1889; he finally left the island in 1895 to continue similar work in Canton, China. He returned to Portland in 1896 to study medicine, graduating as a medical doctor in He spent a year in Europe begging for funds and preaching about his mission, returned briefly to Pendleton to visit his Indian friends there, then traveled to the island of Shek Lung, near Canton, to build his new leprosarium, dedicated under the patronage of St. Joseph. 179 Brandt and Pereyra, Eden, Ibid., The story of Conrardy s service on the Umatilla Reservation, the issues which brought that ministry to a close and his move to Molokaii is related by one of his successors in Umatilla, Michael M. O Malley, S.J. in memoires he wrote late in his own life. See Michael M. O'Malley, S.J., Flocks That I Watched (Spokane, WA: Gonzaga University Press, 1971), Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, Ibid., 342.

282 253 Soon he had over 800 lepers under his care. He died in Hong Kong of pneumonia in Dols and Kauten Arrive The year 1875 would see the arrival on the North Pacific Coast of two more young priests from Louvain: James Dols and Emil Kauten. Dols was committed to service in the Oregon City archdiocese while Kauten had been adopted by the Diocese of Nesqually. James Dols, born in 1849, came to the American College from Sittard in the Limburg Province of the Netherlands. He arrived in Louvain and enterd the college in October of In 1874 he was officially accepted as a seminarian of the Archdiocese of Oregon City. He was ordained to the priesthood in Mechlin on May 22, 1875, then left Louvain for Oregon City on the 19th of October of the same year. 185 Coming from studies in Bastogne, Emil Kauten arrived in Louvain a year after Dols, being admitted to the college in September of He was ordained to the priesthood on June 13, He left for the North Pacific Coast with Dols on October 19, With the absence of John De Neve at the helm of the American College, personal correspondence between the young priests in the missions and the institution became considerably thinner. Clearly, the new administrators did not maintain nearly so paternal or attentive a relationship with their former charges as had De Neve. The lack of letters recording first impressions and new missionary experiences by men like Dols leaves the historian with a relative poverty of personal insight into their lives and characters. Indications of their work and accomplishments must be found elsewhere. Almost immediately upon his arrival in Oregon in 1875 Dols was assigned by Archbishop F. N. Blanchet as founding pastor of St. James Parish in McMinnville, not far from Adrien Croquet s Grand Ronde parish. By June of 1876 he had already 184 O'Connor and Gaire, Baker, Album Alum. II, Ibid., 212.

283 254 constructed a new church. 187 He served four years in Gervais, Oregon before being assigned in 1881 by his fellow Louvanist, Archbishop Seghers, to one of the most remote regions of his episcopal territories, Butte, Montana, as the town s first resident priest. 188 Just two years later, in April of 1883, the region was made an apostolic vicariate and received its first bishop-administrator, fellow Louvanist, John Baptist Brondel; in 1884, it was erected as the Diocese of Helena and Dols was thereafter incardinated as a priest of the new diocese with Brondel as his ordinary. Butte was a small copper mining town being quickly settled by large groups of Irish immigrants. 189 With the reputation as a rough and tumble place, Dols must have found himself in an altogether new world far from anything he had known in either Oregon or Belgium. Nevertheless, by 1884, a reporter to the Catholic Sentinel was writing: Butte deserves special mention for its magnificent new church erected by the pushing, hard-working Father Dols, formerly of Gervais, Oregon.... When Father Dols went to Butte there was no church worthy of the place, no hospital, no school. This was only some five years ago. Now they have one of the most beautiful churches I have yet seen on this Slope for its. They have a fine brick hospital, which I inspected, and which is truly a model for what an hospital should be. They have two Orders of Sisters one presiding over the hospital, and the other teaching in the grandest mansion in the territory. And all this has been [undecipherable] in a great measure by Father Dols and the Butte Catholics. Father Dols has also erected a neat, snug rectory, in which I have spent many hours yarning with him Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, 233. Also mentioned in: Schoenberg, Chronicle, Schoenberg, Chronicle, 95. Western Montana was part of the Vicariate of Idaho, at that time administered by the archbishop of Oregon City, Charles John Seghers. Seghers had visited the area in August of 1879, and presumably recognized the need for a resident priest in the growing town. 189 For more on the remarkable town of Butte see David M. Emmons, The Butte Irish: Class and Ethnicity in an American Mining Town, (Champagne, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1990). Also see Michael P. Malone, The Battle for Butte: Mining and Politics on the Northern Frontier, (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006). 190 Catholic Sentinel (Portland), December 18, Because of this author s geographic distance from any original copies of the Catholic Sentinel, he has had to rely on microfilm copies provided to him by the Archives of the Oregon Province of the Society of Jesus (Gonzaga University, Spokane). At some points, the quality of typescript in the microfilm is so low as to be unfortunately undecipherable.

284 255 From 1866 until Dols s arrival on March 8, 1881, Butte had been tended pastorally by fellow Louvanist, Remegius De Ryckere, out of his Deer Lodge parish. 191 The first historian of the church in Montana, Lawrence B. Palladino, S.J., (a witness to many of the events he describes and contemporary of many of the personages involved), offers further details about Dols s considerable work in Butte: Butte offered a splendid field to the ability and energy of the new pastor. There being as yet no suitable quarters for the priest, one of the first cares of Father Dols was to erect a modest, comfortable residence. It cost some $3,000, and was ready for occupancy before the close of the year. In a mining community like Butte, where dangers and accidents to limb and life were without number and of daily occurrence, the need of a Sisters Hospital was sorely felt. Steps were now taken by Father Dols to supply this want, and the sick and disabled miner soon found in the newly erected Hospital, named after St. James, and conducted by a colony of Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth, Kansas, attentive and skilful nursing and all the care and comforts of a home. The Institution has had to increase its capacity time and again. In May, 1883, Father Dols undertook construction of a larger church, as the first one proved now utterly insufficient to accommodate the numerous and daily increasing Catholic population. The cornerstone was laid during this same month, Rev. F.J. Kelleher and Rev. R. De Ryckere taking part in the ceremonies, and before the close of the year the new building was ready for use. It is a neat brick structure on a stone foundation and with cut granite facings, costing close on $18,000. The church was dedicated September 17, 1884, under the same title as the original edifice [ Saint Patrick ; the original building was constructed by De Ryckere]. 192 With the erection by Pope Leo XIII of the vicariate apostolic of Montana and the arrival of Bishop John Baptiste Brondel as its administrator, Dols, like other diocesan priests in the region, faced the prospect of finding himself a permanent resident of Montana. Shortly after Brondel s arrival, Seghers wrote to Dols of the decision yet to be made as to whether the priest should remain in Montana or return to Oregon: I trust you have, by this time, the consolation of Bp. Brondel s presence. In answer to your inquiry I beg to state that I have a right to claim you as my subject; but, as I told you before, you have a right either to return to Oregon or to remain in Montana. As for me, I cannot, in charity, deprive Bp Brondel of a workman like you and am, therefore, willing to leave the matter between you and him. Make your choice; settle 191 L. B. Palladino, S.J., Indian and White in the Northwest: A History of Catholicity in Montana (Baltimore: John Murphy & Co., 1894), Ibid.,

285 256 your question by your own selection; your future movements will depend upon the Ordinary you adopt. 193 Palladino goes on to note that Dols s tenure in Butte was not without personal tension between the pastor and at least some of his parishioners, though Palladino s sense of discretion moves the author to leave out most of the explanatory details of the conflict s cause: The field having become too large for one priest, the Ordinary sought to give Father Dols some help a couple of times. But unfortunately the assistants failed to assist and had soon to be dispensed with, their absence being preferable to, and more serviceable than their presence. Nor was this the only unpleasant experience of the Butte church at this time. A small Community opened here a school but under auspices that were unfavorable, and their mission was a failure. Considerable dissatisfaction also seemed to spring up at this date among some of the Butte congregation against Father Dols. At first the discontent could scarcely be accounted for, but subsequent and unlooked for events revealed the cause; malevolence and evil tongues were at the bottom. That on one occasion by publicly disapproving the Holy See, for condemning the Plan of Campaign and boycotting; and again, later on, by upholding in opposition to the Ordinary, a clerical tramp, some few of the Butte Catholics have not shown the filial respect and docile submission of loyal children of the church to Ecclesiastical authority, is a matter of history and much to be regretted. The blame, however must be made to rest where it properly belongs, that is with the insignificant few, and not to be laid at the door of that excellent and exemplary Catholic community. 194 By December of 1885, Dols had had enough; the pastor... was allowed to take a much needed rest in a protracted visit to his native country. 195 Prior to leaving for Europe, Dols was informed what would be in store for him upon his return to Montana: all of Beaverhead County, located in the southwest corner of the territory. It was the largest county in Montana covering over 14,400 square kilometers (5,500 square miles). In September of 1886, Dols dutifully took up his new pastorate; he built a residence in the town of Lauren but shortly thereafter began construction of another rectory and church (dedicated to St. Rose of Lima), in Dillon. 193 Seghers to Dols, July [undecipherable], 1883, Oregon City Letterbook, Archives of the Archdiocese of Portland, Palladino, Indian and White, 1st ed., Ibid.

286 257 The new church was dedicated by Bishop Brondel on August 19, four years in Dillon, Palladino writes: Of Dols s Father Dols worked with zeal and success four years on this field, the homes of Catholics and non-catholics alike being always open to him, extending to him, wheresoever he went, a hearty welcome and a generous hospitality. 197 On February 25, 1891, 198 Dols completed his assignment in Dillon and moved to Great Falls as its first pastor. The town and surrounding areas counted about 1000 Catholics. 199 There he remained until his death on May 30, 1898, at the age of fifty. 200 Upon his arrival with Dols on the North Pacific Coast, Emil Kauten was assigned as assistant pastor of St. James Parish in Vancouver. Only three months later, in January, 1876, he was sent as assistant to Father Francis X. Prefontaine at Our Lady of Good Help Parish in Seattle. Already mentioned in an earlier chapter, Prefontaine was a French Canadian from Montreal, having arrived in Nesqually in Considered the founder of the church in and around Puget Sound and in particular, Seattle, Prefontaine was very much a loner and was notorious for not getting along with other clergy. 201 Almost certainly it was a most difficult assignment for the young priest, not only for the extraordinary distances involved in ministering to the Catholics in the area, (he regularly visited the Puget Sound missions including Port Townsend, San Juan Islands, Port Gamble, Steilacoom and Olympia 202 ), but even more for the difficulties involved in working with Prefontaine. In August 1878 Kauten was given particular responsibility for the Tulalip Indian Agency while still with Prefontaine but was 196 Ibid., Also noted in: Verhaag, Louis, Mission of Dillon, Montana, Reminiscences and Current Topics of the Ecclesiastical Province of Oregon, II, no.1, (1898), Ibid., Brondel, John Baptist, Notebook of Events in the Diocese of Helena, Archives of the Diocese of Helena. 199 Lawrence B. Palladino, S.J., Indian and White in the Northwest: A History of Catholicity in Montana 1831 to 1891, 2nd ed. (Lancaster, PA: Wickersham Publishing Company, 1922), Cyril Pauwelyn, The Beginnings and Growth of the Catholic Church in the State of Montana, Acta et Dicta: A Collection of Historical Data regarding the Origin and Growth of the Catholic Church in the Northwest, V, no 1, (1917), Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, Catholic Sentinel, (Portland), June 7, 1900.

287 258 reassigned altogether in December of 1879 to St. Francis Xavier Parish in Cowlitz. Of the move Schoenberg writes: This highly individualistic priest, [Prefontaine] with an almost chronic aversion for other clerics, finally got rid of his assistant, Father Kauten Shortly after arriving in Cowlitz, Kauten became embroiled in a property dispute with his predecessor and elder Louvanist, Peter Hylebos. Though Hylebos s side of the dispute is not preserved, two letters by Kauten to Bishop Junger expressed in bitter terms his anger at Hylebos s having removed from the Cowlitz parish house and church almost everything of value, including bed sheets, altar linens and saddles. First, Kauten expressed to his bishop his contentment at the assignment he had received: My mission, thank God, has been a consoling one to me ever since I came here, as far as the spiritual welfare of my parishioners is concerned. At Easter, I had 133 communions here, 2 at Cathamet and 4 at Kalama. One family here, that had been quasi-follower of [undecipherable], made their Easter duties and two more are coming to church again, but have not yet approached the sacraments. I am in hopes they soon will. Only for temporal matters, I would be as happy as a king, but yet if it could not be helped [emphasis in original], I would and should be satisfied. 204 He then expressed his contempt for the priest who had treated him so shabbily: Before I go any further, let me remark, what you know to be so, (this between you and I), that the Rev. Hylebos is tricky, bold, and I might add, shameless. This seems hard, but it is what by experience I know. You tell me that the Rev. Hylebos took only what belonged to him or what he acquired, well then, for pity sake, why did he not take the church along too! You wrote to me once and told me also at Vancouver, that you mean that at every missionary station there should be the necessaries at the house. Well now are not sheets, blankets, towels necessary in a house? And did he leave even the corner of either of these? No! Did he leave any altar linens? Come and see. 205 This and a second letter to the bishop continued to harp at some length over Kauten s issues with Hylebos. If nothing else, they illustrate how difficult life could be 203 Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, Kauten (Cowlitz Prairie) to Junger (Vancouver), September 22, Archives of the Archdiocese of Seattle. 205 Ibid.

288 259 in what even then were impoverished conditions and how easily squabbling over what little was available could develop among the clergy. 206 Kauten remained pastor of Cowlitz until Thereafter he would became one of the primary players in a most significant moment in the history of the Catholic community in Spokane. Previously tended to almost exclusively by the Jesuits, Spokane had been experiencing a period of extensive growth making it necessary for the bishop of Nesqually, Aegidius Junger, and the Jesuit superior, Joseph Cataldo, to divide the city in quadrants, the Nesqually diocese taking responsibility for three of the quadrants, each eventually to become a parish, while the Jesuits would continue to control the fourth. Following the division Kauten was assigned by Junger as pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish located south of the Spokane River. 208 In 1898 Kauten purchased the property upon which the future cathedral church would be built. 209 He began construction on the grand new church for Spokane in 1902 though he was no longer pastor when it was finally completed and dedicated in November, In 1902 he returned to Seattle to serve as chaplain at Providence Hospital and was involved in the construction of the Providence Sisters new hospital there. Further, 206 Evidently, the passing of years healed the hard feelings between them for Hylebos served as assistant priest at Kauten s silver anniversary mass and as toastmaster at the banquet that followed in June of 1900 at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Spokane. Spokane Review, June 14, The Inland Catholic: Jubilee Edition, (Spokane), December, 1938, Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, 374. The basic parish divisions of the central area of Spokane remain along these lines to this day. The Jesuit presence is now limited to St. Aloysius Parish which encompasses Gonzaga University. Kauten s role as founder of the parish merited mention in a recent lecture given by Bishop William S. Skylstad, President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, at The American College in December 2005; see William S. Skylstad, "The Church at a New Frontier," Origins 35, no. 29 (2006). 209 Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, Ibid., 449. The church building was completed under the rectorate of his successor, fellow Louvanist, Alphonsus Aloysius Verhagen. Verhagen ( ), was a native of Beekendonk (Netherlands). He entered the American College in September 1889 as a student for Nesqually. He was ordained a priest in Louvain s Sint-Kwinten s church on June 29, 1892 and departed for Nesqually in September of the same year. See: Album Alumnorum Collegii americani Immaculatae Conceptionis B.M.V., Pars 4, Archives of The American College, vol. IV (Louvain: ), 208. With the erection of the Diocese of Spokane in 1913 Verhagen was incardinated in the new diocese where he was serving already as pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes. He was strongly rumored to be the first name on the terna for the new diocesan bishop but was not chosen. See Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, With the erection of Spokane Our Lady of Lourdes church was established as the new diocese s cathedral. This author was ordained a priest in Kauten and Verhagen s neo-romanesque edifice.

289 260 Kauten served the diocese as its chancellor until his death, which took place on January 7, Lemmens Begins His Mission on Vancouver Island John Nicholas Lemmens was a native of Schimmert, Netherlands. He and his four siblings received a thorough Catholic education, John being sent to grammar school in Herve, Belgium and later, evidencing an interest in the priesthood, to the minor seminary in Rolduc. 212 He was considered... a very clever student... excelling in the classics, modern languages and mathematics. He was gifted in music and so was given both singing and piano lesson.... He also became an accomplished pianist and composer. 213 His sense of a missionary calling at first focused on the Chinese missions but his father rejected that possibility due to the persecutions taking place there at the time. As a second option, he looked towards Vancouver Island... the greatest challenge in all the world He was admitted to the American College on August 12, 1872 and actually arrived on the 5th of October. 215 He was ordained to the priesthood on Holy Saturday, 1875 by the nuncio in Brussels, Archbishop Cattani. Unfortunately, before he could be sent to the missions, he had to spend almost a year at his home to recuperate from tuberculosis. As if to fortify himself for all that was to come, before leaving for his new mission Lemmens took time to visit the previously mentioned Belgian mystic and stigmatic, Louise Lateau, in Bois d Haine, an experience that clearly made a great impression on the young priest: We were convinced that by the Grace of God, we were in the presence of a saint. 216 By mid- June 1876 Lemmens was well enough to finally depart for North America Kauten Biographical Summary. Archives of the Archdiocese of Seattle. 212 Vera McIver, "Bishop J. N. Lemmens: 5th Bishop of Victoria, 2002," Unpublished Manuscript, p. 3-4, Archives of the Diocese of Victoria, Victoria. 213 Ibid. 214 Ibid., p Album Alum. II, Eindelijk, men is overtuigd dat men voor eene heilige staat die van God door buitengewone genade begunstigd wordt. Lemmens (Leuven) to his parents, July 8, Photstatic copy, Archives of the Diocese of Victoria. Translation provided by Vera McIver. 217 Album Alum. II, 214. McIver, "Lemmens, p. 4.

290 261 Lemmens joined up with his friend, Joseph Nicolaye 218 and fellow American College student, Alphonse Bronsgeest, and together the three men traveled to Liverpool, then to New York and Philadephia, by land to San Francisco, and having missed the bimonthly ship to Victoria, they traveled overland to Portland, Tacoma and Seattle, in each place visiting the resident American College priests. 219 From Portland he wrote his family of his impressions of the new world he was discovering stage by stage: I have seen a lot since my last letter, but after all my travels, what impresses me most is how big the world really is; everybody knows this, but you have to take an ocean and a country like America hour by hour and step by step, to feel the vastness. 220 Of American ways and customs he noted: If anybody tries to sell liquor on Sunday, he is put in jail. The food in the restaurants is good and not expensive. The Americans don t drink beer and wine with their meals, only water with ice in it and coffee Joseph Nicolaye may have been a student at the American College in Louvain; Moser and Steckler both write that he was but there is no record of him in the Album Alumnorun nor are there any of the usual application or dimissorial letters on file in the Archives of the American College. He is not among those alumni listed in Van der Heyden s history of The American College. See: Moser, Reminiscences, 146. Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., 136, Joseph Van der Heyden, The Louvain American College: (Louvain: Fr. & R. Ceuterick, 1909), 395. He is listed in Sauter as an alumnus of the American College, though Sauter s citation makes note only of a letter from Nicolaye to John De Neve held in the Archives of The American College, dated September 10, 1889; see Sauter, American College, 272. The letter s contents are inconclusive as to the perplexing question of his possible status as a former student. Until more substantial evidence to the contrary should come forward, this writer will trust the authenticity of the oldest source, the Album Alumnorum, in the matter and will not include Nicolaye among the alumni of the American College on the North Pacific Coast. Nevertheless, Nicolaye closely associated himself with the priests of the American College and wrote often to the college s rector over the years. During the episcopacies of Lemmens and Christie at the end of the century and the first years of Orth s, Nicolaye served as the diocese s vicar general. He would play a key role in the forced resignation of Orth and was one of the names on the terna sent to Rome following Orth s resignation. He was probably not selected by Rome for the episcopacy since to have done so would have lent credence to the charges made against Orth. The Orth affair will be discussed in a succeeding chapter. See McNally, Vineyard, Lemmens (Portland) to his parents, August 16, Photostatic copy, Archives of the Diocese of Victoria. Also see McIver, "Lemmens, p Sedert den datum van dien laatsten brief heb ik werkelijk veel gezien, maar de hoofdindruk dien de reis op mij gemaakt heeft bij al het varen en vooruitstoomen dat geen einde schijnt te nemen, is, dat de wereld machtig groot is; dat weet iedereen maar men moet den oceaan en een land als America uur voor uur en stap voor stap als t ware nagaan om deze onmeetbaarheid te gevoelen. Ibid. Translation provided by Vera McIver.

291 262 The houses in the countryside don t look like much, most of them more like wooden shacks, each house set apart.... The first time we met Hollanders was in Cincinnati. In the time of a few minutes we were with 16 Hollanders together in the house of a brother of a Dutch Jesuit, and I can assure you that we drank a good glass of American wine to the Fatherland. All of them were Catholics. We noticed how children of rich parents walked barefoot over here.... Right now we are guests at the palace of the Archbishop of Oregon; although the palace is built of wood, it nevertheless is beautiful, and we all have a special room. On Sunday, 6 Aug, we celebrated a High Mass. Mr. Bronsgeest officiated, Mr. Nicolaye said the homily in German, because it is a German parish, and I played the organ.... Everything has gone real well, we are not tired, nor sick; I even think that the change in climate is doing me good, very good indeed, at least if a good appetite is a sign of health. People there eat meat three times a day. We never were served bacon yet, those are just rumors die daar op den Zondag sterke dranken verkoopt wordt achter slot gebracht. Het eten in de hotels is goed en niet al te duur; de Amerikanen drinken onder het eten geen bier noch wijn, maar alleen water met ijs in, en koffie.... Op het platte land zag het er met de gebouwen minder goed uit; meestal waren het houten hutten, ieder huis apart gelegen.... In Cincinnati hebben wij de eerste Hollanders aangetroffen. In een huis bij de broeder van een Hollandschen Jesuit waren wij in tijd van eenige minuten met 16 Hollanders vereenigd, en ik verzeker u daar werd een duchtig glaasje americaanschen wijn op de gezondheid van het oude vaderland geledigt. Deze Hollanders waren allen katholiek. Het was ons opvallend hoe hier de kinderen van rijke burgers barrevoets liepen.... Zo zijn wij op het oogenblik gelogeerd in het paleis van den Aartsbischop van Oregon, wel is waar een paleis van hout, maar toch en schoon huis, wij hebben ieder een bijzondere kamer. Op Zondag, 6 Augustus hebben wij te Omaha eene plechtige hoogmis gehouden. Mr. Bronsgeest deed de Mis, Mr Nicolaye hield eene preek in het duitsch wijl het eene duitsche parochie is, en ik speelde het orgel.... Alles is goed afgeloopen; wij zijn niet moede, nog veel minder ziek; ik vind zelfs dat de verandering van klimaat gunstig op mij werkt, zeer gunstig, ten minste als goede appetijt een teeken van gezondheid is. Men eet hier overal driemaal per dag vleesch. Men heeft ons nog geen spek voor gezet; dat zijn praatjes. Ibid.

292 263 They finally arrived in Victoria on August 19, 1876 and were welcomed to the diocese by Seghers, Jonckau and Leroy. 222 Seghers was not one to leave a new priest idling about Victoria getting acclimated. He put Lemmens to work in the missions almost immediately. By September 8th, he and Lemmens were already on their way to Lemmens s new assignment, the founding of a new mission at Nanaimo under the patronage of St. Peter. He was installed as pastor by Seghers on Sunday, the 10th of September. 223 Nanaimo had seen its first European settlers arrive in 1849; three years later coal was discovered in the area, which resulted in the Hudson Bay Company establishing a fort there. The coalfields attracted miners from Australia and Great Britain which moved Bishop Demers to purchase land for a church and parish house in A small chapel and house were built thereafter. The parish was served by the priests in Victoria until Lemmens s arrival. 224 It was not long before Lemmens would have additional help with his mission. By June 1877 he wrote to his brothers that two Sisters of St. Ann had arrived in Nanaimo and already set up a school for girls. 225 By September the school counted 40 children,... among whom were the children of a Protestant minister. 226 It seems that isolation, deprivation and shared need opened the door to the developing a personal relationship with that protestant minister, something that must have been inconceivable to the priest before he began his missionary life. He wrote of this development in a matter of fact manner: The gentleman pesters me constantly by inviting me for the midday meal; I have done it a few times. After dinner we talked about religion; he is quite a learned man and it looks like he refuses to become Catholic. His wife has promised to come to Mass McIver, "Lemmens, p Ibid., p Ibid. 225 Lemmens (Nanaimo) to his brothers, June 12, Photostatic copy, Archives of the Diocese of Victoria. Translation provided by Vera McIver waaronder ook de kinderen van eenen protestantischen domine. Lemmens (Nanaimo) to his parents, September 5, Photostatic copy, Archives of the Diocese of Victoria. Translation by John A. Dick. 227 Deze heer valt mij voortdurend lastig met mij uit te noodigen om het middagmaal bij hem te komen gebruiken; ik heb dit een paar maal gedaan. Na het eten werd [undecipherable word] over godsdienst gesproken; hij is een tamelijk geleerd man en schijnt veel neiging te hebben om

293 264 The friendly relationship did not mean however that they were not still competing with one another; just a few lines later, Lemmens added: The big news here is that our new church is being built; it is already under a roof and will be ready by Christmas. Here in Nanaimo there are several Protestant churches, but ours will be bigger and much nicer than all of them.... The Protestants are jealous and are surprised that we build such churches. 228 Lemmens began studying Chinook and the other indigenous languages nor was his musical talent was not lost in his work in Nanaimo. Not only did he form a choir for the liturgy he also played a brass instrument in the community band even composing a special march for it. 229 remembered for by his coworkers: His love of music was one of the qualities that he was One evening, intending to board a steamer in the early morning, he played music all night and became so interested in it that he forgot all about the steamer till after it had sailed. Taking out his watch: Gracious! he exclaimed, I missed the boat! 230 Lemmens s ministry in Nanaimo continued through the following years until September of 1882 when Bishop John Brondel brought him to Victoria to serve as pastor of the cathedral parish. 231 Vincent McNally, as he writes of Seghers and Brabant, harshly judges Lemmens, whose... Jansenistic spirituality helped him almost Katholiek te worden. Zijn vrouw heeft beloofd naar de Mis te komen. Ibid. Translation by Joske Dick t Hart. 228 Het groote nieuws hier is dat onze nieuwe kerk in aanbouw is; zij is reeds onder dak en zal voor Kerstmis moeten klaar zijn. Hier in Nanaimo zijn verscheidene Protestantse kerken; doch de onze zal grooter en veel schooner zijn dan die allen.... De Protestanten worden jaloers en staan verwonderd dat wij zulke kerk bouwen. Ibid. Translation by Joske Dick. 229 Joseph Leterme, "Lives of Former Bishops," The British Columbia Orphans' Friend Historical Number: , December 1913, Ibid. 231 McIver, "Lemmens, p. 12. Lemmens (Victoria) to his parents, September 20, Photostatic copy, Archives of the Diocese of Victoria. That Lemmens was blessed with a lighter spirit and a bright sense of humor is evidenced in the title he gave for a diary of a missionary excursion he took in 1883 to Kuyoquot after a thirteen day journey from Victoria: Haps and Mishaps, Accidental Incidents, Incidental Accidents, Occurring Adventures, Eventful Casualties, Occasional Fortuities and Contingencies. Detailed Minutes, Minute Details of Solid Facts. Moser, Reminiscences, 133.

294 265 celebrate his failure as the will of God Clearly his contemporaries in the church did not view Lemmens so critically for in 1888 he would be named bishop of Vancouver Island, following in the footsteps of Seghers and Brondel. 233 Two years had intervened between the arrival of John Leroy and that of John Lemmens. What seemed to Seghers like a trickle of priests coming to Vancouver Island from the American College was cause for the young bishop to express his frustration with the college s leadership. In a letter to his old friend back in Louvain, Sebastian Goens, Seghers wrote shortly after Lemmens s arrival in 1876: You are, I am sure, aware of the accident that happened to F. Brabant. He is now, thank God, perfectly well and celebrates Mass. F. Lemmens sickness is, as you very well say, a very painful trial. You ought to exert yourself, and get me a good, efficient clergy. What can I do here, if I get from Louvain a priest every five [emphasis in the original; the word is underscored three times by Seghers] years? That is four priests in twenty [emphasis in original] years. And before the twenty years will have elapsed, I shall be long dead and buried.... Now, for God s sake, do not forget your friend of old, his Diocese and his flock. If I had lost F. Brabant what would I have done, after all the sacrifices we had made for the sake of the West Coast? 234 Seghers s hectoring of Goens did little good; two more years would pass before the next recruit from the American College would get off the boat in Victoria, (John Althoff in 1878). 232 McNally, Vineyard, 112. The charge of possessing a Jansenistic spirituality is based by McNally on extant homilies written by Lemmens much earlier in his life. McNally also claims that Lemmens was unable to learn the native languages yet other sources indicate that he was something of a linguist in the matter and actually composed a Nootkan dictionary. 233 "The Bishops of Vancouver Island and Victoria," The Torch 1946, Before leaving Lemmens for the time being, it should be noted that a small biography of him was published in Dutch in his home town in 1990; efforts to secure an original copy from the author were not successful. See: J. H. M. Nijsten, Mgr. J. N. Lemmens: Belevenissen van een Schimmertse Missiebisschop tussen de indianen (Schimmert: Heemkundevereniging Schimmert, 1990). 234 Seghers (Cowichan) to Goens, January 10, Archives of The American College, Louvain.

295 266 Bronsgeest: Oregon s Fifteenth Louvanist Even as Bishop Seghers and the Catholics of Vancouver Island could count only six Louvanists in their midst, Oregon City was receiving its fifteenth priest from the American College: Alphonse Bronsgeest. Bronsgeest entered the American College on the 5th of October, He received his minor orders and diaconate while in Louvain before leaving the college for two further years of study in Innsbruck. 236 He was ordained to the priesthood on January 15, 1876 and departed for America in June of the same year, along with Lemmens and Nicolaye. No record of Bronsgeest s first assignment has been found by this author. On June 7, 1881, Seghers wrote to Bronsgeest that he was to prepare himself to move to The Dalles, a small community in eastern Oregon located along the southern bank of the Columbia River: I have before me your letters of May 30 and June 3 and am sorry to learn the bad news about the scarlet fever. You will make it a duty to visit all the missions of your county, to collect all that is collectable, to pay your debts, settle your accounts wind up all your business and prepare yourself to move to the Dalles and take care of that important mission. You will endeavor to show docility toward the Bishop and kindness toward the people, [undecipherable] at the Dalles, where you will have all the ordinary faculties you had before.... I entrust you one of the most important missions of the diocese, and I have confidence enough in you to expect that you will be the right man in the right place. Your missions will be both Wasco and Grant counties, the latter to be visited two to three times a year. 237 Clearly, Bronsgeest was the right man in the right place for he remained pastor of The Dalles until his death in December His many years in The Dalles were marked by substantial accomplishments, the first being the laying of the cornerstone for a new building for St. Mary s Academy, established some years earlier by Vermeersch. 235 Album Alum. II, Sauter, American College, Seghers (Portland) to Bronsgeest, June 7, 1881, Oregon City Letterbook, Archives of the Archdiocese of Portland, 91. The archivist in Portland no longer allows the letterbooks to be accessed by researchers due to their extremely fragile condition. This author was able to access the contents of the letterbooks by way of microfilm copies in the Archives of the Jesuits of the Oregon Province at Gonzaga University (Spokane). 238 O'Connor and Gaire, Baker,

296 267 The celebration was presided over by Seghers with the assistance of fellow-louvanist, Patrick Gibney, who delivered the discourse on the occasion. 239 Bronsgeest oversaw construction of the St. Joseph School for boys, which was completed and blessed by him in January In 1890, Bronsgeest began collecting funds for a new St. Peter s church in The Dalles; soon thereafter the building project commenced but had to be stopped mid-course due to crop failures and a fire that destroyed eighteen city blocks of the town s business center. In 1894, the town was flooded by a swollen Columbia River, further delaying construction of the church. Work on the project recommenced in earnest in 1896, the result being a grand gothic structure that stands to this day. 240 In 1908, Bronsgeest was appointed Vicar General of the Diocese of Baker, following the recently deceased John Heinrich in the position. In 1909, he was made a Domestic Prelate to His Holiness, the Pope, and invested on April 16, 1910 by Bishop O Reilly. Upon that bishop s appointment to the see of Lincoln, Nebraska, Bronsgeest was named administrator of the diocese and remained so until his final sickness and death. Bronsgeest s years in The Dalles were not free from controversy, though seemingly, in retrospect, of minor consequence. Preserved in the Oregon City letterbooks are a number of letters between Bronsgeest and Seghers over the matter of Bronsgeest s beard. Seghers wrote: I avail myself of this opportunity to insist on your perfect compliance with the discipline of the Church in the shaving of the beard. Now that Easter is passed and the weather moderate, shave off your beard at once and let it grow no more. The Bishops of this Province have agreed, as I wrote before, to be strict in this matter; and in matters ecclesiastical, the very last person you have to consult is an American doctor. 241 Evidently, Bronsgeest had secured the medical advice of a local doctor, that he should be allowed a beard for medical reasons (... a great protection against neuralgy. ). 242 For Seghers, the only matter of importance was that of strict obedience 239 Ibid., Bronsgeest s building is now a civic museum. 241 Seghers to Bronsgeest, March 28, 1883, Oregon City Letterbook, Archives of the Archdiocese of Portland, Seghers to Dr. A. D. Gilmer (The Dalles), May 8, Oregon City Letterbook, Archives of the Archdiocese of Portland, 75.

297 268 to the episcopacy. Bronsgeest was not molified; he evidently then went over Seghers s head by writing directly to the cardinal prefect of the Propaganda Fide in Rome to secure his permission. Seghers responded: By a letter dated March 30, the Cardinal-Prefect of the Propaganda instructs me to examine your application for the permission to wear the beard. You will, therefore, 1 o inform me whether you wear beard before the granting of the permission applied for, 2 o give me the address of the doctor or doctors who certify the necessity of the beard and the condition of your health, 3 o, state, whether to the best of your belief there is no other means to protect yourself from the evils you wish to guard against by letting your beard grow. Upon receipt of your answer I will at once forward my [undecipherable] according to the request of His Eminence. 243 Such unvarnished disagreements documented in letters such as these, small though they are, offer insight into the characters of the men involved as well as the kind of concerns bishops and priests (and Roman cardinals even) spent their time and considerable energies contending with on a daily basis. The small story of Bronsgeest s beard, perhaps more than churches built or schools founded, reveals a determined man willing to challenge the episcopal authority even as it shows us a determined bishop (Seghers) bent on gaining control of his clergy and insisting on his authority in all matters pertaining to their lives. Bronsgeest s confrontative character with regards to episcopal authority would show itself again in a more serious matter after the turn of the century. He would be one of several priests involved in protesting the erection of the Diocese of Baker City, a story to be told in a later chapter. Donckele, Althoff, Eussen and Capelle Arrive Charles John Seghers s final year in his struggling island diocese was a notable one in terms of progress made on the missionary priest front; Vancouver Island received three new American College men in the months before Seghers s move to the Archdiocese of Oregon City. A fourth young man in the group was destined for Seghers s new archdiocese. 243 Seghers to Bronsgeest, May 2, 1883, Oregon City Letterbook, Archives of the Archdiocese of Portland, 63. There is no further letter in the letterbook to show how the issue was eventually resolved. In a 1912 photograph of the diocesan clergy, however, Bronsgeest is wearing a very full beard. See: O'Connor and Gaire, Baker, 127.

298 269 The first of the four was Gustave Donckele from Bruges (Brugge). He entered the American College in 1875 at the age of twenty-four, having been accepted as a seminarian for the Diocese of Vancouver Island. He was ordained a priest in Brussels on March 31, 1877 and departed the college for Victoria on October 14th of the same year. 244 John Althoff came to Louvain s American College from the Diocese of Roermond. He also entered the college in 1875 as a student for the Diocese of Vancouver Island. He was ordained a priest on June 22, 1878 and departed for Victoria with Donckele in October, Likewise, Louis Eussen, also of Roermond, entered the college in October of 1875 and was assigned to the Diocese of Vancouver Island. He was ordained with Althoff on June 22, 1878 and with the others, left for Victoria in October of that year. Victor Capelle from the Diocese of Namur joined the American College one year before the others, in October of 1874 and was attached as a seminarian to the Archdiocese of Oregon City. With the other three, he left for North America in October, Donckele was the first to set foot in Victoria on November 20, 1877, arriving from Portland, where he had spent just two days before continuing his journey to the north. 246 Upon landing in Victoria, so it was reported, he was so sickly that John Jonckau remarked with barely disguised cynicism, Well, what an acquisition! How soon shall we have to get a coffin for him? 247 Seghers kept Donckele in Victoria for a year, then on November 8, 1878, accompanied the young man to the mission in Cowichan to serve as assistant to Father Rondeault. Once in Cowichan, he spent much of his daily life aboard his canoe moving from island to island visiting the native communities pertaining to his mission. He remained in this mission until 1890 when, by chance, he came upon a newly erected but as yet unoccupied school on Kuper Island; the boarding school had been constructed by the Canadian government to train young Indian boys in the ways of Western civilization. Donckele reported his find to thenbishop, John Lemmens, who gave him permission to request that the government pass 244 Album Alum. II, Ibid., Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., 183.

299 270 the school into Catholic hands. Such was accomplished and Donckele was made responsible for its development and administration. Donckele s initial efforts to place Catholic laymen as teachers and principal were foiled by the teachers inability to adequately control the young boys of the school. Donckele was forced to step in and take over the operation himself. Soon enough, sufficient success was had under his direction that girls were also taken in by the school. Of the school s progress, it was reported: In a short time the boys were working quietly in the fields, in the shoeshop and at carpentry, and they were taught the three R s. Not only this but a band was formed, the Government, of course, supplying all the instruments.... The girls were taught domestic work. Under the instruction of the Sisters they cooked, washed, ironed and sewed nor is the inevitable mending overlooked. 248 Seghers had more ambitious plans for John Althoff once he had arrived with Louis Eussen. That Althoff had arrived in a world and church unlike that which he had known in Europe was made clear at the moment of his first encounter with Seghers: When Althoff and Eussen drove up to the bishop s residence the day of their arrival, Althoff, a man of wealthy background, pulled off his kid gloves and asked the archbishop if the domestic could help with the baggage. The archbishop said that he could, rose, rolled up his sleeves, and went to help in the unpacking. 249 Whatever Seghers may have thought of Althoff at that moment he nevertheless put the fresh missionary to studying both Russian and Indian dialects for five months in Victoria, then made him part of one of his final initiatives as bishop of Vancouver Island. He booked passage for the two of them to the mining town of Wrangell in southeastern Alaska where he intended to establish Althoff as the first resident parish priest in that vast land. Alaska had been purchased by the United States from Russia in 1867 and Wrangell had since become a base for the American military. The presence of the 247 Mary Theodore, Heralds, Ibid., Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D.,

300 271 military brought with it crime and disorder 250 due to dissolute soldiers stationed there. Among other vices, they brought alcohol to the Indians. 251 The town Althoff found himself in was described by the American naturalist, John Muir, in 1879 in these words: It was a lawless graggle of wooden huts and houses, built in crooked lines, wrangling around the boggy shore of the island for a mile or so in the general form of the letter S, without the slightest subordination to the point of the compass or to building laws of any kind. Stumps and logs like precious monuments adorned its two streets, each stump and log, on account of the moist climate, moss-grown and tufted with grass and bushes, but muddy on the sides below the limit of the bogline. The ground in general was oozy [sic], mossy bog on a foundation of jagged rocks, full of concealed pitholes. These picturesque rock, bog and stump obstructions, however, were not so very much in the way, for there were no wagons or carriages there. There was not a horse on the island. The domestic animals were represented by chickens, a lonely cow, a few sheep, and hogs of a breed well calculated to deepen and complicate the mud of the streets. 252 The shock of viewing his new home from the deck of the Olympia must have been substantial to the young priest accustomed to wearing kid gloves. On May 3rd Seghers and Althoff landed and secured the use of a hall for the first mass in the town to be offered the following day; both whites and Indians attended. Althoff was introduced by Seghers as the community s new pastor and the parish was established under the name of Saint Rose of Lima, the first saint of the Americas. A second service was held the same night by Seghers, which was itself followed by Seghers s offering of a long instruction to the Thlingit Indians. 253 Seghers initiated a parish register by recording within it these opening words: In the year of the Lord one thousand eighteen hundred and seventy-nine on the fourth day of May which was the Feast of the Solemnity of St. Joseph and the Third Sunday after Easter, We, Charles John Seghers, Archbishop of Emensensis, in partibus infidelibus [sic], have appointed the Reverend John Althoff, missionary priest of this mission, which we place under the assistance and patronage of St. Rose of Lima, there being in this location many Catholics from Europe and not a few Indians Vincent Yzermans, Saint Rose of Wrangell: The Church's Beginning in Southeast Alaska (Saint Paul, MN: North Central Publishing Co., 1979), Ibid., Ibid., Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, Yzermans, Saint Rose of Wrangall, 24. Yzermans does not get the Latin correct; it should read: in partibus infidelium.

301 272 Thereafter, Seghers arranged for the local Catholics to build Althoff a house and church on property recently secured for the purpose. As for Althoff s impressions of his new home, he wrote to the Catholic Sentinel: The less we say about the city of Wrangle [sic] the better as there is no earthly probability of using the least encomiun in speaking of that place. 255 Presbyterian missionaries had been in Wrangell already a year before Althoff and Seghers arrived. The principal Presbyterian in town, Mrs. Anna McFarland, was not pleased with the intrusion of the Catholics into the region and wrote: The Roman Catholics are invading our ground. Among the passengers on the Olympia a week ago was a Roman bishop and a priest. They at once established a mission. The bishop made an attack on Mr.Young the following Sabbath morning. He was trying to get the people to make the sing of the cross, but none would respond save Shus-taks, the wicked chief. This made the bishop angry, and he broke out as follows: Why don t you do as I told you? Are you afraid of Mr. Young? You are not Mr. Young s slaves. He is not a true minister anyway. No man can be a true minister and have a wife. Look at me; I am a true minister; I am all the same as Jesus Christ and I dont have a wife, and much more of the same kind. The Indians are so fond of outside display and show that the Roman Church would suit them in that respect. But we can take courage as we remember that the Lord is on our side. 256 Seghers and Althoff then traveled to Sitka by steamer, where the archbishop announced to the Catholic population that he was establishing a parish there as well; it would be dedicated to St. Gregory Nazianzen and Althoff would serve as its pastor though he would maintain his residence in Wrangell. The next day, Seghers left for Victoria to celebrate his final mass and deliver his last sermon before going on to Portland for his new assignment. Of Althoff s life in Wrangell, the following remembrance was recorded some years later by one who knew him: Those Wrangel [sic] years were isolated, inactive years, if so we may call the hidden life of our Blessed Lord. The energies of Father Althoff s athletic frame were confined to saying his daily Mass, at which, Sundays included, he was the congregation and celebrant. The miners admired the fine priest, with the pleasant, friendly word suited to each; they had enough religious sense to understand his unselfish reason for being among them; but they were godless, the country was 255 Ibid. The name of the town is spelled in the historical sources both as Wrangell and as Wrangle. The modern spelling is Wrangell. 256 Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., In fact, Mr. Young s own record of Seghers s arrival and their acquaintance is decidedly more positive as Steckler makes clear.

302 273 godless, and they wanted no change. In such an environment little could be done with the Indians. 257 What then did Althoff do with his time in Wrangell? Sister Mary Theodore recalls the pious character of the man: Fr. Althoff prayed. Piety was his most striking characteristic. As iron seeks the magnet so did he the Tabernacle; there, he would be seen, kneeling in rapt adoration, sometimes for hours. An onlooker could not but feel that it was the outpouring of his burning love of God. He could go to confession but once a year. Priests have to do that, too, you know. When he wanted to go the holiest even feel the need he opened the Tabernacle door and confessed to its divine Prisoner. 258 Upon returning from Sitka after seeing off Seghers, Althoff found the men of the parish at work on a small home for him along the muddy shore of the harbor. Althoff was not pleased with the makeshift affair and began to clear the land for the new church and then, using his own tools, build his own place there. By May of 1880, he had a 25x45 foot church completed on a hill above the town. 259 Of this church, a pleased bishop, John Brondel, wrote to the Catholic Sentinel (under the pseudonyme North- West ): Sitka: It is refreshing when traveling on steamboat for three or four days through straits and channels, narrows and seas, island, sounds and inlets, viewing nature in all its beauty and grandeur, to land finally where man has built a home, and see the cross-crowned church steeple in immaculate whiteness adorning already the hill where the track of man is hardly perceptible. 260 Brondel arrived in Wrangell on May 10th. The two proceeded the next day to The first thing that attracted our attention was the Indian camp with its burial ground, which has small houses build over the burnt remains of the dead.... On Wednesday 257 Alaska s First Resident Priest, The B.C. Orphan s Friend, Victoria, May The author of this article is identified only as a Missionary S.S.A, most probably, Sister Mary Theodore, S.S.A., author of the previously cited Heralds of Christ the King. Sister Mary Theodore s writings are valuable since they are based on contempoary knowledge of the bishops and priests of Vancouver Island, nevertheless, some of her dates and minor facts are suspect. 258 Mary Theodore, Heralds, Catholic Sentine, June 10, Ibid.

303 274 and Thursday mornings, Father Althoff said Mass at Mr. Haley s, quite a number attending. There were six communions and ten confirmations. 261 On May 30th, Brondel blessed Althoff s new church and once again, Althoff was left alone in his isolated mission. In the end, Althoff s work in Wrangell and surrounding region was unsuccessful, at least by common standards; in his five years as the only Catholic priest in all of Alaska, Althoff would record only thirty-eight baptisms in the parish record begun by Seghers with such high expectations. 262 During these same years, both Sitka and Wrangell were being left behind by a newly established town to the north where gold had been discovered: Juneau. Althoff followed the miners and in 1882 moved to Juneau himself, setting up a new church in a log cabin. From Juneau he continued to visit Wrangell and Sitka from time to time. 263 In 1882 Althoff returned to Vancouver Island to serve the Nanaimo mission for a period of three years, he then returned to Juneau in 1885 at the direction of the newly returned archbishop, Charles Seghers. With new gold discoveries in the Klondike, Juneau became an important stopping place for the miners of the gold rush, whom Althoff helped materially... and spiritually Althoff s concern for more adequately meeting the spiritual needs of Alaska s people led him to travel to Baltimore to visit Cardinal James Gibbons 265 with the request that the Jesuits and Oblates take over the Alaska mission altogether. Instead, Gibbons counteroffered to have the entire area made into a vicariate apostolic and in so doing also to name Althoff as administrator. Althoff rejected the offer out of hand. In a way Althoff eventually had his concern resolved for after the death of Seghers, the Jesuits, in fact, took over the Alaskan mission in 1887, 266 leaving Althoff 261 Ibid. 262 Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., Yzermans, Saint Rose of Wrangall, Mary Theodore, Heralds, Gibbons, James ( ), a Baltimore native, was ordained a priest in 1861 for that archdiocese. As a young priest, he served as Martin J. Spalding s secretary during the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore. He was thereafter made vicar apostolic of North Carolina. In 1872 he was made bishop of Richmond. In 1877 he became archbishop of Baltimore. Thomas W. Spalding, Gibbons, James, Glazier and Shelley, eds., The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History. John Tracy Ellis, The Life of James Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore, vols. (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Co., 1952). 266 Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D.,

304 275 free to retire from Alaska definitively. For nine years thereafter he served in the Victoria cathedral parish. In 1902, he moved to Nelson, British Columbia, where he lived out the remainder of his life. He was particularly remembered for his energetic care of the men of Nelson who were being felled by the notorious flu epidemic of He himself died on December 30, Louis Eussen s missionary life would not be nearly so long as that of John Althoff, his friend and companion from Louvain. He was stationed by Seghers in 1879 as the first priest to serve the mission in Alberni. Noted by his Louvain companions as the sort of person who never broke a rule, not even smoking surrepticiously, 268 Eussen was evidently also a frail man and his health was seriously compromised by the efforts required of him in his primitive mission. In his rounds he was often obliged to sleep in the woods rolled up in his blanket. He caught cold on the damp ground, and the cold developed into lung trouble with hemorrages. 269 During one such crisis in the winter months he recognized that he had to reach civilization as quickly as possible if he were to survive. He then began an extraordinary trek through snowy woods and over mountains in the dead of winter to reach Nanaimo, a journey on foot that covered sixtythree miles in three days and this while carrying a pack of thirty pounds. Shortly thereafter, with the hope of recuperating, he returned to his family in the Netherlands. After a year in his homeland he was preparing to return to Victoria when the hemorrage returned and ended his life in The fourth Louvanist to arrive in 1878, Victor Capelle, was distinct from his travel companions in two ways: first, he was from Wallonia, the French-speaking part of Belgium, and second, he was attached not to Vancouver Island as were Donckele, Althoff and Eussen, but to the far less primitive Archdiocese of Oregon City. According to a letter from Adrian Croquet to Sebastian Goens in Louvain, Capelle was first assigned as chaplain to the sisters and the sick at St. Vincent Hospital in 267 The B.C. Orphan s Friend, May Mary Theodore, Heralds, Ibid. 270 Ibid.,

305 276 Portland. 271 By the time Capelle wrote to Goens in December, he had already been transferred to Goens s former parish in Salem. In the December letter, Capelle wrote, I was sent to Salem to replace Father Dieleman (who is now at Astoria) at the end of the month of August His initial experience of his new pastorate was made more difficult by a dangerous bout of sickness:... in the month of October I caught typhoid fever which took me to the gates of eternity; for about two weeks I was between life and death, but since the Lord wants me to work according to my strength for his greatest glory, he allowed the medicines to restore me to health and today I am completely cured, except however that my strength has not yet come back. 273 Of his parish itself, he wrote, The state of affairs at Salem is not so brilliant as in your time; actually I have no more than twelve or fifteen Catholic families, the Church is much too large. 274 Cappelle s actual work in Salem merits only the briefest of notice in the usual sources; the Salem pastor s voyage to Europe found mention in a Letter from Salem in the November 6, 1884 issue of the Catholic Sentinel: Father Capelle, who has been visiting in Europe for the past six months, it is learned by private letter wiritten to a friend in this city, intended to leave Liverpool, England, on the 16th of October for the United States. So by this time he is well on his way home. He is said to have had a very pleasant visit. His many friends in Salem will be much pleased to see him Croquet (Grand Rond) to Goens, January, 20, Archives of The American College, Louvain. A letter from Capelle to Goens is more vague about his station; see: Cappelle (Portland) to Goens, June 29, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 272 J ai été envoyé à Salem pour remplacer Mr Dieleman (qui est maintenant à Astoria) la fin du mois d Août.... Cappelle (Salem) to Goens, December 15, Archives of The American College, Louvain. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB au mois d Octobre j ai attrapé la fièvre typhoïde qui m a conduit jusqu aux portes de l éternité; pendant près de 2 semaines j ai été entre la vie et la mort, mais comme le Seigneur veut que je travaille dans la mesure de mes forces pour sa plus grande gloire, il a permis que les remèdes me rendent la santé et aujourd hui je suis complètement rétabli, sauf cependant mes forces qui ne sont pas encore revenues. Ibid. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB. 274 Les affaires de Salem ne sont plus aussi brillantes que de votre temps; je n ai actuellement pas plus que de 12 a 15 familles Catholiques, l Eglise est beaucoup trop grande. Ibid. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB. 275 Catholic Sentinel, November 6, 1884.

306 277 While Capelle was in Europe in 1884, so was his bishop, Charles John Seghers. One brief mention of Capelle by Seghers in a letter to John De Neve in Louvain indicated that all was not well with the young man, at least in Seghers s eyes: F. Capelle could not decently support himself in Salem, neither is he very much inclined (in acts; for in words est aliud rem ) to use much of his patrimony; how then could he support an assistant besides himself? I am afraid his piety has been gradually leaking out, and he is too prone to listen to bad advisors in Oregon: his salvation would be less hazarded in Belgium. 276 Whatever the seriousness of his leaking piety, and though Seghers seemed to be thinking he should return to his homeland before he was altogether empty, Victor Capelle remained in Oregon for the remainder of his life, dying there in A Summary of the Decade The star of the decade of church work covered in this chapter is indubitably the young bishop of Vancouver Island. Once a sickly and consumptive man with little hope of surviving the rigors of life in the mission diocese he had been adopted into, even to the point of being close to death himself even as Bishop Demers was being buried, he came dramatically back to life once the episcopal ministry had been conferred on his thin shoulders. His indominitable zeal and almost obsessive commitment to tend not just to Vancouver Island but to evangelize Alaska as well, sets the tone of the Louvain mission in the region. Though few others could possibly keep up with him, his pastoral example, moral hectoring, and incessant encouragement to the others made him the leader and model for the other priests serving in his wake. Those others, each in his way and according to his personality, was contributing substantially to the building up of the church in the region of the North Pacific Coast. As the stories of those men are related across the decade of the seventies, one senses already the development of two distinct but overlapping worlds. On the one hand, in and around the bigger cities like Portland and Vancouver (Washington), the fast-paced development of society and church was making the 276 Seghers (Liverpool) to De Neve, August 8, Archives of The American College, Louvain

307 278 environment within which the priests lived more like what we know today, or at least more like what they had known in Europe as younger men. Travel by rail, improved social services, increasing population certainly made these places less wild and wooly than that known in the sixties. The character of the priests work necessarily changed too; they were now serving hundreds and even thousands of souls in well-organized parishes and building ever more elegant churches of stone, brick, and stain-glass. Schools and hospitals were on increasingly firm ground as more and more religious women were brought into the region. They had the resources to begin a substantial newspaper. As the old bishops grew ever older, more of the diocesan administration, itself increasingly demanding, fell into the capable hands of their younger vicar generals. And yes, a number of priests were now living with far less poverty and far more comforts. On the other hand, it is also clear that in the more remote areas severe deprivation abounded and social and ecclesial progress was still hard to come by for the priests serving in the sticks. The regularity of reports of very serious sickness among them is one clue that the wilderness environment that attracted them as idealistic seminarians continued to prevail in the conditions many of them yet faced and had the capacity to still take a heavy toll on their health. In regions such as these, there was a long way to go before the church would find herself to well established and her missionaries able to settle down into a more domestic kind of life. It is these latter priests, still out in the rough, still risking life and limb, still caring for their people one soul at a time, who stand out as the century moves ahead. John Althoff s courage in facing the lonliness of Wrangell and Sitka, the extraordinary sixty-three mile trek of Louis Eussen across snowy mountain and deep valleys while severly ill, or Louis Lambert Conrardy s warm relationship with the Indians in Umatilla, are poignant reminders that being a missionary on the North Pacific Coast could still be a dangerous and heroic enterprise. Be that as it may, all of them, wherever they found themselves, were contributing to something grand. Whether constructing beautiful neo-gothic churches in the big cities for thousands of worshippers or simply enduring the harshest forces nature had to throw at them just so a few far-flung souls might be offered the sacraments, the church was being steadily built person by person, town by town, steeple

308 279 by steeple. Self-sacrifice, wisdom, and tenacity were still the hallmarks of the best priests out there, wherever they were. In spite of its own leadership troubles, the seminary in Louvain continued placing an ever-increasing number of such men across the grand expanse of terrain that encompassed the North Pacific Coast s episcopal province: over thirty Louvanists had landed in the region before this decade ended. The number would double before the next decade was complete. Some of those men were about to rise to a new level of leadership in the church they were so invested in building as the new decade would soon be bringing a dramatic changing of the episcopal guard. They would guide the development of the Catholic Church during, arguably, the most important decade of its history in the region At this point in this work, it is necessary to leave off with individual studies of each of the men arriving from Louvain; over sixty are yet to arrive before the end of 1907, too great for the author to consider their lives and works with any depth. Hereafter, as the priests from the American College who arrived on the North Pacific Coast after 1878 find mention in other contexts, brief biographical details will be provided in the footnotes.

309 CHAPTER VII THE LOUVAIN BISHOPS: Seghers s Transfer to Oregon City In recounting elements of the lives of the Louvain missionaries on the North Pacific Coast the present work has by necessity had to move forward in years and then back again, sometimes leaping among decades with the passing of a paragraph or a page. In recent narratives, it has been necessary to write in an after-the-fact character of the election of a number of Louvain men to the sees of the dioceses that concern us. It is opportune at this juncture to return to 1878 so as to tell the story of several Louvanists rise to positions of episcopal authority in the church of the North Pacific Coast. Their ministry as leaders of the Catholic Church in the region, though brief, would influence the life and character of the church there for decades to come. As we have seen previously, Charles John Seghers was the first of the American College priests to be raised to the episcopacy. Given responsibility for Vancouver Island and Alaska in 1873, Seghers had only five years to lead the large and impoverished diocese. At the same time, both F. N. Blanchet in Oregon City and A. M. A Blanchet in Nesqually were quickly approaching the ends of their lives. In particular, F. N. Blanchet was wearing the years with difficulty; hobbled by a crippled leg, poor eyesight and an increasingly feeble mind, 1 he had already on various occasions suggested to the Propaganda Fide that he be replaced by a younger man, in 1 Patricia Brandt and Lillian A. Pereyra, Adapting in Eden: Oregon's Catholic Minority, (Pullman, WA: Washington State University Press, 2002),

310 281 one case at least, suggesting to them the name of John Fierens. 2 The Roman congregation paid the archbishop little heed until 1876 when he finally submitted his formal resignation. The congregation gave in only partially to his request to be relieved of his episcopal burdens; it recommended to Pope Pius IX that the pontiff appoint not a new ordinary but a coadjutor with right of succession: the young and energetic bishop of Vancouver Island, Charles John Seghers received the papal nod. On December 10, 1878, the official appointment was made by Pope Leo XIII. 3 On April 14, 1879, F. N. Blanchet announced the appointment to his faithful by way of a circular letter printed in the Catholic Sentinel: From the time it has pleased God to send us, in June 1871, an affliction which impaired our right leg, and renders somewhat difficult the visitations of the remote missions of our Archdiocese, we have often thought of retiring form our position. Our affliction increasing with our years we gave at last our resignation in a reunion of the bishops of our Province, in July 1876, and sent it to Rome. But the Holy Father advised us rather to ask a coadjutor, which we did, expecting the matter would be brought to an end in a short time when contrary to our expectations it has taken nearly three years to have it settled. We have therefore much joy in announcing to you that the important affair of the Episcopal succession in this Archdiocese is at last settled. The Most Rev. Charles John Seghers, heretofore Bishop of Vancouver Island, and now Archbishop of Emesa, in partibus, has received the Apostolic Letters whereby he is appointed our coadjutor, with the right o f succession. Notwithstanding his attachment to his diocese, where he enjoyed the love of his diocese, he considered that it was his duty to bow down in submission to the order of the Holy See, and you will be please to learn that his obedience is complete. 4 Seghers did not celebrate the advancement in his ecclesiastical fortunes. To his friend in Belgium, Benoît Van Loo, he wrote: Thank you very much for your kind letter of 26 December and for the good wishes it bears. Your friendship guesses rightly, and you have been able to see from the letter I wrote to Joseph how sorry I am to have to leave the priests, the faithful, the native people, the country to which I am so attached. However, my sacrifice is made and during this present time or towards the end of next summer, please God, I shall transport myself to the field of labor to which His Holiness assigns me, this time, I am sure, never to leave it. 5 2 Ibid., Wilfred P. Schoenberg, S.J., A History of the Catholic Church in the Pacific Northwest; (Washington D.C.: The Pastoral Press, 1987), Catholic Sentinel, May 8, Je vous remercie cordialement pour votre lettre affectueuse du 26 Décembre et les félicitations qu elle contient. Votre amitié a deviné juste, et vous avez pu voir par la lettre que j ai écrite à Joseph combien je suis affligé de devoir quitter des prêtres fidèles, des

311 282 Seghers requested time from F. N. Blanchet to wrap up his affairs in Victoria and, as noted in the previous chapter, took advantage of the months allowed him to accompany John Althoff to his new mission in Wrangell. 6 He celebrated his final mass at St. Andrew s Cathedral and preached his farewell sermon on June 29, 1879; the next day he boarded the ship to Portland accompanied by newly arrived Louvanists, Louis Eussen and Victor Capelle. 7 Two days later, Seghers was met at the wharf in Portland by a great delegation and a carriage with four white horses to carry him to the Cathedral for his formal welcome from F.N. Blanchet. Only ten days further on the peripatetic archbishop had already left Portland by steamer, heading up the Columbia River to commence a remarkable six-month tour across the full expense of the ecclesiastical territories of Oregon, Idaho and Montana. 8 Junger and Brondel Are Consecrated Bishops Even as Seghers s departure from Vancouver Island meant that his former see had to be filled, A. M. A. Blanchet had also reached the end of his productivity as ordinary of the Nesqually diocese. He submitted his resignation to the Vatican in June of Within a few months both sees would be filled with Louvain men, suddenly increasing the number of Louvain bishops in the region from just one to three. Almost certainly under Seghers s influence, John Baptiste Brondel was selected by Pope Leo XIII to replace Seghers in Victoria 9 and Aegidius Junger was named the new bishop of Nesqually. 10 Once Seghers became ordinary in Oregon City in January 1881, 11 the entire North Pacific Coast region from Alaska to Montana was sauvages, un pays auquel je suis si attaché. Cependant mon sacrifice est fait et durant le courant ou vers la fin de l été prochain, s il plaît à Dieu, je me transporterai dans le champs que Sa Sainteté m a assigné, cette fois-ci, j en suis sûr, pour ne plus le quitter. Seghers (Victoria) to Benoît Van Loo, March 2, Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB. 6 Gerard George Steckler, S.J., Charles John Seghers, Missionary Bishop in the American Northwest: (Doctoral Dissertation, University of Washington, 1963), Ibid., Ibid., Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, Ibid., Ibid.,

312 283 under the ecclesiastical care of American College missionaries. The torch had truly been passed from the Quebecois to the Louvanists. Junger was the first of the two new bishops to be consecrated. The ceremony took place in Saint James Cathedral in Vancouver on August 28, 1879, A. M. A. Blanchet serving as consecrating prelate, assisted by his brother. The Catholic Sentinel reported on the celebrations in grand detail, headlining the article Another Bishop in the Church! 12 Nine o clock was the hour announced at which the consecration ceremonies would commence in the Cathedral, but long before that hour the congregation began to assemble until every seat was occupied and the gallery filled to overflowing. On entering the Church the visitor s vision was attracted by the beautiful decorations which adorned the main and side altars, which displayed the admirable taste of the Sisters of Charity. Suspended on candlebrass on the main altars were shields upon which were displayed the episcopal coat-of-arms of the consecrating and assistant Bishops and the Bishop elect, the latter bearing the motto: O Cor Amoris Victima.... Precisely at 9 o clock the procession filed from the Sacristy into the Sanctuary where the Prelates and Priests occupied their respective positions in the following order: Consecrator, Most Rev. F. N. Blanchet, Archbishop of Oregon; Assistant Priest, Very Rev. B. Delorme, V.G., Deacon, Rev. J. B. Brondel, Subdeacon, Rev. J.B. Boulet. Deacons of Honor: Rev G. A. Vermeersch, Rev. L. Dielman, Rev P. Hylebos, Rev L. Gaudon. Master of Ceremonies, Rev J. S. White; Censer Bearer, Rev. B. Orth; Acolytes, Rev. L. Verhaag and Rev. N. Cesari; Mitre Bearer, Rev. E. Kauten; Crosier Bearer, Rep P. F. Gibney. Bishop elect, Rt. Rev. Aegidius Junger, D. D. Assistants: Rt. Rev. A. M. A. Blanchet, D. D., First Bishop of Nesqualy [sic]; and Very Rev. J. F. Fierens, V. G., of this Archdiocese. Master of Ceremonies, Rev. L. Schram. Orator, Rev. Thomas Duffy, of Walla Walla. 13 The fact that ten of the fifteen priests participating in the procession were Louvanists gives witness to the extent to which the priests of the American College had woven themselves into the life of the North Pacific Coast church since Adrien Croquet s arrival only twenty years before. John Baptiste Brondel s consecration followed that of Junger by four months, taking place in Saint Andrew s Cathedral in Victoria on December 14, As with Junger s celebration, the Catholic Sentinel reported a full cathedral beautifully adorned for the occasion and a list of attending prelates and priests at least as distinguished as that of Junger s celebration, dominated as before by names from Louvain now familiar to this study. Charles John Seghers served as the ordaining 12 Catholic Sentinel, October 30, Ibid.

313 284 prelate assisted by Bishop Louis Lootens (formerly of the Vicariate of Idaho) 14 and Aegidius Junger. The service lasted three hours leading the Master of Ceremonies, Joseph Leroy, to announce to those gathered that... in consequence of the great length of the ceremony, the sermon for the occasion would be deferred until evening when Archbishop Seghers would preach at 7 p.m. 15 The text of the sermon was not published in the Sentinel, though it was described by the reporters as both impressive and eloquent. 16 Seghers s First Oregon Pastoral Tour All three bishops would find a full plate of problems and needs awaiting their attention once they recessed from their consecratory celebrations and began the hard work of leading their diocesan churches through their next stages of growth and development. Due to his position as coadjutor, Seghers had time to ease his way into the issues facing the Archdiocese of Oregon City. As noted in the previous chapter, even while still coadjutor archbishop, Seghers commenced a pastoral visitation of Oregon, Idaho and Montana. The ecclesiastical domain he was about to come to know first hand included both the Archdiocese of Oregon City (covering the present State of Oregon) and the rather forlorn Vicariate of Idaho (covering the present State of Idaho and Western Montana). 17 Though geographically extensive and in many ways still undeveloped, the region as a whole was much better off than his former diocese of Vancouver Island. In Oregon alone, the church had twenty-three priests in twenty-two churches serving a population of 175,000 whites, 20,000 of whom were Catholics, and 5,000 Native Americans. The Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and 14 Lootens, Louis Aloysius ( ). A native of Bruges, he was ordained in 1851 for the Diocese of Vancouver Island but transferred to San Francisco in 1860 for reasons of health. In 1868 he was named Vicar Apostolic of the Vicariate of Idaho. The primitive conditions he found in Idaho led to a decline in his mental and physical health. In 1875 he left the Vicariate and returned to Victoria where he lived the remainder of his life. Nicholas Walsh, Lootens, Louis Aloysius, in: Michael Glazier and Thomas J. Shelley, eds., The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1997), Catholic Sentinel, December 18, Ibid. 17 The Vicariate of Idaho had been erected in 1868 and Louis Lootens consecrated as its vicar apostolic. In 1876 Lootens retired to due ill health; since that time the vicariate had been administered by the Archbishop of Oregon City. See Cyprian Bradley, O.S.B. and Edward

314 285 Mary staffed seven academies and an orphanage for girls. There were two high schools for boys, four parish schools for boys and two for girls and small Indian schools on both the Grand Ronde and Umatilla Reservations. A new cathedral was being consecrated in Portland. The Vicariate of Idaho, for its part, added another 5,650 Catholics including 2,600 Indians to the total. Ten Jesuits were at work in the Rocky Mountain missions while two diocesan priests served in the Boise area and another in Deer Lodge, Montana. The Sisters of Providence operated a hospital and schools in Missoula, Montana and the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth (Kansas) had a hospital in Deer Lodge. 18 On the negative side of the ledger, the young archbishop, not yet forty years of age, found himself immersed in a church that had fallen into administrative disarray due to the increasing feebleness of Francis Norbert Blanchet. Personnel problems abounded. In particular, the priests he would soon be supervising had had years of semi-independent life in often isolated missions; they would not be accustomed to being treated as unquestioning soldiers in a new general s army. Seghers would be an archbishop who detested in priests any sign of failing commitment, missionary mediocrity or anything even remotely smelling of disobedience before ecclesiastical authority. Besides the issue of Brongeest s beard mentioned in the previous chapter, letters of Victor Capelle to Sebastian Goens in Louvain made mention of two other problems that would be on Seghers s plate. The first concerned the saintly Adrien Croquet on the Grand Ronde Reservation. Capelle had visited the mission sometime before accompanying the new archbishop from Victoria to his new post in Portland; it is hard to believe he would not have shared with Seghers at least some of his impressions of Croquet s mission and what he had heard others saying about the man, things he saw fit to share in writing with the American College s Sebastian Goens: I went to see Grand Rond [emphasis in original] and I found it all very disorganized; the sisters are discouraged.... As for the church and Father Croquet s house, they are only good for burning: the rain comes in everywhere, even on the altar, the tabernacle is a sad sight; they plug the holes in it with paper. For furniture Father Croquet has only a table and a broken chair. His nephew is completely changed; it is a heavy cross for the sisters who are obliged unwillingly Kelley, D.D., Ph.D., History of the Diocese of Boise: , 1 vols., vol. I (Boise, ID: Roman Catholic Diocese of Boise, 1953), Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D.,

315 286 to feed him and to care for his clothes; on his part, he does not wish to do even the slightest service for the sisters; he spends his time smoking and sleeping; he has taken on the ways of the Indians to whom he gives the example of a lazy and useless life... they say he [the nephew] is going to marry an Indian. 19 Concerning Croquet s nephew, Capelle wrote further,... the worst of it is that Father Croquet does not see what is going on and believes his nephew is necessary for the mission And finally, concerning Seghers, Capelle sounded a more positive note: Bishop Seghers received me most graciously; he told me that as soon as he gets to Portland he would look into the mission of Grand Rond and he would help me as much as he could: you will have a visit from me frequently, he said, for I love dearly the Indian missions. 21 His preoccupation with Croquet not being the only thing on his mind, some weeks later, Capelle continued the same letter to Goens with further news about another of his fellow Louvanists: Father Orth from Astoria has given serious scandal. The Bishop suspended him and ordered him out of the Mission; he refused; the Bishop then had to go to the civil authority and, faced with compulsion, Father Orth decided to leave J ai été visiter le Grand Rond et j ai trouvé le tout bien désorganisé; les soeurs sont découragées.... Quant à l église et la maison du P. Croquet c est uniquement bon pour brûler [sic]; il pleut partout, même sur l autel, le tabernacle est triste à voir; on en a bouché les trous avec du papier. Pour tout ameublement le P. Croquet possède une table et une chaise brisée. Son neveu est entièrement changé; c est une grande croix pour les soeurs qui sont obligées à contre-coeur de le nourir, et de soigner ses habits; pour lui il ne veut pas rendre le plus léger service aux soeurs; son temps se passe à fumer et à dormir; il a pris les habitudes des sauvages auxquels il donne l exemple d une vie paresseuse et inutile.... on dit qu il va se marier avec une indienne.... Capelle (Portland) to Goens, June 29, Archives of The American College, Louvain. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB le malheur est que le P. Croquet ne voit pas ce qui se passe et croit son neveu nécessaire à la mission. Ibid. 21 Mgr Seghers m a reçu de la manière la plus affable; il m a dit qu aussi tot [sic] arrivé à Portland il s occuperait de la mission de Grand Rond et qu il m aiderait de tout son pouvoir: vous aurez bien souvent ma visite, m a-t-il dit, car j aime beaucoup les missions Indiennes. Ibid. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB. In reading Capelle s letter to Goens, one is tempted to attribute his criticism of Croquet to an immature piety not yet been tested by the realities of life in a hard and complex world unlike that of a missionary such as Croquet. 22 Mr Orth de Astoria a donné grand scandale; Mgr l a suspendu et lui a ordonné de quitter la Mission, il a refusé; Mgr a dû alors avoir recours à l autorité civile et devant la force, Mr Orth s est décidé à partir. Ibid. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB. The final page of the letter from which this quotation is taken is dated July 17, The nature of Bertrand Orth s great scandal is not identified elsewhere. Perhaps it was nothing more than a refusal to accept an order to move to a new mission or parish. Whatever it was, the matter seems to have been not so serious as to have imperiled Orth s on-going ministry. He was shortly thereafter appointed

316 287 The young Capelle accompanied Seghers on the first leg of his pastoral visitation, traveling up the Columbia River as far as The Dalles with him. 23 There they were met by the pastor, Louis Gaudon, one of the few non-louvanists in the archdiocese. Seghers led services and preached that night to a large congregation. After morning mass and a visit to St. Mary s Academy, he was joined by Louis Conrardy and Joseph Cataldo, S.J., superior of the Jesuits in the Rocky Mountains. Together they proceeded up the river to Umatilla. From there he continued into Idaho, meeting with regional Indian chiefs and their tribes. Still accompanied by Cataldo and Conrardy as well as three Nez Perce braves Seghers made his way through Washington Territory to the Sacred Heart Mission of the Coeur d Alene Indians. As always he addressed the Indians, presided over a pontifical mass and confirmed children. Having completed his work among the Coeur d Alene s he and his retinue traveled by land into Montana, settling first in Frenchtown, not far from Missoula, then to the Flathead Indian Agency, and finally on to the Jesuit s St. Ignatius Mission, where all the Indians were said to be Catholic, 24 all this in less than a month since his arrival in Portland. For the indefatigable Seghers, this was just the beginning; he and his party would remain on the road for two more months. Met by processions of white Catholics, preaching to crowds of Indians, confirming children wherever he found them, and generally making a splendid impression at every juncture, Seghers continued his juggernaut through the Indian missions of Montana, finally arriving at Remegius De Ryckere s parish in Deer Lodge on August 24th. On the 26th he and De Ryckere were in Butte where he dedicated De Ryckere s newly constructed church under the patronage of Saint Patrick. 25 After three weeks of further travels to obscure towns (many no longer in existence), Seghers arrived in Helena. The local newspaper pastor of a new parish established in South Portland and for which he oversaw construction of a new church. See: Catholic Sentinel, August 16, In 1900 he would be named bishop of Vancouver Island. 23 Capelle (Portland) to Goens, June 29, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 24 Catholic Sentinel, July 17 December 18, In these issues full accounts of Seghers s journey were published from week to week. Also see: L. B. Palladino, S.J., Indian and White in the Northwest: A History of Catholicity in Montana (Baltimore: John Murphy & Co., 1894), Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D.,

317 288 described the scene as the archbishop arrived in the city (a report reprinted soon thereafter in the Catholic Sentinel): According to the announcement of the Herald that the Archbishop of Oregon would arrive in Helena at 4 P.M., yesterday, His Grace, escorted by the deputation of citizens in carriages, who went to Silver City to meet him, arrived promptly at that hour, and was driven to the pastoral residence of Father Palladino. At five minutes to four the dust of the approaching cavalcade at the outskirts of the town was the signal for the ringing of the church bell, which continued its peals of welcome until the arrival on the hill. A few minutes after alighting the Bishop was vested in his episcopal robes, and preceded by all the Fathers in attendance, and the acolytes, incensing and bearing lighted candles, he entered the church at the front vestibule. Arriving at the altar, the Bishop, clergy and congregation all united in prayer, while the choir rendered a beautiful anthem. Then followed a most appropriate address from this eminent prelate That very evening, Seghers gave a stinging public lecture on one of his favored themes: the irreligiosity of the public school system. The local newspaper, which had so graciously described his welcome, followed the next day with an equally stinging rebuttal to the archbishop s lecture. 27 In the improbable backwater town of Helena, Montana, Seghers found himself suddenly immersed for the first time in the typically contentious American debate over the appropriate roles of religion and state in a nation where the constitutional separation between the two was jealously guarded. After his visit to Helena, Seghers redrew his plans, choosing to travel to Boise through the Salmon River area of central Idaho, then still very much a wilderness area dotted with mines and small settlements. As with his compulsion to bring the faith into Alaska, Seghers seemed to feel an irresistible attraction to be the first priest in any land. Such was the Salmon River country for him. In a lengthy letter written to F. N. Blanchet and published in the Catholic Sentinel, he wrote of his mission through Idaho s wilderness: Upon enquiring whether any priest had ever been in that part of Idaho, I learned that in 1867 Father D Aste, S.J., had visited Leesburg, and that Father Archambault had accompanied the Sisters of Providence when they collected money on Loon Creek. But no priest had ever penetrated in to the heart of Salmon River Country; and that fact was an all-sufficient reason to make me arrive at the conclusion of traversing that 26 Catholic Sentinel, October 9, Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., In attacking the public schools, Seghers was echoing a theme common among the more conservative elements in the American Catholic Church at the time. See Gerald P. Fogarty, S.J., The Vatican and the American Hierarchy from 1870 to 1965 (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1985), ,

318 289 NEWLY DISCOVERED PORTION OF IDAHO, no matter at what expense, chiefly with a view of acquiring accurate knowledge of it Having arrived at Salmon City on the 3d of October, I celebrated, the following day, THE FIRST MASS ever offered in that town. In and about Salmon City there are about twenty Catholics. I had eight confessions, three baptisms and one marriage..... There are a few mines around Challis; that place and its surrounds contain about one hundred people; its present condition is anything but cheerful; and I leave its future to the knowledge of prophets. I found there three Catholic families; I had one baptism and four confessions, and the FIRST MASS EVER CELEBRATED in Challis was said by me on the 10th of October..... There had never been before me a clergyman of any persuasion in Bonanza.... I had some trouble finding a suitable place to celebrate Mass; but on Saturday, 18th of October, feast of St. Luke, I offered up the Immaculate Lamb, FOR THE FIRST TIME In these lonely mountains, in the house of Mr. Brady.... Such is the manner in which I crossed this country, where there is no Priest, never had been any, and where perhaps there will be no resident Priest for quite a time in the future. I have tried my best to do good. Instead of leaving our ninety-nine sheep on the mountain, I have after the example of our Blessed Saviour rather left those in the valleys, in order to look ON THE MOUNTAINS for the lost sheep. With our Lord et transiens ministrabet illis and if I had been in Challis one day earlier, I would have administered, during this trip of mine, all of he seven Sacraments, for, a Catholic, John McGrath, died there the very evening that I arrived: he died without a Priest, from an overdose of morphine. 28. Seghers continued on to Boise, arriving there on October 21, and visited surrounding communities while in the area. From Boise he traveled in a single day to Baker City, Oregon, the Bunch Grass Empire, as it called itself, 29 arriving on November 27th where he was greeted with a large fire built in the center of the town, 28 Catholic Sentinel, November 6, The odd typesetting preserved in this text, presumably was that of the Catholic Sentinel editor rather than of Seghers himself. 29 Catholic Sentinel, December 4, 1879.

319 290 and the loaded anvil again and again expressed with its thundering voice, the welcome of our citizens to Most Reverend Archbishop Seghers. 30 Finally, after five months on the trail he passed through Canyon City where he was received by Bronsgeest, then returned to Portland. Immediately, he met up with Aegidius Junger and together they sailed to Victoria for the consecration of John Baptiste Brondel as bishop of Vancouver Island. The importance of this extraordinary tour at the beginning of his ministry as archbishop is not just to be measured in miles crossed, numbers of children confirmed, or first masses said. It also convinced Seghers, if he needed convincing, that the land he was expected to administer was too great for even someone as energetic as himself. Two things needed to happen: (1) the Vicariate of Idaho needed its own bishop again, (2) Montana needed to be erected as an apostolic vicariate or diocese with a bishop it could call its own. Seghers took the necessary steps to accomplish both goals. Lawrence Palladino, who accompanied him on part of this journey, attributes the establishment of the Helena diocese directly to Seghers: Archbishop Seghers was not less favorably impressed with the Territory and her people than had been Bishop O Connor, 31 and this favorable impression, resting on his personal observation of several months, made him conceive a great interest in the spiritual welfare of the country. He espoused Montana s cause before the Holy See, and through his representations and advocacy, the whole Territory was first united into one Vicariate, and then, a year later, made an Episcopal See, measures compared to which none could have been more beneficial to his community. 32 After returning from his duties as consecrator of Brondel in Victoria, Seghers immediately picked up where he had left off, commencing on December 18th a visitation of his Oregon missions. He returned to The Dalles, Pendleton and Conrardy s Umatilla mission. 33 While in Umatilla, Seghers wrote to Goens in Louvain: 30 Ibid. 31 O Connor, James ( ), a native of Queenstown, Ireland, came to America at the age of fifteen. He was ordained a priest in In 1872, he was appointed Vicar Apostolic of Nebraska, which until 1887 included much of eastern Montana. See: New Advent: Catholic Encyclopedia, Diocese of Omaha, August 6, Palladino, Indian and White, 1st ed., Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D.,

320 291 From Canyon City I traveled right along to Victoria to consecrate my successor then I went to the Dalles to give Confirmation; now I am here to attend to the very unsettled affairs of the Umatilla Indians and, after a few days, I shall be in hot water again at Astoria. Many thanks for your timely hints about the Grande Ronde Reservation where I shall soon find myself. 34 One has to suspect that Goens s timely hints about the Grande Ronde had everything to do with what young Victor Capelle had previously written him about the situation and rumors he found there. The letter also makes it clear that even in the post-de Neve period, Goens and the American College were very much involved in both receiving and passing on information about ministry in these dioceses, acting as a sort of hidden (or at least unacknowledged), middle-man between priests and bishop. The hot water in Astoria almost certainly refers not to the new pastor there, Leopold Dieleman, but to the residual problems remaining after Bertrand Orth s dismissal from the parish. Finally, the unsettled affairs of the Umatilla Indians were certainly those circulating around the federal government s intention to impose severalty on Indian lands. While in Umatilla, Seghers succeeded in negotiating a nine-point resolution to these contentious issues that would have long-term consequences; Seghers s settlement effectively put an end to the Native Americans common life but guaranteed them, at least in principle, their educational and religious rights. 35 After spending the Lenten season in Portland, Seghers traveled to visit James Dols in McMinnville, then moved on to the other Catholic reservation in Oregon, Grand Ronde, where he attended to the difficulties already mentioned. Besides whatever concerns he had with Croquet, he also had to deal with substantial troubles surrounding the sisters who had been serving in the school on the reservation. The Holy Names sisters had first been invited to work at Grand Ronde in 1863 but the Superior General, Mother Theresa of Jesus, turned down the invitation due to existing conditions; she left open, however, the possibility of tending to the mission when conditions improved. 36 The sisters would make good on that promise in 1874 when agreement was reached with the U.S. government for the sisters to staff the 34 Seghers (Umatilla) to Goens, January 12, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 35 Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D.,

321 292 Indian school on the Grand Ronde. They would receive $100 per year per child boarded and educated by them from the government. On April 17, 1874, three sisters were received at the train station by the agent, P.B. Sinnott, a Catholic, and a delegation of wondering and admiring braves. 37 As the conveyance containing the nuns and the cavalcade approached, a salute of thirteen guns was fired. Amid the enthusiasm and excitement of the moment, two Indian chiefs took their stand and in turn used all the eloquence of Indian oratory to welcome the little band. Rev. A. Croquet s emotions were too deep for words God had heard the sighs and prayers of these long years of weary waiting and he was satisfied. 38 Four problems for the sisters arose almost immediately: (1) There was only one school building, which was made to house both girls and boys together, in violation of the sisters rules for boarding schools. (2) There was no fixed age-limit for admission to the school. 39 (3) Father Croquet was inconsistent in providing to the sisters regularly scheduled religious services. 40 (4) Lodging for the sisters themselves was inadequate. Except for the housing of the sisters, Croquet himself seemed to be rather unconcerned by the sisters issues; in September of 1879 he wrote to his friend and benefactor, Sebastian Goens in Louvain, Our good sisters continue to give instruction to our Indians. 41 Further on, he wrote: Since my last letter, I am happy to tell you that there is some change in [undecipherable] on the Reservation; the spirit of division and criticism has disappeared. We are on good terms with everyone. 42 Croquet did make substantial efforts to build a decent house for the sisters, going into substantial personal debt and requesting assistance from Goens and his 36 Mary Flavia Dunne, S.N.J.M., Gleanings of Fifty Years: The Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, (Portland: Glass and Prudhomme Co., 1909), Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Martinus Cawley, ocso, Father Crocket of Grand Ronde: Adrien-Joseph Croquet, Oregon Missionary , 2nd ed. (Lafayette, OR: Guadalupe Translations, 1996; reprint, 1996), Nos bonnes Religieuses continuent à donner l enseignement à nos sauvages. Croquet (Grand Rond) to Goens, September 16, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 42 Depuis ma dernière lettre, je suis heureux de vous dire qu il y a quelque changement en sur la Réserve; l esprit de division et de critique a disparu. Nous sommes en bons termes avec tout le monde. Ibid. Translation by Denis Carlin.

322 293 own family members in Belgium. 43 Seghers arrived on the scene and made every effort to keep the sisters in place. Croquet was impressed with his new bishop; in a letter to his father he wrote: We are very happy to have him as Archbishop. He is a true Missionary Bishop indefatigable, full of merit and talent, and at the same time full of goodness and affability. He has already made an episcopal visit to Grand Ronde and he spoke to the Indians in their own language with a facility which excited their admiration. He intends to come again next autumn to give them a mission. 44 Seghers s efforts on behalf of the mission were not enough; on September 5, 1880, the Sisters of the Holy Names finalized their decision to abandon the Grand Ronde school. 45 The restless archbishop continued his travels in Oregon, then, worked his way up to the Coeur d Alenes in northern Idaho, returned to eastern Oregon visiting LaGrande and Pendleton, Baker City and finally, by way of California, visited Klamath in south-central Oregon. On his way back towards the west coast of Oregon, while passing through Roseburg, Seghers took the surprising first step of becoming an American citizen. 46 The man who had once expressed his grave distaste for American values had seemingly experienced enough quality in the character of the American people that he could finally become one of them; of the move, the Catholic Sentinel wrote:... the more His Grace mixes with the people the higher opinion he forms of the American character. 47 He continued through the coastal areas of Oregon, then returned to Portland, arriving there on September 20th. He added an additional leg onto his journey by going back into the Willamette Valley, where he met up with new 43 Jean Bosse, Mémoires d'un Grand Brainois: Monseigneur Adrien Croquet, le "Saint de l'orégon" (Braine-L'Alleud: Association du Musee de Braine-l'Alleud, 1976), Nous sommes tous heureux de l avoir pour Archevêque. C est un véritable Evêque Missionnaire indéfatigable, plein de mérite et talent, et en même temps, plein de bonté et d affabilité. Il a déjà fait une visite épiscopale au Grand Rond, et a parlé aux Indiens dans leur langage avec une facilité qui a excité leur admiration. Il se propose de venir encore l automne prochain pour leur donner une mission. Croquet (Grand Rond) to his father, July 31, Archives of the Association du Musée de Braine-l Alleud, Braine-l Alleud. Translation by Denis Carlin. 45 Dunne, Gleanings, Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., Ibid., 243. Catholic Sentinel, September 2, 1880.

323 294 arrival from Louvain, Peter Stampfl, then ended his remarkable sixteen months of travel by spending three days in Salem with Victor Capelle. 48 Seghers Finally Takes the Reins from F. N. Blanchet On January 25, 1881, word arrived from the Propagation of the Faith that F. N. Blanchet s retirement had been formally accepted, and with that Charles John Seghers took full control of the Archdiocese of Oregon and the Vicariate of Idaho, worlds he now knew as perhaps no other living person knew them. Seghers wrote to the administrators of the American College: I think it my duty to inform you and the R.R. F.F. Goens and Willemsen that a letter of the Cardinal Prefect of the Propaganda, dated December 12, 1880, and put into execution last Sunday, announces to the Most Rev. Archbishop Blanchet that his resignation has been accepted. I am aware of the great responsibility I assume by succeeding the first Apostle of Oregon, and under the influence of the sentiment with which the weight of my charge inspired me, I earnestly recommend myself to your pious prayers, and to those of your colleagues, and my Diocese to your well known [undecipherable]. 49 Having full pastoral authority now resting squarely on his shoulders, Seghers dove into the multiple problems facing the Archdiocese of Oregon City with his usual fervor and zeal. Among the urgent issues on his episcopal plate were, among others, these: (1) The need for all three bishops of the province to provide financial support to the retired Bishop Lootens. (2) The financial chaos and debt of his own archdiocese, especially that of the newly constructed cathedral. (3) Halting building projects not supported by adequate funding. (4) Dealing with recalcitrant or ineffective priests. (5) Continuing the fight against godless public schools. (6) Recruiting ever more nuns and priests into the archdiocese. (7) Traveling, as always, to the missions as much as possible. 50 Even as Seghers wrangled with all these issues, he also made arrangements with Rome to have the pallium, the symbol of his archepiscopal office and his communion with the Pope, brought to Oregon. The date for his solemn investiture in 48 Ibid., Seghers (Portland) to Pulsers (Louvain), March Oregon City Letterbook, Archives of the Archdiocese of Portland. 50 Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D.,

324 295 the pallium was set for August 15, Seghers took advantage of the event to accomplish two grand objectives of his new episcopacy: to convene a diocesan synod (he and his priests) before the investiture ceremony and a provincial synod (he and the other bishops of the region) following the ceremony. The diocesan synod was convened for August 10th and 11th and brought together twenty-one priests of the Archdiocese of Oregon City and the Vicariate of Idaho. Seghers saw the diocesan synod as direct preparation for the provincial synod of bishops that would follow; he would set the agenda for both and in so doing, he set the agenda for the church s ministry through the region. These synods would set the stage for the exercise of a more rigorous leadership within the church. To make certain who would be calling the ecclesial shots, Seghers emphasized to his priests in his advance directives that he would be in charge, making it quite clear that... although a cleric does not come to the synod to discuss, approve, and make laws, he should be present to deliberate with his bishop, speak out his mind on matters, make known his wishes and desires, and if asked proffer his opinion. 51 Seghers appointed three commissions, each to study a particular question: one for matrimony, another for catechism, Christian education and the Catholic Sentinel, and a third for varied topics such as vespers, ecclesiastical chant, and diocesan collections. 52 Seghers opened the synod with a lengthy discourse on the relationship of missionary priests to their bishop, making it absolutely clear again that the latter are directly subject to the authority of the former, their relationship to the bishop being that of vicar to pastor, as in Europe. He then read several constitutions that he intended to promulgate; these instituted locally matters agreed upon at the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore (convened by Martin J. Spalding in October of 1866). 53 Among them: priests were not to engage in clamorous hunting, enter taverns or engage in business. Further, the council forbade priests from practicing medicine and regulated their relationships with religious women. A uniform schedule of stole feels 51 Ibid., Bertrand F. Griffin, The Provincial Councils of Portland in Oregon (Doctoral Dissertation, Pontificia Universitas Lateranensis, 1964), For a presentation on the work of the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore see Thomas Spalding, Martin John Spalding: American Churchman, (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1973),

325 296 was established. Seghers categorized the declarations as directives until they could be promulgated at the forthcoming provincial council. 54 The pallium ceremony followed the diocesan synod on the prescribed day with much ecclesiastical fanfare The pallium itself had been delivered from Rome (via New York) to San Francisco. It was collected there by John Fierens and carried by him to Portland where it was received with all solemnity by Alphonse Glorieux, who then carried it in procession (behind a cross carried by John Hartlieb) to the cathedral where it was met by Seghers and John Brondel, brought into the cathedral and deposited in the tabernacle. 55 The following day, the feast of the Assumption of Mary, the investiture liturgy took place in the same cathedral. Aegidius Junger of Nesqually was delegated to present the pallium to the clergy and faithful then place it on the archbishop s shoulders. Brondel, Segher s closest friend, preached the sermon for the occasion. 56 If anyone wondered who was leading the church in the expansive region extending from Alaska to Montana, these ceremonies, replete with Louvanists at all levels, would have given them a resounding answer. The French Canadian era was over; the Irish had not yet arrived. For the moment, the priests of the American College controlled and dominated the ecclesiastical and missionary scene on the North Pacific Coast without question. The provincial synod to follow would serve to confirm the transition from one era to the other. Following the pallium ceremonies the second provincial synod in the history of the church on the North Pacific Coast commenced. 57 Seghers had issued his letter convoking the council on July 15, 1881; the synod itself was to begin on August 16th. In the letter of convocation he invited to the synod his suffragan bishops, Junger and Brondel, as well as the three retired bishops of the region, Lootens and the two Blanchet brothers. Neither Lootens nor F. N. Blanchet were able to attend due to illness or old age; A. M. A. Blanchet was in attendance, but mostly as a gray eminence rather than a key player in the council proceedings. This was not only a 54 Ibid., Catholic Sentinel, August 18, Ibid. 57 Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., 305. The first synod had been held in 1848, in the early years of the young Blanchet brothers and Demers s rule over the barely-established church in the North Pacific Coast region.

326 297 provincial synod; in a real sense, this was a Louvain synod. Perhaps most of all, it must be added, this was a Seghers synod. The first session began on the morning of August 16th with a mass in honor of the Holy Spirit at which Seghers presided and preached, followed by a profession of faith. Each bishop was allowed to bring into the consultations two or three priests as his theologians; among those so designated by the bishops were Croquet, Fierens, Hylebos, Schram, Jonckau, Glorieux, and Verhaag. Hylebos and Glorieux were appointed secretaries and Orth was chosen to be Master of Ceremonies. The first public session commenced that same afternoon, followed by several others over the course of the ensuing three days of the synod. As with the diocesan synod before it, much of the business of the meetings dealt with the application in their particular churches of the decrees of the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore and the Vatican Council. A number of practical issues were resolved, such as the proper ownership of vestments donated to the parishes by foreign missionary aid societies. The status of Catholic members of so-called secret societies such as the Masons, the Odd Fellows, the Fenians and the Sons of Temperance was discussed at some length. The Baltimore prohibitions were retained but allowance was to be made in the Oregon Province for some pastoral discretion in imposing excommunication of members if there was doubt about the anti-catholic character of one or other of the local societies. 58 Uniformity in the celebration of the Catholic feastdays was established, bringing the dioceses into conformity with the rest of the church in the United States. Special consideration was given to the celebration of the sacrament of baptism, allowing it to be celebrated in private homes because of the distances involved for families traveling to mission churches. Regarding marriage, complications arising from the Tametsi decree of the Council of Trent were considered 59 and mixed marriages were not to be celebrated in churches nor in church sacristies. A common catechism, that of Ireland, was adopted for use in the region. 60 Each mission was to possess its own Roman Missal and abide by it strictly, including the manner of chanting the orations; they were not to be sung according to local or national custom but following only the Roman tones. It was recognized that the missionary priests of 58 Griffin, Provincial Councils, Ibid.,

327 298 the region might not be able to pray the Breviary fully because of their extensive travel. Priests were prohibited from contracting parish or mission debts or beginning construction projects without the bishop s permission. Many more such practical rules of church life were approved, most of them intended to bring the local parishes into conformity with the wishes of Rome and the Baltimore council and eliminate local diversity. More significantly, under Seghers s influence, the synod fathers ringingly condemned liberalism, keeping the dioceses and their clergy firmly in line with Pius IX s Syllabus of Errors. 61 The synod ended with the synodal bishops giving to John Brondel the responsibility of carrying the synod s acts and decrees to Rome, a journey that would commence the coming October. After the synod, Seghers accompanied Brondel back to Vancouver Island where he spent two weeks preaching in St. Andrew s Cathedral and visiting his former missions of Nanaimo, Cowichan and other stations along the island s eastern coastline. 62 Returning to Oregon in early September, Seghers once again immersed himself in the varied issues and concerns the archdiocese and vicariate placed before him. De Neve s Return to The American College Brondel s European portfolio included much more than just conveying the decrees of the provincial synod to the Roman congregations. He had also been assigned the far less glorious but no less important responsibility of visiting the American College, evaluating it, and advising Seghers and Junger as to the state of its affairs. Behind the commission to visit Louvain was a strange and improbable turn of events that had been unfolding there since at least the beginning of The oncederanged John De Neve was maneuvering to retake control of the college from its pro-rector, J. J. Pulsers. Already in 1878, De Neve had been released from the sanatorium in Diest where he had passed the previous seven years recovering from his mental collapse of 60 Ibid., Ibid., Griffin offers a detailed presentation of the decrees and activities of the synod. The next provincial synod would not take place until Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., 307.

328 He spent a further year in a priest s home in Aalst. 63 Though his doctor in Louvain remained concerned that he could yet suffer a relapse, De Neve began a slow and careful program of rehabilitating his image with the clear intention of reclaiming his rectorship of the American College. By December of 1879, he was in Rome where he expressed concerns about J. J. Pulser s leadership of the college and offered himself as a solution. In what can only be seen as a case statement for change De Neve wrote in twelve points, a summary of the importance of the college, his role in its development, and his availability to serve: 1. I believe it is extremely important [emphasis in original] for the good of Religion in America to assure the existence and prosperity of the American College at Louvain, especially for the poor dioceses, the native peoples, etc In 1871, when I became ill and incapable of directing the American College, the Prefect of the Propagation gave the jurisdiction, as Pro-Rector, to Father J. J. Pulsers who was my Professor at the college. 12. Now being as well as I could hope, and that for some time, and urged on by several American Bishops, etc. I wrote to His Eminence Simeone on 5 August and I came to Rome so that they would renew my jurisdiction, or deign to tell me what they want of me, or of the Bishops [emphases in original] of America to make the American College of Louvain a stable institution under the Direction of the S. Cong. of the Prop. 64 By June of 1880, De Neve was in the United States, having based himself in his old parish in Niles, Michigan, but making the most of his six months in the country to travel, meeting his former students and visiting the bishops whose support he would need to regain control of the college. 65 Among those with whom he initiated contact 63 John D. Sauter, The American College of Louvain ( ), Recueil de Travaux d'histoire et de Philologie (Louvain: Publications Universitaires de Louvain, 1959), Je crois, qu il est extrêmement important pour le bien de la Religion en Amérique, d assurer l existence et la prospérité du Collège américain à Louvain; surtout pour les diocèses pauvres, les sauvages, etc En 1871 devenu malade et incapable de diriger le Collège Amér. le Préfet de la Cong. de la Prop. à donné jurisdiction, comme Pro-Recteur, à Mr. J. J. Pulsers qui était mon Professeur au Collège. 12. Maintenant me portant aussi bien que je désire depuis longtemps, et excité par plusieurs Evêques d Amérique etc., j ai écrit à Son Eminence Simeoni le 5 Août et je suis venu à Rome pour qu on renouvelle ma jurisdiction, ou bien qu on daigne m instruire ce que l on désire de moi, ou des Evêques d Amérique [emphases in original] pour rendre le Col. Amér. de Louvain une institution stable sous la Direction de la S. Congr. de la Prop. De Neve, Rome, December 29, Archives of The American College, Louvain. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB. 65 Sauter, American College, 154.

329 300 was James Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore, by then the most influential of the nation s bishops. In October of 1880, De Neve followed his visit to Gibbons with a letter summarizing his status regarding the college and taking broad and uncharitable swipes at the man he was hoping to oust, J. J. Pulsers: In compliance with the advice of Your Grace, after leaving Baltimore, I visited the Most Reverend Archbp. Elder and the other Prelates Patrons of the Amer. Col. of Louvain. The kind encouragements, I received, are for me sufficient enducements [sic] to continue the work I promoted in Louvain.... I am ready to take charge of the College, or to give it up at any time, but I anxiously look for an end to the state of things as they are now because I have been directed from Rome to put an end to it [emphases in original]. Therefore: 1. If you wish to appoint a new Rector; of course I am perfectly satisfied and ready to deed over to my successor all the money paid by the illustrious Patrons and by myself [emphasis in original], invested in the property of the College. My own money left in bonds, books, etc. at the college I will take out. 2. If you judge it proper to appoint Rev. Pulsers (who has been left to act on my respons. [sic] in financial matters after the candidate of the Rt. Rev. Bp. of Louisville was removed, by means which I could never approve) I have no objections whatever but for the good of our Americ. Missions etc. etc. I am obliged to state that the Reverend Father was a Superior of a college which broke down in Detroit that he was for a time Rector of a mission in Dexter from which he ran away that he was a monk of the Holy Cross of St. Agatha when he left with dispensations that he has been received by me with charity in Louvain under condition to teach Canon law, and not to meddle with the direction of the College that he has been acting these seven years in a way injurious to the diocese of Detroit and perfectly useless for several Patrons. Of course, all these, and many other things, would require some explanations but Rt. Rev. of Louisville can give some; and I am ever ready to explain if Your Grace wishes to hear me. If Your Grace would think through missives of Pulsers or otherwise, that a delirious act in sickness, or the fact of having by an outrageous injustice been kept several years in an insane asylum could be an obstacle to my retuning to Louvain, I beg to state simply that, before going to Rome or coming to America, I took the advice of several Prelates and friends of the Coll. in Belgium. If Your Grace would have any doubt, You might write to Ghent and Bruges, who have been constantly with Liège (who is dead now) the warm helpers in the work of Louvain. 66 The response of Gibbons and most of the other bishops to De Neve s position was generally hesitant and non-committal, one notable exception being that of his old student, John Lancaster Spalding, by then, bishop of Peoria, who was a rather enthusiastic supporter of De Neve s reinstatement De Neve (Monroe, Mich.) to Gibbons (Baltimore), October 18, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 67 Sauter, American College,

330 301 The response of Seghers was decidedly more negative. In a letter to Goens at the college in Louvain dated February 20, 1881, Seghers made first mention of the issue with De Neve, You must, all of you, keep in the field and you ought not to allow Mgr. De Neve to oust any of you. Be of one mind among yourselves. 68 Seghers s encouragement to Goens, Pulsers and Willemsen came too late, for De Neve was already on his way back to Louvain as the college s new rector even as the new year, 1881, had commenced. 69 The news of De Neve s having restored himself as rector arrived at Seghers s distant door at least by March 1, 1881 for on that day he wrote to Goens in Louvain: I am sorry to see in the Freeman s Journal that Mgr De Neve is style [sic] President of the American College. The Lord alone knows how much respect and gratitude I feel for him; nevertheless, I do not wish to see him, after the painful accident of 10 years ago, again as the head of the college. You must [emphasis in original] interest Rome in the matter. 70 Seghers s displeasure with the development led him to write the ousted prorector, J. J. Pulsers: I am preparing a letter to Mgr. De Neve to inform him that I shall not acknowledge him as President of the American College until he shows me evidence of orders received from a higher authority than himself. It seems to me that your [undecipherable] audaces, mentioned in yours of Feb [undecipherable date] applies, in its first part to him and in its second to yourself. However, you acted prudently by avoiding a conflict. With my brethren in the Episcopate on this Coast, and with all the priests with whom I have conferred on the matter, I think that the re-instatement of Mgr. De Neve is dangerous to the Students and to himself. The Students, because in case of misunderstanding between them and him, as Rector, they will be led by the presupposition that his mind is unsound. To himself because the same [undecipherable] (his presiding at the College) will produce the same effect. I do advise you to elicit a declaration to that effect from Dr. Le [undecipherable last name] and to send it to the Cardinal. 68 Seghers (Portland) to Goens, February 20, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 69 Sauter, American College, 156. Though Sauter s summation of the complicated events surrounding De Neve s return to the rectorship is very accurate, it is necessarily brief. The correspondence held in the Archives of The American College and related correspondence in other diocesan archives is sufficiently substantial for a more detailed and comprehensive history of these interesting events to be told. 70 Seghers (Portland) to Goens, March 1, Oregon City Letterbook, Archives of the Archdiocese of Portland. Microfilm copy held by Archives of the Jesuit Province of Oregon; unfortunately, the quality of the microfilm image in these letters is very poor.

331 302 In the mean time I hope You and R. F. Willemsen will persevere in laboring for the good of our dear College. 71 Seghers s displeasure led him to write directly to De Neve only a few days after having written to Pulsers: Strange tidings reach us from Belgium; we are advised that, contrary to the wishes of the American Bishops and of the Priests in charge of the American College and contrary to the opinion of doctors, you have, without any authorization from [undecipherable] taken possession of the Presidency of the said American College. Although not removed by any act of human authority, yet you have been removed from the American College by a visitation of God which by reason of the love we all have for you, had filled us all with great sadness. I can easily understand that you are wishing for a restitutio in integrum, but no such restitutio can be taken by private efforts; it must, on the contrary, be granted by public authority. And I request you, therefore, to inform me at once by whom you have been authorized to [undecipherable] in the American College, the place of which an unmentionable affliction had deprived you. Until you give satisfaction to this lawful claim of mine, I shall not acknowledge you as President of the American College, and in that case, the serious consequences which threaten our dear College will [undecipherable] you with a heavy responsibility. I therefore, request from you an early answer This is an extraordinary letter for its forthright references to the unmentionable affliction that ended De Neve s earlier rectorship, but also for the stern and authoritarian tone Seghers affects in his words to De Neve. That De Neve s one-time student and son should be writing now to De Neve as if he were the man s direct superior, demanding explanations and withholding acknowledgement of his rectorship, reveals in extreme the depth of the young bishop s self-identity as a moral and administrative master. Clearly, the moral issue of De Neve s attempted suicide was the engine driving Seghers s objections to De Neve s restoration. Besides the expression of Seghers s reasons for opposing De Neve s reinstatement, the preceding text also makes clear that in matters of the college, he 71 Seghers (Portland) to Pulsers, April 1, Oregon City Letterbook, Archives of the Archdiocese of Portland. Microfilm copy held by Archives of the Jesuit Province of Oregon. 72 Seghers (Portland) to De Neve (Louvain), April Oregon City Letterbook, Archives of the Archdiocese of Portland. Microfilm copy held by Archives of the Jesuit Province of Oregon. It should be noted that in a separate hand at the top of the letter is the notation, Not sent; there is no further explanation. In light of the following letter to Pulsers in the letterbook (see following footnote), it seems probable that the letter was indeed sent to De Neve, but there is no way to know; De Neve did not preserve the original in the American College archives.

332 303 was in regular contact and on-going consultation with Junger. Along this line, just a few days later, Seghers wrote to Junger: I have a letter from Mgr. De Neve which I sent yesterday to Bp. Brondel for whom I had a letter ready. It shows that unless something is done pretty soon, the American College will be [undecipherable]. I will forward it to you, as soon as it comes back to me. Whether Rome will act, except if requested by us, is very [undecipherable] to me. 73 By the end of May, Seghers realized that the deal was done and De Neve was secure in his renewed position. He wrote to Junger: I have a letter from F. Pulsers in which he tells me that Rome does not want to interfere in the matter of the American College.... F. Pulsers, therefore, will serve under Mgr. De Neve for the time being, and... acknowledge him as Rector dejure [sic] as well as defacto [sic]. 74 As the months passed, Seghers kept up his correspondence on the matter. 75 July, a still upset Seghers wrote again to Goens in Louvain: In I am in receipt of your favor of May 6 informing me that Mgr. De Neve refuses to answer my letter and requesting me to acknowledge him as Rector of the American College. You must admit, my dear Father Goens, that the manner in which Mgr. De Neve resumed the office of Rector reveals an abnormal and un [undecipherable] future in the existence of the American College; and it is because I do not wish to consider the College as a personal institution and the private property of one individual... that I refuse approving of the self-reinstallment of Mgr. De Neve for whom I ever profess the highest esteem and the greatest affection. Let Rome and the other Bishops of the [undecipherable], instead of keeping neutral, give their formal approbation as to the present qualification of Mgr. De Neve, and I shall not be slow in joining them; but we must in the mean time make the College dependent on the Holy See and the American Episcopate. Such is my view, open to correction. If Mgr. De Neve wants me to forego the right of patronage of the College and to make an appeal to another, I shall submit, but with sorrow Seghers (Portland) to Junger (Vancouver), April 23, Oregon City Letterbook, Archives of the Archdiocese of Portland. Microfilm copy held by Archives of the Jesuit Province of Oregon. 74 Seghers (Portland) to Junger, May 30, Oregon City Letterbook, Archives of the Archdiocese of Portland. Microfilm copy held by Archives of the Jesuit Province of Oregon. 75 Seghers wrote to De Neve on May 13, 1881 as well but unfortunately the text of the letter (in French) is largely undecipherable in its microfilm copy. 76 Seghers (Portland) to Goens, July 13, Oregon City Letterbook, Archives of the Archdiocese of Portland. Microfilm copy held by Archives of the Jesuit Province of Oregon.

333 304 The relationship between Seghers and De Neve was so damaged by this point that it seems they were communicating with one another only through intermediate correspondents. By mid-july Seghers had taken his concerns to James Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore, to whom he explained in greater detail his on-going objections to De Neve s control of the college: The present condition of the American College claims the attention of the American Episcopacy. Mgr. De Neve, for whom all his ex-pupils profess the greatest love and esteem, claims most of the property of that College as his own personal estate. If he has a return of his malady and if he fell into the hands of unscrupulous liberal lawyers, as the unfortunate Bishop Dumont, would that not be an occasion of great scandal? The Cardinal Prefect assumes no responsibility, the Belgian Bishops have been consistently kept outside of the business of the American College and, therefore, the Bishops of the United States should look into that matter, as it is their interest to do so. Who will sanction the action of Mgr. De Neve in re-assuming the Rectorship of the American College in Louvain? Who will, in future, appoint its Rector? Who will examine its financial condition and ask an account of its economics? Who will see that the studies, spirit and [undecipherable] of its students be well directed? Such are the important questions I propose to Your Grace s consideration. 77 Seghers s next letter to Louvain is addressed to De Neve himself and is dated September 13th. It is a cold and brief response to De Neve s previous letter to Seghers (no longer extant). Seghers wrote: Your favor of the 5th ult. is at hand. How can you be surprised that we (I mean the American Bishops), after being told that the American College is under the immediate control of the S. Cong. of the Propaganda, write: cela est une affaire qui ne nous regarde nullement? It is we that have a right to be surprised, when we learn that Rome waives all claim to superiorship over the Am. College. However, I shall imitate your example and abstain from [undecipherable]. The Bishop of Vancouver Island will soon leave for Europe, we shall leave his prudence and wisdom to settle all these matters. 78 Finally, with his relationship to De Neve an estranged one, Seghers made it clear to Goens in one further letter that his interest in the college as a source of future priests for his archdiocese was also much reduced: 77 Seghers (Portland) to Gibbons (Baltimore), July 16, Oregon City Letterbook, Archives of the Archdiocese of Portland. Microfilm copy held by Archives of the Jesuit Province of Oregon. 78 Seghers (Portland) to De Neve (Louvain), September 13, Oregon City Letterbook, Archives of the Archdiocese of Portland. Microfilm copy held by Archives of the Jesuit Province of Oregon.

334 305 I am in receipt of your favor of the 10th ult. I have, as you are aware, three, or at least two students in the Seminary in Montreal, am expecting to locate Benedictines in two different places and am making other arrangements. You may tell Mgr. De Neve that as soon as I am financially able to pay for students at the American College, I will let him know. At present he need not have any ordained for me. 79 By January 7, 1882, Seghers had received word from Brondel in Louvain that he endorsed De Neve s rectorship. Seghers, putting the matter finally to rest, responded first to Brondel, I received your note containing your declaration of acknowledgement of Mgr. De Neve as Rector and I have written a letter by which I fully endorse it, relying on your wisdom and zeal in discharging that responsible task. 80 And to De Neve himself he wrote: The Bishop of Nesqualy [sic] and I [have] charged Monsignor Brondel with examining the affairs of the American College and with deciding what he judges on the matter. I have just received a declaration written and signed in his own hand by which he attests that there is nothing stopping you being recognized as Rector of the College in fact and in law. 81 Finally, on January 9th, he wrote Goens with the message: I have already sent my endorsement of Bp. Brondel s declaration of acknowledgement of Mgr. De Neve as Rector. I herewith endorse the necessary faculties, will settle any account after a little while. 82 In what seems an effort to restore concord to their severely tried relationship, Seghers wrote De Neve on the issue one final time: After my return from a pastoral visit of six months through Montana & Idaho, I had the pleasure, with Bp. Junger, to meet Bp. Brondel fresh from Belgium. The conclusion I arrived at, after listening to the explanations of His Lordship of Vancouver Island, was that there were two questions involved in the affair of the 79 Seghers to Goens, December 15, Oregon City Letterbook, Archives of the Archdiocese of Portland. Microfilm copy held by Archives of the Jesuit Province of Oregon. 80 Seghers (Vancouver) to Brondel (Rome), January 7, Oregon City Letterbook, Archives of the Archdiocese of Portland. Microfilm copy held by Archives of the Jesuit Province of Oregon. 81 L Evêque de Nesqualy et moi [undecipherable] chargé Monseigneur Brondel d examiner les affaires du Collège Américain en notre nom et de décider ce qu il jugerait à propos. Je viens de recevoir une déclaration écrite et signée de sa main par laquelle il atteste que rien ne s oppose à ce que vous soyez reconnu comme Recteur du Collège de fait et de droit. Seghers to De Neve (Louvain), January 7, Oregon City Letterbook, Archives of the Archdiocese of Portland. Microfilm copy held by Archives of the Jesuit Province of Oregon. 82 Seghers (Portland) to Goens, January 9, Archives of The American College, Louvain.

335 306 Rectorship of Louvain. The first was who is the present Rector, to which I answer, none but yourself. The other was, who was Rector during your absence from the College; this question, inasmuch as I have ever acknowledged, in good faith, Fr. Pulsers as Rector of the College during that time, this question, I say, we may as well drop and leave unanswered, as it refers to a time now past, the circumstances of which will, we trust, never occur again. In the meantime I hope you will not feel aggrieved at any thing which was written contrary to your claims, since I am ready to stand by the College as faithfully as ever. 83 With those words, the painful and contentious issue was formally put to rest. Seghers had lost the battle and waved the white flag in surrender before De Neve s clear possession of the rectorship. De Neve would serve for ten more years as rector of the college; on March 7, 1891, his mind again failed 84 leading to his resignation on the 9th after which he was taken to a priests home in Lier. 85 He resided there until his death on April 11, 1898, 86 almost forty years after he had first walked in the door of Kindekens s new American College with letters ousting Kindekens and naming him as the new institution s second rector. Seghers Looks to Montana With the De Neve matter settled, Seghers, for his part, placed his attention on matters of his own archdiocese and the planning of a second pastoral trip into Montana to begin in June of Seghers s new visitation made its first significant stop at the Jesuits s Sacred Heart Mission among the Coeur d Alene Indians in the northern panhandle of 83 Seghers (Portland) to De Neve (Louvain), January 15, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 84 Seghers had feared that such might take place and had suggested to De Neve in 1883 that he accept a suitable assistant and prepare him to take his own place should his health not hold. In a warm letter to De Neve, Seghers put the matter delicately: What you tell me about your determination not to worry your mind about the past, is very pleasing. It will be much more practically important to direct our thoughts to the future. I am inclined to think the time has arrived to procure for you an assistant whom you will prepare to eventually replace you.... I mentioned this matter to the two Bishops of the Province who coincided with my views. I suggested Father Hylebos of the Diocese of Nesqually. I think you know him well; he has given proof of administrative ability. I may, possibly, be partial to him, as I took him from Belgium to this country in 70. I am only making a suggestion and shall be glad to hear from you on the subject. Seghers (Vancouver) to De Neve (Louvain), May 10, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 85 Sauter, American College, Ibid., 173.

336 307 Idaho, not far from Spokane. There he had the sad responsibility of burying one of the early Jesuit missionaries, Gregory Gazzoli, but also the more joyful one of dedicating the new mission church and announcing that he had ordered for the church a great bell upon which were inscribed the words: Omnia da Carolo qui me dedit omnia sperans. 88 Seghers, accompanied by the Jesuit superior of the Rocky Mountain Mission, Joseph Cataldo, entered Montana in mid-july proceding to visit Missoula, the Flathead Agency, St. Ignatius Mission and finally, St. Mary Mission in the Bitter Root Valley. 89 By mid-august he was in Remigius De Ryckere s parish in Deer Lodge, where Seghers himself was able to welcome to the town a delegation of Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth (Kansas) who arrived on August 20th to open a new academy, the building of which had been completed by De Ryckere the previous year. Seghers continued on to Butte where he was met by James Dols; he remained for two weeks with Dols in his newly constructed rectory and gave the pastor permission to build a new church in Butte. 90 By September 18th, Seghers was back in Idaho where he visited Fort Hall, the Blackfoot tribe and numerous mining towns. On October 14th, he reached Boise City where the local pastor, Louis Verhaag, accompanied him on yet another round of visitations in the area. 91 By mid-november, Seghers was once again in Oregon, visiting Baker City for a week then traveling to Francis Hartleib s mission in Eastern Oregon s Grande Ronde Valley, (distinct from Croquet s Grand Ronde on the western side of the state), where Seghers once again blessed a new church, that of Sacred Heart in Island City. 92 Seghers then traveled by stage coach to Louis Lambert Conrardy s Umatilla Reservation where he rejoined Joseph Cataldo in preaching an intensive eight-day mission to the Indians of the area. Seghers left a few days before the completion of the mission so that he might return to Portland and attend to his 87 Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., Ibid., 313. The same mission church is commonly known today as Cataldo Mission but remains a site of gathering of the Coeur d Alene tribe for annual religious celebrations, especially that of the Feast of Corpus Christi. 89 Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., 330.

337 308 episcopal business there. He had been on the road for six months and had covered over two thousand miles. 93 Two major concerns were waiting for him in Portland. The first dealt with relations with the United States Indian Department s management of the Indian agencies and schools, particularly on Conrardy s Umatilla and Croquet s Grand Ronde reservations. 94 The other was the on-going effort by himself, together with Junger and Brondel, to have the Montana Territory erected into its own apostolic vicariate. Following Seghers s first tour of Montana a formal petition had been sent to Propaganda Fide in Rome in 1879 requesting the change. At that time, the bishops had submitted three names as candidates for the job of leading the new vicariate: John Leroy, John Fierens and Joseph Cataldo. 95 Unfortunately for the bishops plan, the apostolic vicar of Nebraska, James O Connor, whose vicariate included the eastern side of the territory, objected to the plan and it was delayed. Thus another mission given to John Brondel in his 1881 trip to Europe was to lobby again in Rome for the erection of the apostolic vicariate. As the months and years passed, John Leroy grew ill and died. For a time it looked as if Cataldo would be appointed but his Jesuit superiors balked at the possibility. 96 Seghers continued to lobby Rome for the new Montana vicariate. 97 By the summer of 1882, a new list of candidates was submitted, this time with John Brondel as the dignissimus. 98 Finally, in March of 1883, the Congregation in Rome erected the apostolic vicariate of Montana, including within its jurisdiction both the eastern and western sides of the territory. Not surprisingly, John Brondel, already bishop of Vancouver Island, was named its apostolic vicar. Aegidius Junger Takes Control of Nesqually The bright light capturing most of the attention of the Catholics and others on the North Pacific Coast was, without any doubt, that of Charles John Seghers. His travels were documented in regular and lengthy reports published in the Catholic 93 Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., 356.

338 309 Sentinel, his fame as an eloquent orator was widespread even among non-catholics, and his zealous missionary commitment made him a figure next to whom any others surely paled. Less well known and appreciated, but still very important for the development of the church in the North Pacific Coast region, was Seghers s fellow Louvanist, Aegidius Junger, bishop of Nesqually. The diocese Junger took over from A. M. A. Blanchet in 1879 was co-terminus with the Territory of Washington, covering over 71,000 square miles (114,000 square kilometers). Within this territory, the new bishop could count ten secular priests, five religious ( regulars ) and over fifty nuns. They served in twenty-three churches and chapels, two colleges and eleven schools for girls or boys. Of the overall population of 75,000 whites inhabiting the region, 11,000 to 12,000 were Catholics. 99 By the time of his death in 1895, fourteen years later, the situation and the statistics had developed dramatically. The total white population had increased to 400,000, the Catholics among them to 42,000. The number of churches and chapels grew to eighty-two. Secular priests increased to thirty-eight and there were twentyfour religious. The number of sisters at work in the diocese grew to Clearly, the Territory of Washington and the Diocese of Nesqually were on the cusp of extraordinary development as Junger began his ministry as bishop. It would be his job to encourage and guide that development. During the Augustin Blanchet years, Louvain s American College had sent to Nesqually seven priests. Of those seven, Junger and Brondel would be raised to the episcopacy, Mans would go to California with the Jesuits, and De Ryckere would end up in Montana, leaving just three American College priests at work in the diocese in 1879, (Schram, Hylebos and Kauten). With Aegidius Junger s ascension to the sedes of Nesqually, those meager fortunes would take a dramatic turn: during the fourteen years of his episcopate, Junger added nineteen new Louvanists to his company of diocesan priests. Though Junger s accomplishments were considerable, he finds only brief mention in most of the histories of the church of the region and has been largely forgotten in present times. 101 Schoenberg writes, Time demonstrated that Aegidius 99 Sadlier's Catholic Directory, Almanac and Ordo: 1879 (New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co., 1879), Patricia O'Connell Killen and Christine M. Taylor, Abundance of Grace: The History of the Archdiocese of Seattle: (Strasbourg: Éditions du Signe, 2000), John P. Doogan, Hard Work and Humility were His Tools, The Progress (Seattle), April 6, 1989.

339 310 Junger was an excellent choice for bishop. His consecration proved to be another milestone in the history of the church in the Northwest. 102 Thereafter, mention of Junger is, sadly, minimal in Schoenberg s work. Perhaps it must be so. Much less the evangelist than Seghers in that he seldom wrote of his work for public dissemination (via the Catholic Sentinel), and seemingly not nearly the steady personal correspondent as were Seghers and Brondel, Junger left behind scant historical record of his concerns or activities as his years as bishop passed. While Seghers s long letters describing the extraordinary things he was seeing and all that he was doing on his travels appeared almost weekly in the Sentinel, Junger s visitations to distant parishes like that of Walla Walla, the attention he gave regularly to the sisters working in his diocese, his negotiations with the Jesuits in Spokane over the division of pastoral responsibilities there or his jovial habit of playing his fiddle from his episcopal throne in the midst of some pontifical high mass, find only the briefest of mentions in the Sentinel, if any at all. Review of the relevant archives turn up mostly administrative letters. 103 No cache of personal correspondence to family or friends revealing his mind on issues or the movements of his heart has yet been discovered. It is therefore impossible to compose a detailed description of his ministry except in bits and pieces. We do know that as A. M. A. Blanchet was aging, Junger did not see himself as a possible successor. In a letter to Sister Joseph of the Sacred Heart (later Mother Joseph ) 104, Junger wrote in 1876: 102 Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, One exception being those letters to Mother Joseph in the Archives of the Sisters of Providence, some of which are preserved in: Rose Amata, F.C.S.P, Bishop Aegidius Junger (Research Paper, Seattle University, 1950). 104 Mother Joseph of the Sacred Heart (Mother Joseph) ( ), born Esther Pariseau in St. Elzear, Quebec, entered the recently established religious community of the Sisters of Providence in In 1856, Sister Joseph led a group of fellow sisters to Washington Territory with the mandate to care for the poor and the sick and to educate children. Within a short time they had opened both a school and a hospital in Vancouver. Other charitable and educational enterprises followed throughout the region under her guidance. She involved herself in the actual construction of many of these facilities. Mary of the Blessed Sacrament McCrosson, S.P., The Bell and the River (Palo Alto, CA: Pacific Books, 1957). See also Christine M. Taylor, "Pariseau, Esther ( )," in The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, ed. Michael Glazier and Thomas J. Shelley (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1997), April 2, 2006.

340 311 As for Diocesan affairs, up to the present nothing is known. It may take some time. They say Rome acts slowly but surely. I hope this Diocese may not be disturbed. Our Bishop is still able to conduct his Diocese. We do not need another. I am pleased with the present administration. Should Divine Providence arrange otherwise, and our Bishop applies for a Coadjutor (I know nothing about it) I shall be submissive to his successor. I have no ambition for the dignity. I am well satisfied with my present position. I have only one desire to retire into some religious solitude to prepare my soul for eternity, for heaven. But I must not think of it. I shall try to work out my salvation amidst the dangers daily encountered by a secular priest. 105 Junger did not get his wish for religious solitude. Instead, his life took a turn in a very different direction when on October 28, 1879 he was consecrated as A. M. A. Blanchet s successor to the see of Nesqually. Having served as vicar general of the Nesqually diocese in the years prior to his consecration, Junger was well apprised of the needs of the diocese and the work ahead of him. First mention of at least some of that work appeared in the December 4, 1879 issue of the Catholic Sentinel in which the dedication of the new St. Leo s church in Tacoma was reported at some length. 106 The church was built under the pastorship of John Baptiste Brondel so the celebration also served as a farewell to the bishop-elect before proceeding to Victoria for his consecration: It was also the day on which our new Bishop, Right Rev. Æ. Junger, bishop of Nesqualy [sic], made his first episcopal visit to the Sound, and the last day of our Rector s stay among us. 107 As always, the ceremonies were lavish with adornments of the church, processions, hymnody and sermons: Mass followed, during which Bishop Junger addressed the congregation that crowded the building. He described the meaning of the ceremonies which should be understood in their true sense. He also referred to the success in building the church, congratulating both priests and people. As Father Brondel, your former priest, has been appointed to the Bishopric of Vancouver Island, I thank him for the good he had done in this Diocese, and wish him as much success in his Bishopric as he has enjoyed in his parish. [sic] 108 On the less festive side, Junger had to settle a number of pending affairs from the previous administration of the diocese, among them, paying off debts owed to the 105 Junger (Vancouver) to Sister Joseph of the S.H., September 15, Cited in: Amata, Bishop Aegidius Junger. 106 Catholic Sentinel, December 4, It is interesting that mention of the dedication by Junger is located below an article about Seghers s brilliant reception in Baker City. 107 Ibid. 108 Ibid.

341 312 American College. The very first entry under Junger s name in the Nesqually letterbook is directed to Sebastian Goens in Louvain, in which it is noted that a check to the college for 2,240 francs has been issued from the diocesan account with the Propagation of the Faith in Paris. 109 Having been informed in June of a subsidy of 10,000 francs from the French Propagation of the Faith, 110 on August 2nd he sent a check for another 2,800 francs to cover what was owed to the college through July With these debts paid, Junger seemingly felt free to ask for further students from the college for service in his diocese; in December he wrote to Pulsers a letter in which... I asked the Rector of American College Louvain Belgium to adopt one or two students for the diocese. 112 Far more pressing and complicated for Junger was the long history of disputes with the U. S. government over mission land claims belonging to the diocese. The first of these cases concerning the Saint James Mission in Vancouver went back as far as A. M. A. Blanchet s claim to the land, first filed in that year was finally approved in 1859 by the U. S. Land Office. The approval was immediately challenged by the territorial governor, Isaac Stevens. 113 The dispute continued until 1869 when A. M. A. Blanchet was informed by the commanding officer of the U.S. military, one of the claimants to the land, that it was expelling all mission personnel from the 640-acre property. A commission established by the U. S. War Department to investigate the bishop s claim to the property decided in his favor but in 1870 the 109 Junger (Vancouver) to Goens (Louvain), March 22, Nesqually Letterbook, vol 7, , 215. Archives of the Archdiocese of Seattle. 110 Oeuvre de la Propaganda de la Foi (Paris) to Junger (Nesqually), June 14, Record Group 610, Archive of the Archdiocese of Seattle. 111 Junger (Vancouver) to Pulsers (Louvain), August 2, Nesqually Letterbook, vol 7, , 217. Archives of the Archdiocese of Seattle. 112 Junger (Vancouver) to Pulsers (Louvain), December 3, Nesqually Letterbook, vol 7, , 218. Archives of the Archdiocese of Seattle. 113 Stevens, Isaac ( ) was born in Andover, Massachusetts. He was a successful student at West Point, the American military academy in New York, graduating first in his class. This earned him a commission in the Corps of Engineers, in which he assisted in the design and construction of coastal defenses, waterways and harbors. He served as an officer in the war with Mexico. When the new Washington Territory was formed on March 2, 1853, Stevens applied to President Pierce for the governorship. Pierce selected Stevens for the post, which carried with it the title of Superintendent of Indian Affairs. He was instrumental in signing the first treaties with the native tribes of the area, effectively taking much of their land for white settlers. Stevens undertook several military campaigns against Native Americans in the region. He was killed in the Civil War s second battle of Bull Run. See David Wilma, History Link.Org, Stevens, Isaac Ingalls accessed July 27, 2006.

342 313 Catholics were again ordered off the land. The archbishop wrote a stinging letter to Washington, D. C. protesting the action and it was thereafter rescinded allowing the mission personnel to remain in their convents for another ten years. 114 In April of 1887, the U. S. government reasserted its claims to the increasingly valuable land in the heart of the city of Vancouver. The Saint James Mission issue soon became Junger s problem. 115 The case dragged on until it reached the U. S. Supreme Court in April of 1895, only months before Junger s death. The final ruling was a surprise: the court decided against the diocese and the land was ceded officially and finally to the U. S. military. 116 The Saint James Mission land claim was not the only one to trouble Junger during his years as bishop of Nesqually. Immediately upon taking up his episcopal office, Junger had to take on the issues of land claims at two other mission sites, Saint Francis Xavier on the Cowlitz Prairie, (located in the southwestern corner of the territory) and Saint Joseph at Attanum (near Yakima). In a letter to I. M. Armstrong of the General Land Office in Washington, D. C. he wrote a pointed letter dealing with both claims. Junger wrote his first letter as bishop to the U.S. government in stern term: Now let me tell you that I was astonished when I read your letter to him [A. M. A. Blanchet], demanding for the same evidences which have been given time and again. I was so positive in my belief that the General Land Office would issues a Patent for St. Francis X s mission without any new proofs for the existence and the extent of said mission, knowing all necessary papers had been sent to Washington and were filed there, and that a map of St. Fr. X s mission with the certificate of the commissioner Thomas A. Hendricks of the General Land Office answered to it, is on file in your office. Besides Mr. Timme who was here last year, examining Mission and Donation claims, with whom I had an interview, told me in clear words that the papers of St. Francis X s Mission were all in order, that he had sent them on to Washington, and that I could address myself to the General Land Office and a Patent would be issued for said Mission without any difficulty and further delay. Now after more than a year waiting for an answer or rather for the Patent, there we receive a letter which asks for more or the renewal of the old papers. I tell you I was forced when I read your letter to make a rash judgment, viz: that you think us to be very green making us believe that, in asking some more proofs, you are all the time occupied in examining these missions, whilst you are only postponing and postponing the justice of these cases, thereby wishing to tire us out, and to give them up in despair.... Now there is no doubt that in the Mission of St. Francis X and in all our other missions, claimed by us, we have endeavored to act 114 Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, Ibid., Ibid., 397.

343 314 according to law, boundaries were marked and continual possession has been had of the Mission claims since the establishment of the grant of land donated by Congress to missions among the Indians, why then should we not have the full benefit of the Act of Congress? There is one thing which urges me to answer this question. I know it is generally denied, but the past experience and facts corroborate it, so that it is quite natural that it suggests itself to our mind and makes us judge in that way, this is: because they are Roman Catholic Mission Claims [emphasis in original]. I have spoken this clearly, for I think it is better to tell what we feel, than to hide it and retain it. I am only pleading for justice, wishing at the same time that the final transactions about the Mission claims should be made very soon, as it is really annoying and trying, seeing them lingering such a long time for a just approval and execution of he Acts of Congress of 1848 and Junger s harangue must have served its purpose: the Cowlitz mission has remained in Catholic hands to the present day. Among Junger s early accomplishments was his success in bringing into the diocese new religious men and women to serve the needs of the vast territory. Already at work at the Saint James Mission since the 1850 s were the Sisters of Charity of Providence under the leadership of the extraordinary Mother Joseph. 118 Junger, once having taken possession of the See of Nesqually, invited the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, 119 established in Oregon since the 1850 s, to his diocese as well. At the urging of F. X. Prefontaine and with Junger s support, the Holy Names Sisters laid the foundation stone in Seattle of their first of several academies in the Nesqually Diocese in November of When the school opened on January 10, 1881, it boasted an enrollment of twenty-one day students and one boarder. A more expansive building was constructed elsewhere only three years later, which became for the sisters, the pastor and Bishop Junger, a serious problem, for the academy s enrollment was not sufficient to sustain the costs of its construction. With the passing of years and with additional funding from the Holy Names Sisters provincial government the financial situation stabilized so that by 1889, the Seattle academy boasted 148 boarding students and 190 day students Junger (Vancouver) to Armstrong (Washington), March 31, Nesqually Letterbook, vol 7, , Archives of the Archdiocese of Seattle. 118 McCrosson, Bell and River. 119 Among the Holy Names missions in Oregon being that of Croquet s Grand Ronde Reservation, in Salem under the direction of Dieleman, and in The Dalles under Vermeersch. See: Dunne, Gleanings, Ibid. 121 Ibid.,

344 315 In that same year, the Holy Names Sisters expanded their Nesqually operations to Spokane at the urgings of the Jesuit Fathers who had dominated ministry there since Father Cataldo s arrival as a missionary in November The sisters built and opened a school on the site of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish (later the cathedral), in 1889, and despite a typhoid epidemic in Spokane that carried off one of their younger sisters, they also commenced work on a new Holy Names Academy, dedicated on July 31, Being of Prussian stock and a native German-speaker, Junger took to heart the needs of the German-speaking immigrants of his far-flung diocese. In 1891, Junger recruited from Portland two Redemptorist priests, Charles Sigle and Mark Gross, to take over responsibility for the care of Sacred Heart parish in Seattle. 124 The following year, two more Redemptorists, William Lindner and J. B. Cronin, were installed as pastors in Everett (thirty miles north of Seattle), and the Riverside area of Seattle, respectively. 125 Junger also turned to the Benedictines for assistance; William Evermann from St. John s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota was assigned as founding pastor to Our Lady of the Rosary parish in Tacoma while Barnabas Held of Mount Angel Priory in Oregon, was sent to Spokane where he established Sacred Heart Parish and a school for German-speaking boys next door. 126 With their foot in the Nesqually door, the Benedictines of Collegeville began looking to establish their own monastery and college. With the assistance of Junger s pastor in Olympia, Louvanist, Charles Claessens 127, the Benedictines of St. John s Abbey purchased at auction 570 acres of land near Olympia, upon which they established their new Saint Martin s Priory and College in Wilfred P. Schoenberg, S.J., Paths to the Northwest: A Jesuit History of the Oregon Province (Chicago, IL: Loyola University Press, 1982), 89. Also see Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, Dunne, Gleanings, Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, Ibid. 126 Ibid., Claessens, Charles John (1856?), was a native of Roermond, Netherlands. He had entered The American College in 1878 and was ordained and sent to Nesqually in 1881, (Album Alumorum Collegii Americani Immaculatae Conceptionis B.M.V. Lovanii, Pars Tertia, quae incepta est A.D. 1877, Archives of The American College (Louvain: ), 14. See also: Sauter, American College, 210.). By 1883, he had been assigned as assistant pastor of St. Patrick Church in Walla Walla; (see "Sadlier's Catholic Directory, Almanac and Ordo: 1883," (New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co., 1883), 390.) 128 Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest,

345 316 Just as important as the on-going building up of his diocese was Junger s relationship with the Society of Jesus, and in particular, to the Superior General of the Rocky Mountain Mission, Joseph Cataldo. With seven Jesuits at work in the Diocese of Nesqually in 1881 (Grassi, Joset, Diomedi, Canistelli, Cauana, Riaberti and Parodi 129 ), a little more than a third of Junger s available clergy were Jesuits as he began his years as bishop of Nesqually. All were at work in the Indian missions located to the east of the Cascade mountains. 130 Junger s relationship with the Sicilian-born Cataldo got off to a rocky start when Cataldo got wind of comments Junger had made or written about the tendency of the Society of Jesus to hang on to land and property even after they had left a mission. Cataldo reacted to Junger s prejudices towards the order; in a letter dated December 15, 1880, he reassured Junger that the Society of Jesus did, in fact own the churches that it had founded but whenever they had left a mission to a diocese, by their own choice they had freely turned over ownership of the church property to the bishop and not sold it to him. Y. L. [ Your Lord ] adduces some inconvenience that may result from that practice, viz: that, if the Fathers were to leave, called by their superiors, the people should buy over again the same church. This surely would be a great inconvenience, if it were to happen; but I do not think that the case ever happened that our Society would be so recompensed for her services, when leaving a place by her own accord.... To conclude if Y. L. wants us to take care of the Spokans [sic], we will act according to the way of our Society; if this cannot be done it will be necessary for Y.L. to say only one word withdraw, and we will do so, without having to give account to God for souls. 131 More personally, in a postscript to the same letter marked Confidential, Cataldo scolded the new bishop: As I do not think that the dignity of Bp. has restrained any particle of the old friendship, which exists between Fr. Junger and Fr. Cataldo I may be allowed to make a friendly complaint. I heard this remark Those Jesuits must grasp at every thing, and get rich every where; but here they will have only Indians Be sure, Monsgr that the Jesuits will never get rich in Y. L. s diocese, surely not during our lifetime. Y. L. has seen in your visitations of their riches, and if you could now be with Fr. Grassi near Moses, or with Fr. Parodi at the Wenaches [sic] you would see even 129 Sadlier's Catholic Directory, Almanac and Ordo: 1881 (New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co., 1881), Ibid., Cataldo (Colville) to Junger, December 15, Archives of the Archdiocese of Seattle.

346 317 greater riches: and if Y. L. could stop one winter at Spokan [sic], you would see that no priest will be able to live there for many years to come; so it will not be very soon [emphasis in original] that we will quarrel for church property at Spokan Falls. I admire the Fathers when they say with a true apostolic spirit we are here for the Indians but would Y. L. admire their superior if he would say you shall have only Indians? 132 That unfortunate beginning did not permanently damage the working relationship of the two men; by 1884, both Junger and Seghers were asking Cataldo (all three then participating in the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore) for more of his men, though Cataldo continually protested to both bishops that his superiors in Rome had ruled against the possibility. 133 Not taking no for an answer, Seghers finally convinced Cataldo to accompany Junger to Rome and there petition his superiors for permission to recruit more European Jesuits to the Rocky Mountain Mission. The pretext for Cataldo accompanying Junger was that the bishop s poor health required it. 134 Cataldo s trip through Europe won the region a missionary goldmine; he recruited five new priests from various countries, men who in Cataldo s evaluation saved the Rocky Mountain Mission 135 and, in particular, gave the newly founded Gonzaga College in Spokane the leadership and manpower it needed to flourish. In 1890, Junger took advantage of Cataldo s interest in establishing a boys school in Seattle, inviting them to take over an already established school and to establish a third parish in the growing city. The Jesuits moved ahead with the project, the school eventually growing into today s Seattle University. 136 Despite Junger s increasing weight and declining health, he was not a man to sit at home; he traveled his diocese extensively throughout his years as bishop. Local histories record his presiding over church dedications, commencement exercises of small colleges, and pastoral visits to Indian missions from one end of his diocese to the other. As just one example among hundreds, the Sisters of Providence recorded in their history of Spokane s Sacred Heart Hospital the following: 132 Ibid. 133 Schoenberg, Paths, Ibid. Junger, even at this early stage of his life was feeling the effects of weight gain and what was then called Bright s Disease, a chronic inflammation of the kidneys; see: Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, Schoenberg, Paths, Ibid.,

347 318 On July 2, 1886, Feast of the Sacred Heart, the building was sufficiently advanced for he laying of the corner stone, and the event was scheduled for that date, which coincided with the visit of Right Reverend Aegidius Junger, Bishop of Nisqually [sic]. The latter had arranged to be in town for the dedication of the new church of Our Lady of Lourdes on the following Sunday.... Bishop Junger, assisted by the late Reverend James J. Rebmann, S. J., pastor of the new church, and other Jesuit fathers, performed the ceremony amid a throng of people gathered for the occasion. 137 In 1884, Junger took time to travel to Baltimore for the Third Plenary Council and then on to Europe (with Cataldo), where he visited Rome and, after presiding over the college s ordinations, collected from the American College three new clergymen for the dioceses of the North Pacific Coast. A summary of Junger s visit to Rome and his homeland appeared in the September 24, 1885 issue of the Catholic Sentinel: Rt. Rev. Bishop Junger accompanied by Rev. Father Hillebrand 138 of the Diocese of Nesqualy and Rev. Father Verbeke 139 of the Diocese of Vancouver Island and Rev. Mr. Pauwelyn 140 for Helena, Montana, arrived here yesterday. The Reverend 137 Fifty Golden Years: A Short History of Sacred Heart Hospital (Spokane: 1936), Hillebrand, Anthony ( ), was born in Brilon, Westphalia, and entered the American College in August He was secured for Oregon by letter of Most Rev. Ch. J. Seghers. He was ordained a priest in the American College chapel on June 28, 1885 by Aegidius Junger, then departed for America with Junger on August 22, See: Album Alumnorum III, 234. After three years of service in Eastern Oregon, he was named pastor of St. John Parish in Oregon City in 1888, remaining there until the end of his life in He was responsible for doubling the size of the former cathedral church in Oregon City. He also erected a high school in the town. He also served in various archdiocesan offices including defensor matrimonii. See "Our Jubilarians," The American College Bulletin VIII, no. 4 (1910): Also see July 29, Verbeke, Remigius ( ), came to the American College in August 1883 from the Diocese of Bruges. He was assigned to the Vancouver Island diocese then under the leadership of John Brondel. He was ordained a priest on December 20, 1884 in Mechlin. See: Album Alumnorum III, 142. That he was assigned to Alberni on Barclay Sound is the only notation found in the files of the Archives of the Diocese of Victoria. See: Diocese of Victoria, Questionaire, Dictionary of Missions, Sacred Congregation of the Propaganda, photostatic copy. Archives of the Diocese of Victoria. 140 Pauwelyn, Cyril ( ), was a native of Poelkapelle, in the Diocese of Bruges. He was ordained to the diaconate by Aegidius Junger on June 28, 1885 in the chapel of the American College; while still a deacon he departed for America with Junger on August 22, He had been assigned to the Diocese of Helena. See "Our Jubilarians," 157. Also see: Pauwelyn (Helena) to De Neve, October 4, 1885, Archives of The American College, Louvain. On November 29, 1885, he was ordained to the priesthood in Helena by John Brondel, the first diocesan priest to be ordained in the new diocese. For two years he tended the settlements lining the Northern Pacific Railroad as far east as the Dakotas. In October 1887, he was assigned to Miles City, where he remained until In that year, he was transferred to Butte, the largest town in the diocese. See Album Alumnorum III, 226. See also: Palladino, Indian and White, 1st ed., 310. "Father Cyril Pauwelyn," The American College Bulletin VIII, no. 4 (1910):

348 319 party left Antwerp, August 22d, on the steamer Northland and had a most pleasant trip on Neptune s vast domain. The steamer carried about 800 passengers. Bishop Junger during his visit to Europe, visited the most prominent cities, amongst others the center of Catholicity Rome, where His Lordship was received with all affection and kindness by our Holy Father, Leo XIII, who from all his heart bestowed upon this Coast and chiefly upon the Diocese of Nesqualy, his paternal blessing. His Holiness took a lively interest in the progress of religion in this Far West. Many were the marks of respect and friendship paid to Bishop Junger in the land of his birth and when the hour of departure arrived, thousands upon thousands accompanied the Prelate to the depot. An accident happened on the railroad from New York to Montreal, which proved fatal to the engineer and seriously wounded four others. The Bishop and his Rev. fellow-travelers had a narrow escape. The Bishop accompanied by Rev. Father Flohr of Walla Walla and Rev. Father Meuwese 141 of Vancouver left for the latter place yesterday afternoon. A grand reception was tendered to the beloved Prelate on his safe return home. 142 Upon his return from the old country, the Catholic Sentinel recorded his continued efforts to make his pastoral rounds as well as the concerns that he expressed to his Catholic faithful as he traveled:... Rt. Rev. Bishop Junger, soon after his return from the old country, made an extended trip through the [Puget] Sound. He visited the Indian school at Tulalip in the welfare and success of which he takes the greatest interest.... At his return from Tulalip His Lordship stopped for several days in Seattle where he visited our Catholic institutions. In the Academy of the Holy Names, he was tendered a heartfelt reception by the pupils of the institution.... The following Sunday His Lordship administered the Sacrament of Confirmation to seventeen children who had been carefully prepared for that solemn event by Rev. Father Prefontaine, Pastor of the beautiful Church of Our Lady of Good Help. Moreover four grown persons, who had been instructed by Rev. Father Demanez, 143 Chaplain of Providence Hospital, shared with ten young ones the 141 Meuwese, Aloysius ( ), a native of s-hertogenbosch, Netherlands, entered the American College in September 1882 and was assigned to the Nesqually diocese. He was ordained a priest in April, 1884 and departed for America later that same year. See Album Alumnorum III, 190. Meuwese was appointed as the first resident pastor of Mary, Queen of Heaven parish in Sprague, Washington (near Spokane). In December of 1885, Meuwese met with the Sprague parishioners and proposed establishment of a parish school in the town; he built a three-story frame building and after considerable difficulties finding religious sisters to staff his school the Sisters of Charity of Providence sent three sisters from Vancouver, allowing St. Joseph Academy to open with twelve pupils. By the end of the next year, the school boasted a hundred students. Meuwese assisted Bishop Junger in dedicating the first church in that town on July 15, See Wilfred P. Schoenberg, S.J., A Chronicle of the Catholic History of the Pacific Northwest: (Portland, OR: Catholic Sentinel Printery, 1962), 99, 118. Meuwese transferred to the Diocese of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in Catholic Sentinel, September 24, Demanez, Emmanuel ( ), had arrived in Nesqually from the American College in 1883, where he had spent less than two months before his departure to America. A native

349 320 blessings of this day. Two of them, patients of the aforesaid Hospital, had been received in the fold of the Catholic Church on the same morning. Rt. Rev. Bishop Junger assisted by the Rev Fathers Prefontaine and Demanez, celebrated High Mass and preached an eloquent and impressive sermon. Taking his text from the Gospel of the day give to Caesar what is Caesar s and to God what is God s, he showed that the Catholic Church is a law-abiding institution and inculcates in the hearts of her members respect for the laws and the constitution of the country. But the main object of His Lordship s sermon was to expose the duties of practical Catholics, and among others, he laid stress on the first and most important duty of Catholic parents, namely, the education and training of their children. Here he plainly expressed how sadly he had been disappointed at the sight of the few children who attend the Academy of the Sisters of the Holy Names. And by way of comparison, in refuting the silly objections of some Catholics against our institutions of learning. His Lordship alluded to the prosperous state of the Catholic schools at Vancouver. He had the more reason of being painfully impressed for the lack of supporting their schools, since the large attendance in church on that Sunday, clearly showed that there are in Seattle a great number of Catholics. Finally, he expressed the firm hope, that in the future, all the member of his beloved flock in this city, would better heed the teachings of Popes, Bishops and Councils concerning the important duty of sending their children to the Catholic schools. 144 In the matter of constructing church edifices, Junger did not leave such projects just to outlying towns; he took the initiative to construct in Vancouver a new cathedral for the diocese of Nesqually. With his fellow Louvanist, confessor, and dearest friend, Louis de G. Schram, to manage the project, Junger hired architect Donald Mackay to design a 128x54 foot building with naves of 33x10 feet. They advertised for the submission of proposals for a new church in the Catholic Sentinel on May 9, The neo-gothic structure was completed and dedicated in honor of Saint James and Saint Augustine by Junger two years later on a rainy Sunday on November 1, of Tournai, he was already a priest of the Diocese of Ghent and had been serving as a professor at the college of Oudenaarde before entering the American College; Demanez was assigned as chaplain to the city and county hospitals in Seattle and prefect of the parochial school for boys there. In 1889, he was named chaplain to the Providence Hospital, then in 1890 he was assigned as founding pastor of Sacred Heart Church in Seattle. He left the parish when the Redemptorist priests took it over. In 1896 he received permission to leave the Nesqually diocese for one year; he moved to the Helena diocese where he resided at Lewistown. Bishops Brondel and O Dea planned for him to return to Nesqually in 1897, a move he successfully resisted. In the background of these moves was a significant problem with financial debts that became unmanageable. In 1898 he was tragically killed in a railroad accident. See Album Alumnorum III, 244. Also Demanez personnel file, Archives of the Archdiocese of Seattle. 144 Catholic Sentinel, November 19, Catholic Sentinel, May 10, Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, 311. Schoenberg suggests that Schram was in competition to complete the Vancouver cathedral ahead of the one being built across the

350 321 In 1887, Junger celebrated his silver anniversary as a priest by calling together the clergy of his diocese for a retreat followed by a synod. The retreat ended with a pontifical high mass, the Catholic Sentinel reported, which was then followed by a closed meeting of the clergy. Thereafter, Junger announced publicly his appointment of Peter Hylebos as his Vicar General while F. X. Prefontaine, and Louvanists, Emile Kauten and Michael Flohr 147 were appointed to his Bishop s Counsel. Thereafter the priests joined their bishop in his episcopal apartments where he was addressed by Prefontaine, the diocese s senior priest: Having been appointed our Bishop, it devolved upon you to supervise the whole management of this vast diocese. To you the priests look for counsel, aid and encouragement in their hard and continued struggles for the progress and prosperity of our Holy Catholic church. And as the flood of immigration goes onward to populate this Territory, more priests are needed, more churches and schools are to be erected, all of which means an increase of care and anxiety for you. 148 The following day, another solemn celebration marking the bishop s anniversary was held, forty priests and two bishops being present. 149 At promptly 10 o clock, while the organ pealed forth it joyful harmonies through Vancouver s fine Cathedral, Bishop Junger s crowning work, the long line of priests, swelled by many dear old friends from the Archdiocese, emerged from the sacristy and filed into the sanctuary. The vast crowd of people which filled the spacious church were greatly edified at the sight of this phalanx of noble missionaries who gave up all that was dear them [sic] and consecrated themselves to the Almighty. 150 Columbia River in Portland by his fellow Louvanist, John Fierens. If that be the case, Schram and Junger lost the race: the Portland cathedral was dedicated on August 16th, two and a half months ahead of the one in Vancouver. 147 Flohr, Michael ( ), hailed from the Archdiocese of Cologne. He entered The American College in 1879 as a seminarian for Nesqually. He was ordained to the priesthood in December, 1881 and departed thereafter for Washington Territory; see Album Alumnorum III, 38. His first assignment was to the cathedral parish in Vancouver; see "Sadlier's Catholic Directory, Almanac and Ordo: 1883," 389. In 1884, he was made pastor of St. Patrick Church in Walla Walla, the parish s first irremovable pastor. He remained in this position until his death in 1906 in Walla Walla; see W. L. Davis, S.J., Centennial Souvenir of the Catholic Church in the Walla Walla Valley: (Walla Walla: 1947), Also see "Necrology," The American College Bulletin V, no. 1 (1907): Catholic Sentinel, July 28, Ibid. 150 Ibid.

351 322 Among the Louvanists present for Junger s celebration were Dieleman, Vermeersch, Demanez, Kusters, 151 Fierens, Hylebos, Flohr, Verhaag, Gibney, Van Lin and Bronsgeest. 152 That Junger felt a special bond with his Louvain confreres is given evidence in the fact that in 1893, he welcomed his fellow Louvanists to Vancouver for a reunion of the spiritual brothers. The event would be lost to the historian were it not for the chroniclers of the Sisters of Providence who recorded it in their Annals: September 13, 1893, was a memorable day for Vancouver. For the first time there was held a reunion of missionary priests, former students of the American College of Louvain, who are today dispersed throughout different parts of the United States. Such a reunion resembled the Worlds Fair which was held in Chicago. The occasion of this reunion was to cement the fraternal ties which bind these former students of this famous college. Among the prodigious number of priests that are ordained from Louvain College, we find Bishops, Vicar Generals and so forth. The most remarkable feature of these devoted priests is their zeal to evangelize the American people. Bishop Junger, being the eldest in the province of Oregon City, called the assembly of priests to Vancouver. Twenty-two answered and were present. There was a pontifical Mass at the Cathedral of St. James. The ceremony was truly magnificent. The beautiful Mass of St. Therese by LaHathe, accompanied by two organs, was a great success. Quid Retribuam was sung at the Offertory. The most touching and the dearest for the missionaries was to hear some sixty harmonic voices sing the Hymn of Departure used in the College of Louvain when any priests leave for America. The hymn was sung as the clergy entered the sanctuary. A greater pleasure could not have been given these priests and all of them united their voices to those of the choir. Never was such a chorus heard under the dome of our Cathedral. 153 Even after more than thirty years of presence on the North Pacific Coast, the fraternity of the Louvanists held. Nevertheless, the possibility of a second such 151 Kusters, Louis (1857?) was a native of Neer of the diocese of Roermond, The Netherlands. He entered the American College in September of 1877 and was assigned to the diocese of Nesqually. He was ordained a priest in May 1880 and departed for North America in October of the same year; see Album Alumnorum III, 8. As with other new priests, Junger assigned him to his cathedral parish in Vancouver from which he served as prefect of an unnamed boarding and day school; see Sadlier's Catholic Directory, Almanac and Ordo: By 1886 he was reported to have completed construction of a new church east of Seattle, Saint Cyprian, in Newcastle Mines; see Schoenberg, Chronicle, 124. A record of the year of his death has not been located. 152 Catholic Sentinel, July 28, Also celebrating his twenty-fifth anniversary that day was Leopold Dieleman. 153 Annals of the House of Providence, Vancouver, September 13, Cited in: Amata, Bishop Aegidius Junger. The Hymn of Departure mentioned in the quotation is certainly that which is still sung in the college and at its alumni reunions to this day: O Sodales.

352 323 reunion in Vancouver the following year, was not greeted with enthusiasm by Junger. In a letter to Schram, he discouraged the plan, perhaps reflecting the burden of his increasing infirmity as well as the issue of costs that he more specifically mentioned: I would wish, that the meeting of the Louvain students would be postponed until next year. There are too many expenses connected with it, and every priest is poor and has scarcely enough to pay for his support. So far as I have been informed by every priest I met, they have no money and have to curtail their expenses all along. Besides I do not like that the meeting is held at Vancouver. If it is necessary to have a meeting an other place should be selected. I have my reasons why I object to have it in Vancouver. 154 Though the man was growing increasingly frail, he kept active and continued his visitation schedule throughout his later years. In the same letter to Schram, written from Spokane only a year before his death, he recorded his projected travels in some detail: Now I leave here next Monday for the Okanogan Country. I do not think that I can be back to be in Portland for the 31st of May next. Most likely I cannot be in Seattle for the 1st of June, and I have to give confirmations in Seattle the 3rd of June.... there is only one steamer a week as I understand from Wenatchee to Okanogan and back (which leaves Wenatchee on Monday evening). It takes this steamer two days to go up and I suppose it will come back to Wenatchee towards the end of the week, which will be either Thursday or Friday next. And from Wenatchee to Seattle it takes at least 12 hours by the Great Northern. 155 By early-1895, he must have known he was not long for this world since he prepared a will naming his life-long confidant and friend, Louis de G. Schram as his administrator. In the spring of that year he came close to dying but managed a recovery after some weeks. He took on yet another tour of the diocese even in his weakened condition, visiting again both Seattle and Spokane, then returned to Vancouver in mid-december. 156 The Annals of the Sisters of Providence in Vancouver, with whom Junger had taken up residence earlier in the year, recorded the following of his return to their convent on December 14th: On arriving at the Academy he exclaimed how good it was to be home. Although sick and suffering he continued to visit the parish on the Sound. He was as cheerful 154 Junger (Spokane) to Schram (Vancouver), May 18,1894. Archives of the Archdiocese of Seattle. 155 Ibid. 156 M. Eileen Rose Kelly, S.H.N., The Second Bishop of Nesqually (Research Paper, Seattle University, 1946), 11.

353 324 as ever and his health seemed to improve. It was a joy to have our good Father with us. Our joy did not last long for on the 26th of December at 9:30 p.m. death took him from us. The end came quickly leaving him just enough time to make his confession and receive Extreme Unction from Rev. Louis de G. Schram. All the priests of the Bishopric were present, as were the two Doctors Wall. Nearly all of the Sisters of the house were also present.... Our bishop had acquired the esteem and affection, not only of the priests in his diocese, but also that of those in other dioceses. Above all he was a peaceful man, meek, humble and very pious. On his death all were of one accord in saying that he had never made an enemy. He knew how to reconcile hearts and succeeded in making friends where enmity had reigned. For more than fifteen years the Bishop suffered from the malady that was to cause his death. Suffering didn t hinder him from giving his entire self to his laborious task. How many perilous trips and fatigues he endured. When he had a duty to perform he let no obstacle come in his way. For two years the life of our dear Bishop was a life of intense suffering. Many months he suffered with an eczema which gave him no rest and eventually caused painful ulcers to form on his heels. 157 Junger s funeral was celebrated in his cathedral in Vancouver. His Louvain companions, Alphonse Glorieaux, Bishop of Idaho, presided at the funeral liturgy while Helena s John Baptiste Brondel was called upon to preach the funeral sermon. Brondel s words in part: Having known your prelate since 1861, as fellow student first; having labored with him for thirteen years as a fellow priest here, and, having been associated with him for sixteen years in the episcopacy, I cannot help letting the heart of a lifelong friend speak to you on this occasion, to you whom he has brought forth to the faith of Jesus Christ, and fostered in Christian virtue during thirty-three years.... When at the age of choosing an occupation for life, he decided to devote himself to the service of the altar. Wishing to make himself especially useful, he chose the outlying posts of the American missions as his future field of labor. Bishop Spalding, of Louisville, Ky., and Bishop Lefevre, of Detroit, Mich., had recently established an American seminary at Louvain, Belgium, to provide the new dioceses of American with priests. It was with joy that the young man found this easy means at hand to satisfy his vocation. It was there we found him in 1861 as a subdeacon of the Church. In company with Father Mans, who was in the same order, he came to America, and labored with him here for a number of years. We then knew him studious, virtuous, a model seminarian; and all the perfections we admired in him then, we have no ceased to admire until the day of his death.... You, beloved brethren, know more than what I can tell you of that persevering work for the salvation of souls, for the building up of the Church of God among you. You have seen him here for so many years, ever at the post of duty, ever 157 Annals of the House of Providence, Vancouver, Washington, December 26, Cited in: Amata, Bishop Aegidius Junger.

354 325 ready to give spiritual comfort, ever breaking the Bread of Life, and teaching the word of God. Since his consecration which took place on the 28th day of October, 1879, Bishop Junger added to the secular clergy 32 and to the regular 18. Fifty new churches were built, 106 new stations visited by the clergy, three new colleges were established, 15 parish schools, 2 Indian schools, 4 religious communities for men and 8 for women, 3 orphan asylums and 9 hospitals. This new cathedral also remains as a monument of his zeal and piety. Trials, hardships, oppositions, rebukes, public or private, never discouraged him; but he went on with a prudent, judicious mind, directing the souls of individuals and diffusing the blessing of religion over this vast, growing and prosperous State of Washington. Whilst suffering from the disease that destroyed his precious life, he visited regularly his vast diocese, not neglecting its most outlying districts. This went on for years and years, until a fortnight ago he came back to rest here a few days intending to resume his travels in January. But the Lord disposed otherwise. His vitality was farther gone than he had thought.... On St. Stephen s day he was too weak to celebrate; in the evening he wished to sit up, spoke his confession, and as the weakness seemed to increase, Extreme Unction was administered to him, when bending the head, he fell asleep in the Lord. 158 The same issue of the Catholic Sentinel reported: At a special meeting of the members of the Alumni Union of Louvain, at Vancouver, Wash., Dec. 31, 1895, on the occasion of the sad death of Rt. Rev. Aegidius Junger, D.D., Bishop of Nesqually, said meeting being called to order by the Vice-President, Very Rev. John Heinrich, it was enacted as follows: WHEREAS, Almighty God in His inscrutable designs has removed from among us Rt. Rev. Aegidius Junger, D. D., Bishop of Nesqually, our revered president; and WHEREAS, At all times he has shown indefatigable interest in the affairs of our Union; and WHEREAS, We all admired his sterling qualities as a Bishop, and as President of our Union; be it, therefore, RESOLVED, That whilst we humbly submit to the all-wise decrees of Divine Providence, we cannot but lament our irreparable loss in the death of Bishop Junger; RESOLVED, That we express our feelings of sorrow and condolence to the priests, religious, and laity in their sad bereavement; RESOLVED, That we extend our heartfelt sympathies to his relatives in the painful hour of their loss; RESOLVED, That the above resolutions be spread on the records of the Union, and published in the CATHOLIC SENTINEL, and that a copy of them be sent to the bereaved relatives. Rt. Rev. John B. Brondel, D. D., Bishop of Montana Very Rev. Louis deg. Schram, Admin. Diocese of Nesqually, 158 Catholic Sentinel, January 9, 1896.

355 326 Rev. B. Orth, Portland, Ore. 159 As a final note on the life of this bishop who would later be referred to as the forgotten bishop the editors of the Catholic Sentinel offered the following tribute to the late bishop: Bishop Junger, though one of the most learned in the purple in America, was one of the humblest. His Lordship s faith was as simple as was his every act. He knew not the policy of duplicity nor the diplomacy of deceit. 160 John Baptiste Brondel Named Bishop of Vancouver Island The episcopal career of Junger s eulogist, John Brondel, 161 itself commenced only months after the consecration of Junger in 1879, as noted previously in this chapter. Brondel sized up the challenges ahead of him and his resources in a letter to his brother, Charles: Fifteen years ago to-day I was ordained a priest, and three days ago I was consecrated bishop, here at Victoria, on the third Sunday of Advent by Archbishop Seghers, my best friend, and my predecessor, assisted by Msgr. D Herbonez, O.M.I., Apostolic Vicar of British Columbia, Msgr. Lootens, missionary bishop and former Apostolic Vicar of Idaho and Msgr. Junger the new bishop of Nesqualy my former classmate and colleague.... My diocese extends to the Territory of Alaska, which now belongs to the United States, and was formerly called Russian America and Vancouver Island. Victoria is the harbor of Vancouver Island and is half way between San Francisco and Sitka, the capitol of Alaska. One of my priests who assisted at my consecration came on from Sitka; he traveled four days by steamer. He has left again expressing the hope to have a visit from me within four months. In my diocese I have Father Gustave Donckele, a native of Harelbeke, who is doing very well at Cowichan, Father August Brabant, a native of Marke, near Courtrai, who was unable to assist at the 159 Ibid. Further mention or documentation concerning the Alumni Union of Louvain in the usual sources and archives has not been found by this writer. 160 Catholic Sentinel, January 2, It seems most regrettable that though there is considerable documentation surrounding Brondel s life and ministry, especially his work as bishop of Vancouver Island and, later, Helena, no substantial biography has yet been written documenting his life. The typed manuscript of a brief biography of Brondel in six chapters is held in the Archives of the Diocese of Helena; probably written by Rev. Stephen Joseph Sullivan, a priest of that diocese from 1900 to 1941, but it has never been published. Sullivan is the probable author as well of the translations of the Brondel letters held in the same archive.

356 327 consecration for lack of communication. With me are two Belgian priests and one Hollander. Fifteen miles from here, at Saanich, there is a French priest. There is also a Canadian priest at Cowichan. There is a Dutch priest on the West Coast of the Island, and another Hollander at Nanaimo, seventeen miles from here. Another priest is expected here tomorrow, Father Van Nevel, who comes from Nazareth, East Flanders. The Sisters of St. Ann have a beautiful boarding school here, and also a beautiful brick hospital. There is a brick college for boys. At Nanaimo there is an academy for girls and another one at Cowichan, both of which are directed by the Sisters of St. Ann. This order of Sisters was founded by Monsignor Bourget, Bishop of Montreal. I thank God that, having been raised to the high dignity of the episcopacy, I enjoy the happiness of having saintly priests. This encourages me to fight the holy battles of the Lord. 162 The lack of communication with Brabant mentioned in Brondel s letter must have rankled the new bishop more than he let on to his brother since Brabant revealed in his own diary that Brondel had expressed astonishment that Brabant was not present for the celebration in Victoria: February 25. An Indian arrived at the Mission from Barclay Sound and delivered a letter, with a portrait enclosed, of the new Bishop of Vancouver Island, the Right Rev. J. B. Brondel, D.D. The new prelate expressed his astonishment that I was not present at the great celebration of December 14th, when he received the mitre at the hands of the Most Rev. Archbishop Seghers. 162 Aujourd hui il y a 15 ans que je fus ordonné prêtre et trois jours que je fus sacré évêque ici à Victoria 3 Dim d Avent par l Archevêque Seghers mon meilleur ami, et mon prédécesseur, assisté de Mgr D Herbonnez, O.M.I., Vicaire Apost. de la Columbie Brittanique [sic], de Mgr Lootens, évêque démissionaire anciennement Vicaire Ap. d Idaho et de Mgr Junger le nouvel évêque de Nesqualy mon ancien condisciple et collègue.... Mon diocèse s étend sur le Territoire d Alaska appartenant maintenant aux États Unis, anciennement appelé l Amérique Russe et l Ile de Vancouver. Victoria est le port de mer de l Ile Vancouver et est à moitié chemin entre San Francisco et Sitka la capitale d Alaska. Un de mes prêtres qui assistait au sacre venait de loin et avait voyagé 4 jours en bâteau à vapeur. Il est reparti et espérait recevoir ma visite dans 4 mois. J ai dans mon diocèse Mr Donckele de Harelbeke qui fait très bien à Cowichan, Mr Aug. Brabant de près de Courtrai qui n a pas assisté faute de communication. J ai deux prêtres Belges avec moi ici et un Hollandais. Il y a un prêtre Français à 5 lieues d ici à Saanich, un Canadien encore à Cowichan, un hollandais sur la côte occid. de l île et un autre hollandais à Nanaimo à 25 lieues d ici. Un autre est attendu ici demain, Mr Nevele qui vient de Nazareth Fl. Or. Les soeurs de Ste Anne ont un beau pensionnat ici et aussi un bel hôpital en briques. Il y a un collège en briques pour garçons. A Nanaimo il y a un pensionnat et un autre à Cowichan dirigés par les Soeurs de Ste Anne, un ordre de soeurs qui fut institué par Mgr Bourget Ev. de Montréal. Je remercie Dieu de ce que étant élevé à la haute dignité de l épiscopat, j ai le bonheur d avoir des saints prêtres; c est ce qui m encourage à combattre les saints combats du Seigneur. Brondel (Victoria) to his brother, December 17, Photostatic copy with translation of original French text. Archives of the Diocese of Helena.

357 328 A great many events take place and great celebrations in the Church are had, but, although I would be happy to be present and witness them, I must forego the pleasure of taking part in them owing to the lack of communication. Our new Bishop will after a time understand the situation and in the present instance he will be astonished to learn that it was over a month after his consecration that I received the letter of invitation, to be present on the great occasion. 163 One of Brondel s earliest tasks was to make contact with John De Neve. On the feast of Saint Joseph, the foundation day of the college, Brondel wrote to De Neve: Monsignor, I have received with great joy the letter you wrote to me from the Eternal City. I thank you for having obtained for me as well as for my worthy priests the Papal Blessing. We were pleased to learn that you had recovered your health. May God be blessed! I beg to thank you for your fatherly congratulations and I hope with the aid of your prayers and Holy Sacrifices to obtain the graces necessary in a state so elevated and so full of responsibilities. On my part I shall pray to Saint Joseph whose feast is celebrated to-day that you may be enriched with heavenly blessings. 164 In April of 1880, Augustin Brabant traveled to Victoria by canoe to finally meet his new bishop; he then spent three days with Brondel before returning to his mission. On the way to Victoria by canoe, Brabant later wrote, his feet nearly froze, and would have except for the kindness of one of his Indian guides who pressed his own two bare feet to the missionaries to warm them. On the return journey to his mission, he and his guides were caught up in a most severe storm... that threatened to engulf us at any moment. 165 Brondel himself took to the sea to begin his first pastoral tour of his diocese. He left Victoria by the steamboat California on the first Wednesday of May and arrived in Wrangell the following Sunday evening. From Wrangell, he wrote his brother in Belgium: I would like to give you the pleasure to receive a letter written two hundred and fifty hours away from my episcopal city. I left Victoria the first Wednesday of May and arrived here per steamship, California, Sunday evening. The mountains still have snow on them. The people 163 Charles Moser, OSB, Reminiscences of the West Coast of Vancouver Island (Victoria, BC: Acme Press, 1926), Brondel (Victoria) to De Neve (Louvain). March 19, Photostatic copy of a translation of original text. Archives of the Diocese of Helena. 165 Moser, Reminiscences, 94.

358 329 here are mostly Indian, there are a few Europeans. People come here to look for gold about 100 hours up the river Stickeen. There were 3 Irishmen present at Mass this morning, they leave today per steamship to look for gold. Your brother will have difficulty to have enough money to return to Victoria. It is the first time that I am so close to gold mountains, I have to say that there are lots of complaints everything is expensive, travel is hard, the people are spoiled rotten and many find little or nothing. I went from here to Sitka with the priest Mr. J. Althoff a Dutchman 26 years old who lives here. Sitka is forty hours more to the North. There I have seen the Sitka Indians with their body blackened, with rings in the nose and the women with silver squares in their lip. They build small houses on their burial ground and they put baskets inside with the burned bones of the dead. Here in Wrangell they place a column of 30 feet high in front of their house. The column has been cut with bear men and whale figures and colored, in the column they hack an opening in which they lay the bones and close it with a plank.... Here I am in the only Rectory in Alaska, which was build this year. Mr Althoff was installed here by Msgr. Seghers. But you ask me how the Indians are, do they want to become Catholics. Oh well. The priest here has baptized three grown-ups before they died and 25 children in one year, so it is not for nothing that he came. But the work of the Apostalate is very difficult and not pleasant to human nature. Never have I seen it more then here because I was never in area where our holy believe began Ik wil u het vermaek geven eenen brief te ontvangen geschreven twee honderd en vijftig uren van mijne bischoppelijke stad. Ik vertrok van Victoria den eersten woensdag van Mey en kwam hier per stoomboot California s Zondags avond aen; de bergen zijn hier nog met sneeuw bedekt. Het volk hier is meest Indianen, er zijn een klein getal Europeanen. Het volk reist alhier om goud te zoeken omtrent 100 uren op de rivier Stickeen. Er waren 3 Ierlanders tegenwoordig te misse heden morgen, zij vertrekken vandaag per stoomboot om goud te zoeken. Uw broeder zal met moeite geld genoeg hebben om naar Victoria terug te gaan. Het is de eerste mael dat ik zoo nabij goudbergen ben en ik moet zeggen dat er hier meest klagen zijn; alles kost dier, 't reizen is zwaer, de menschen zijn bedorven en velen vinden weinig of niets. Ik ben van hier naar Sitka gegaan met den priester Mr. J. Althoff een Hollander 26 jaar oud die hier woont. Sitka is veertig uren meer in t Noorden. Daer heb ik de Sitka Indianen gezien met hun wezen gezwart, met ringen in de neus en de vrouwen met zilver hoeken in de lip. Zij bouwen kleine huizen op hun begravenisplaets, en leggen er in bakskes waerin de verbrande beenderen der dooden zijn; hier te Wrangell plaetsen zij een kolonne van dertig voet hoog voor hun huis. De kolonne is met beers mans walvisch figuren gesneden en gekoleurd in de kolonne kappen zij een opening waerin zij de beenderen leggen en opsluiten met een planke.... Hier ben ik in de eenigste pastorij van Alaska, die dit jaer gebouwd wierd. Mr Althoff werd hier in Mey 1879 door Msgr. Seghers ingesteld. Maer gij vraegt mij hoe gaat het met de Indianen hier, willen zij Katholiek worden. Eh wel. De priester hier heeft drij groote menschen gedoopt voordat zij stierven en 25 kinderen in een jaer en dat het eerste, zoo dat het niet voor niets is dat hij hier gekomen is, maer t werk van t Apostelschap is zeer hard en onaengenaem volgens de naturie. Nooit heb ik het meer gezien dan hier omdat ik nooit in een streek was waer ons heilig geloof begon. Brondel (Fort Wrangel) to his brother, May 26,

359 330 Brondel returned to Victoria on June 18th. Before commencing his first visit to Brabant s mission on the island s primitive west coast, Brondel took time to travel to the Saanich mission, thirteen miles north of Victoria by a good road accompanied by John Leroy. There they were met by Gustave Donckele and the Frenchman, Joseph Mandart, for the blessing of a new church bell weighing 550 lbs that had just been purchased for $165 from San Francisco. After that solemn duty was accomplished, a high mass celebrated, and the bell rung for the first time at the Angelus, Brondel took time to address the Indians in Chinook. 167 Within a month Brondel was once again on the road, or rather, on the sea, as he undertook a visitation of Augustine Brabant s Hesquiate mission. 168 As had happened in Alaska already, Brondel was confronted with a reality he had theretofore been unacquainted with. Brabant wrote of the new bishop s initiation into the realities of missionary service on the island: July 28. Right Rev. J. B. Brondel made his first episcopal visit to the coast, and I am sorry to say I could not report omnia prospera. The Bishop seemed disappointed; he expected to receive a great reception and he would have been received with all the honors due to his rank. But my Indians with the exception of one family being still pagans, I thought it would look like hypocrisy to make them turn out and act as Christian Indians do elsewhere. I live in hopes that the time may yet come when our Bishop will be duly received here by Christian Indians. 169 Brondel continued up the coast then returned to Brabant s Hesquiat mission, introducing him to his new neighbor, Joseph Nicolaye, whom he was assigning as the first missionary priest to the Kyoquot Indians, sixty miles to the west of Brabant. Everything was arranged and the new Mission was to be put up without delay, wrote Brabant. 170 Of this same pastoral journey, Brondel himself wrote extensively to his brother; a brief selection of his words provides a graphic glimpse into the world in which he had found himself immersed: Archives of the Diocese of Helena. Translation by John A. Dick. The same visit is also described in Our Sitka Letter, Catholic Sentinel, June 10, The Sitka Letter, signed North-West is almost certainly from the hand of Brondel. 167 Catholic Sentinel, July 22, Ibid. 169 Moser, Reminiscences, Ibid.

360 331 I left Victoria July 17 to visit the West Coast of Vancouver Island, and, upon my return, the 15th of August, I found your letter at home. This will show you the length of the trips I have to take. The trip was made on a sailing vessel in a country inhabited exclusively by Indians. During a whole month I slept ashore but three nights, the rest of the time I was aboard the ship. We left Victoria on Saturday: we had a stiff breeze and my next three meals were offered as an involuntary tribute to Neptune. On Sunday night we came to the Pauquachin Indians who live opposite Cape Flattery, Washington Territory, the farthest northwest point on the mainland of the United States.... Wednesday afternoon the fog lifted and a little breeze helped us in to Barclay Sound. How many rocks visible and hidden! How many islands! That evening we arrived at Father Nicolaye s, the priest from Limburg, Holland, who is in charge of the Indians of the surrounding country. He met us in a canoe. I passed a night at his home, and at eight o clock the next morning, I dedicated his church to the worship of Almighty God, under the invocation of St. Mary Magdalene, whose feast was celebrated that day. I preached in Chinook, and an Indian translated my sermon into the language of the tribe. The chapel was filled; there were about eighty Indians. The next day I continued my journey, accompanied by Father Nicolaye. We passed through several Indian villages, and, at night, we reached the Ucluliets [sic].... Upon our arrival they shouted that they wished to see us. Several wore nothing but a sheet and it is not unusual to see some attired as was Adam in the Garden of Paradise. However, as a rule, they wear some clothes. I explained to them the object of my visit, some of them replied that I had rather bring them something to eat bread or tobacco. I grew indignant and replied that Not on bread alone doth man live, but on every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God and that truth and justice which I was bringing to them endureth to life everlasting On Tuesday we arrived at Hesquiat, 110 miles from Victoria. Here lived Father Brabant, a native of Rolleghem, near Courtrai.... He met me with a canoe filled with Indians. Many of these, upon landing, came to the Bishop and rubbed the velvet of his cassock. Several of them said that I was aské [emphasis in original] which means that I have not much hair on the head J ai reçu votre honoré du 15 Juillet. Je partais de Victoria le 17 de Juillet pour visiter la côte Occidentale de l Ile Vancouver et à mon retour le 15 d Août je trouvais votre lettre chez moi. De là vous pouvez comprendre la longueur des voyages que j ai à faire. C est à bord d un voilier que je devais faire ce voyage dans un pays habité exclusivement par des sauvages. Je n ai couché à terre que 3 nuits en un mois, le reste du temps j étais en bâteau. Nous partions de Victoria le Samedi; le vent s élève et pour 3 repas successifs je rendais à la mer ce que j avais mangé. Le Dimanche soir nous arrivions chez les Indiens Pachens [sic] qui demeurent vis à vis de Cape Flattery, le point le plus au Nord Ouest de Etats Unis.... Le Mercredi après midi le brouillard se leva et avec un petit vent on entra en Barclay Sound. Que de rochers à vue et cachés, que îles nombreuses!! Nous arrivâmes le soir chez Mr Nicolaye le prêtre Limburgeois Hollandais en charge des Indiens de ces alentours. Il venait en canoe c. à d. une petite barque indienne pour nous encontrer. Je logea chez lui et le lendemain à 8 h. je bénis son église sous le patronage de Ste. Marie Magdaleine dont on célébrait la Fête. Je prêchai en Chinook et un Indien traduisit dans la langue sauvage ce que

361 332 A year into his ministry in this most difficult mission Brondel felt compelled to write John De Neve in Louvain again; as he was experiencing acutely the pressures of his diocese s ministerial needs, the bishop needed to clarify for De Neve the urgent character of those needs: Da mihi Belgas, said Saint Francis Xavier. I make the same request to-day. The Belgian missionaries are very well adopted [sic] to the exigencies of this country. Send me no Germans, I have but few German people here and the people demand good English here.... All the missionaries here are happy because they live the life of true missionaries. Father Leroy, however, is sick beyond hope of recovery; yet I hope that God will not take him from us. Our missionaries are very successful among the Indians. But I am in need of priests. God grant that priests zealous for the propagation of the faith turn in this direction. I know that there are many such in Belgium, but I fear that they think that we have nothing but whites here. This is not the case. If I had priests I would place them among the Indians. Victoria is the only place that has a white population. But I am poor, have no money, and the experience of others makes me fear to go into debt. I paid for a student for three years and then he did not come. Behold how poor missionary bishops have to suffer! 172 At almost the same time Brondel was appealing to Louvain for more clergy, he was also convoking his first diocesan synod at St. Andrew s Cathedral in Victoria. Brondel announced the synod to his clergy on July 20, 1881; they were requested to je disais. La chapelle était remplie, il y avait à peu près 80 Sauvages. Je continuais ma route le lendemain en compagnie de M. Nicolaye nous passions plusieurs de villages d Indiens et arrivâmes le soir chez les Uclulicks [sic].... A notre arrivée ils s écriaient qu ils voulaient nous voir. Plusieurs n avaient sur eux qu un drap de lit et de les voir dans l état d Adam au Paradis n est pas chose extraordinaire. Cependant en général ils s habillent. Je leur disais pourquoi je venais et quelques uns répliquaient que je ferais mieux de leur apporter de quoi manger du pain ou du tabac. Je me suis indigné et leur ai expliqué que l homme ne vit pas seulement de pain mais de toute parole qui procède de la bouche de Dieu, que la vérité et la justice que je leur apportais était un bien qui durait jusqu à la vie éternelle Le Mardi nous sommes arrivé à Hesquiat 110 milles de Victoria où demeure Mr. Brabant de Rolleghem lès Courtrai... Il vint au devant de moi avec un canoe d Indiens et mettant pied à terre beaucoup d Indiens vinrent voir l évêque et toucher le velours de la soutane. Plusieurs disaient que j étais aské [emphasis in original] ce qui signifie qu il n y a pas beaucoup de cheveux sur la tête. Brondel (Victoria) to his brother, August 23, Photostatic copy with translation of original French text. Archives of the Diocese of Helena. 172 Brondel (Victoria) to De Neve (Louvain). June Photostatic copy of a translation of original text. Archives of the Diocese of Helena. Original text not located.

362 333 present themselves ten days hence and to bring with them statements as to the number of Easter communions and matrimonial dispensations they had granted. With even Althoff from Wrangel joining Jonckau, Mandart, Lemmens, Donckele, Van Nevel, Heynen, 173 Rondeault, Nicolaye, and Eussen, (Brabant was excused because of distance while Leroy was dispensed from attending due to sickness), mass was celebrated at 7:30 a.m. by Brondel with the synod formally opened thereafter. The whole affair was over by noon, with benediction celebrated to close the synod. Two statutes were enacted, one affirming the statutes of Brondel s predecessor and the other allowing each church to reserve the Blessed Sacrament in the residence of the missionary so as to be prepared for calls for holy Viaticum. 174 The call to gather in synod for a half-day leads one to wonder if the young bishop had yet grasped the difficulties involved in traveling the length of his diocese for his priests; on the other hand, perhaps someone like Althoff looked forward to having an official excuse to leave his lonely post in Alaska to return to Victoria and enjoy the company of his fellow clergymen. A month later, the new bishop s busy schedule called for him to travel to Oregon for the investiture of Charles John Seghers with the pallium to be followed by the previously described Second Provincial Synod that Seghers had called. With Junger assigned the role of presenting the pallium to the new archbishop, Brondel, as Seghers s closest friend, was invited to give the sermon for the grand occasion, typically reported at length in the Catholic Sentinel: After the Communion, the Rt. Rev. J. B. Brondel ascended the pulpit and delivered one of the most touching and beautiful addresses we have ever listened to. Many 173 Heynen, William (1856?), was from the diocese of Roermond, The Netherlands. He entered the American College in 1877, was ordained in Louvain in 1880 and departed for Vancouver Island the same year. He began his work in Vancouver Island as assistant at St. Andrew s Cathedral and teacher at St. Louis College. In 1885, Heynen was assigned by Seghers to found the first Native mission in Sitka, Alaska.. John Lemmens brought him back to Vancouver Island and placed him in charge of the Clayoquot Indian mission on the West Coast of the island. In 1892, he was sent to serve the coal miners in Wellington and in 1898 Bishop Christie named him pastor of the parish in Nanaimo. On the occasion of his twentyfifth anniversary, Heynen wrote to the editor of the American College Bulletin that... he has not done anything worth recording during the twenty-five years of his priesthood. These years, he says, have all been de Communi Confessorum non Pontificum. The date of his death has not been found in the usual sources. See "Our Jubilarians," The American College Bulletin III, no. 3 (1905): Brondel (Victoria), July 20, Photostatic copy of summary. Archives of the Diocese of Helena.

363 334 people were moved to tears during its delivery, many passages being rendered with a power, pathos and eloquence seldom excelled. Brondel s sermon began with a consideration of the words of Christ: Ego sum pastor bonus..., raced through reflections on papal authority, ecclesial unity, the wealth and progress of the United States (as an example of the power of union), reflections on the vices that afflict families who live without God as their source of unity (divorce and abortion), the apostolic example of Archbishop F. N. Blanchet, first priest and first bishop of Oregon, and finally ended with the words of Saint Augustine: Consequently, if you wish to live by the Holy Spirit, keep charity, love, truth, desire unity, that you may reach eternity. Amen. 175 As noted earlier in this chapter, the pallium ceremony in Portland was followed immediately by the Second Provincial Synod at the end of which Brondel was given responsibility by Seghers and Junger to convey the fruits of the synod to Rome, to visit the American College and report back to Seghers and Junger on the status of its rector, John De Neve, and to promote in Rome the erection of Montana Territory as an apostolic vicariate and eventual diocese. With such weighty charges placed upon his shoulders, Brondel appointed the ever-faithful John Jonckau as administrator of the diocese and in September of 1881 proceeded to Europe. Clearly, he acquitted himself admirably on all counts. In Rome, the synod documents were received by Pope Leo XIII and Cardinal Simeoni of the Congregation for the Propagation of Faith. Simeoni also took seriously Brondel s appeals for the erection of the Montana vicariate. Only a year later, in April 1883, not only was the vicariate erected as Brondel had requested, but he himself was named its vicar apostolic. He had had too few years in Victoria to accomplish much in the far-flung and impoverished diocese; he would have many more years to leave his mark on the church in Montana, which he would lead until his death in John Jonckau Refuses the Episcopacy Brondel s move from Vancouver Island left an episcopal slot open in the North Pacific Coast region. That opening would set the stage for a story of episcopal 175 Catholic Sentinel, August 18, 1881.

364 335 succession that can only be described as an oddity unlike any other the church in the region had yet known or would know again. Once again, Seghers was in the role of kingmaker as far as the episcopacy in his province was concerned, so at least one of the three names in the terna that was sent to Rome as the new bishop of Vancouver Island was that of his friend, co-worker and fellow-louvanist, John J. Jonckau. Jonckau had been a competent pastor, diocesan administrator and teacher since his arrival in Victoria. During both Seghers and Brondel s terms as bishop, Jonckau had served capably as diocesan administrator so knew well the diocese and its needs; he was the logical choice as Brondel s successor. Jonckau s appointment as coadjutor bishop of Vancouver Island was made in Rome sometime in the spring of By mid-april, it was clear the appointment was in trouble: Jonckau was refusing it, ostensibly for reasons of poor health. 176 In response to a letter from Jonckau, (not found by this writer and possibly no longer extant), presumably advising Seghers of his refusal, Seghers wrote back to Jonckau immediately and sternly: Right Reverend Dear Bishop, I answer at once your favor of the 13th inst. Not only you can [sic] conscientiously accept the dignity offered to you, but you are in duty bound to submit to the decision taken by the highest authority under God on earth. To destroy what it has taken the Bishops of this Province three years to build up, viz. the erection of the Vicariate of Montana, is a matter much more conscientiously grievous than Your private scruples.... To deny that God calls you, when all those above you in the Church call you, is to destroy the arguments you yourself made use of to persuade me to accept. 177 Seghers s first letter to Jonckau did not have the desired effect; Jonckau continued his resistance to the appointment. On May 8th, Seghers responded to another of Jonckau s letters expressing his refusal to be consecrated. If the April letter was notable in its brevity, the May letter to Jonckau took the opposite tack: its length runs to six pages of condensed handwriting. In the letter, Seghers appealed to 176 Though Brondel was moving to Montana, he retained the title of bishop of Vancouver Island until his installation as apostolic vicar of Montana. Thus the original appointment of Jonckau was as coadjutor bishop of Vancouver Island. Brondel wrote to his brother of the matter, Entretemps je tiendrai le titre d évêque de l Ile de Vancouver mais je résiderai en Montana. Mr. J. J. Jonckau a été nominé mon évêque coadjuteur pour l Ile de Vancouver. Il refuse d accepter la consécration épiscopale. Brondel (Pendleton) to Ch. Brondel (Dottignies), May 18, Archives of the Diocese of Helena. 177 Seghers to Jonckau (Victoria), April 17, Oregon City Letterbook, Archives of the Archdiocese of Portland. Microfilm copy held by Archives of the Jesuit Province of Oregon.

365 336 Chrysostom, Thomas Aquinas, Gaudentius of Brixia, among a host of other notable figures of church history, to build his extraordinarily detailed case for Jonckau s acceptance of the office. The letter also made clear the concerns Jonckau was privately putting forward for his rejection of the honor: You mention facts which I shall not dispute. I will, however, make you aware that our first impressions about things that happen under our eyes, are often erroneous and that it is only after a certain lapse of time that we discover the designs of God in the events of this world. How do you know that the mere passing of Rt. Rev. Bishop Brondel through the episcopacy of Vancouver Island was not meant to prepare the way for you at a time that your health evidently disqualified you for the position? Your fear of your priests lacking the obedience and respect towards you on account of your want of knowledge is imaginary, an effect of your natural timidity and more than uncharitable towards your fellow priests. I know them well enough to assure you that you have nothing to dread from them in that matter.... You say You have already written to the Cardinal to signify your [undecipherable] for the moment, I shall neither praise nor blame your action, but I warn You to be on the watch where humility stops and obstinacy begins... and if the Cardinal deigns to write and to insist on your accepting the dignity, beware of going against his instructions.... You must understand not only that the translation of your Bishop is an accomplished fact, but also that it took place with his free and full consent, and after he had been duly consulted: that step he takes merely in deference to the wishes of his superiors. The See of Vancouver Island is, therefore, now to all intents and purposes vacant. Do not keep that dear church in the state of bereavement and widowhood. Lack of canonical knowledge, which You pretend, is injurious more to the administration of the diocese than to the episcopal dignity; now, you have been several times in charge of the episcopal administration; is it not a little strange that you should plead ignorance to flee from the dignity, when you did not plead it to flee from the administration of the diocese? 178 Seghers s new arguments notwithstanding, Jonckau continued his firm resistance to his consecration as bishop. In the meantime, in advance of the recently announced Third Plenary Council of Baltimore to be convened in November of the following year, Seghers along with all the American archbishops was called to Rome by the Prefect of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, Cardinal Giovanni 178 Seghers (Portland) to Jonckau (Victoria), May 8, Oregon City Letterbook, Archives of the Archdiocese of Portland. Microfilm copy held by Archives of the Jesuit Province of Oregon.

366 337 Simeoni. 179 Seghers scheduled his departure to Europe for September. The issue of Jonckau s refusal would certainly be on his agenda with Simeoni. 180 In the meantime, Seghers continued to press Jonckau with further letters, writing in August: I am sorry you prevented me from consecrating you before my departure for Europe. It must [emphasis in original] take place at my return Deo volente Jonckau, for his part, also communicated to Simeoni, I am sickly as the enclosed doctor s certificate testifies; I am very small and insignificant in stature and if you do not believe me I will come to Rome and show myself. 182 Seghers, with Peter Hylebos accompanying him as his secretary, left for Europe on September 17th, traveling by way of Montana, Washington, D.C. and New York. 183 After a visit with family and friends in Ghent, he continued to Rome, arriving there by mid-november. By the middle of December, 1883, Jonckau had received word from Rome that his pleas seemingly had been heard and he was soon to be relieved of his episcopal appointment. To John Brondel, already in Montana, he wrote: End of nine months trouble and Kkouli Tomtom Glorious news from Rome!! Father Jonckau no Bishop!!!!! The Pope does not want him!!! The Pope is the best man that ever lived!!! Three cheers for the Pope!!!!!!!! The Archbishop writes to me that the Cardinal is looking out for another man for Vancouver Island, and that man will be a thousand times welcome. If I had a vote in the chapter I know what man would come here, it would be the man who left in such a hurry on the 9th of May to go to be roasted alive like St. Lawrence in 179 Simeoni, Giovanni ( ) a native of Palestrina, was ordained a priest in 1839, thereafter teaching philosophy and theology at the Urbanianum in Rome. He was consecrated bishop in 1875 and made a cardinal in pectore the same year; he received his red hat in December In March 1878, Pope Leo XIII appointed him Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith. See The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church: Biographical Dictionary, August 6, Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., Ibid., Ibid. According to Van der Heyden s biography of Augustine Brabant, Jonckau reported in an October 19th letter to De Neve that he had in his possession medical certificates corroborating his claim that he was unable to perform active duties, and that to attempt would only materially shorten his life. The letter is no longer extant in the archives of The American College. See Joseph Van der Heyden, Life and Letters of Father Brabant: A Flemish Missionary Hero (Louvain: J. Wouters-Ickx, 1920), Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D.,

367 338 summer, and be frozen like a codfish in Norway in the winter, and I am quite sure that by this time that man would be as glad to return here as I am today (glorious day too!) of escaping the gallows, excuse me, I mean the mitre. (Again three cheers for the Pope!!!) 184 In fact, the next bishop of Vancouver Island would not be a returning Brondel, but the man with whom Jonckau had so stubbornly fought, Seghers himself. When or under what circumstances Seghers finally gave in to Jonckau s obstinacy and thereafter thought of himself as the solution to the Vancouver Island problem is not known. What happened in Rome to effect this turn in both men s fortunes was recalled by Seghers himself in a letter to Jonckau, dated January 1, 1884 and published some four months later in the Catholic Sentinel: Last Sunday from 5:15 p.m. till 6 o clock I saw His Holiness privately and presented him Father Hylebos and when he dismissed us, he spontaneously added, I could, if I choose, see him once more, in a private audience, before leaving Italy.... And how long, the Pope enquired were you Bishop of Vancouver Island? [sic] Six years, I replied, but I belonged in all sixteen years to that Diocese. And what is the Capital of the Island and the Episcopal See? Victoria, was my answer. Is it a nice town? Yes, a very nice one. This gave me a splendid opportunity to add: Your Holiness is aware that I have offered my self to return to my former Diocese. Yes, he answered, Cardinal Simeoni told me a word about it. The fact is that on my first visit, both to the Cardinal Prefect of the Propaganda and to Bishop Jacobini, 185 secretary of the Propaganda, both had asked me with great concern: Well, Monseigneur, what are we going to do with Alaska? That extensive region is altogether abandoned and neither the Jesuits nor the oblates [sic] are able to take charge of it. I replied, the matter was very simple; let them send me back to Victoria; I would take care of Alaska, and continue the work I had commenced in If they said: quem mittimus? Et quis ibit nobis? I would answer Ecce ego, mitte me. And would you, asked Cardinal Jacobini, give up the diocese of Oregon which you administer so well? I replied I would if I were sure of the Pope s approval and blessing of my resolution. The Cardinal suggested to me to ask the Pope himself; I said I felt too delicate about the matter and would prefer him to do it for me. He promised he would. A few days afterwards the Cardinal mentioned the matter to the Holy Father and told me the same day that the Pope approved it. It was to that interview with Cardinal Simeone that the Holy Father alluded. But I must proceed with my conversation with the Holy Father. He enquired shrewdly into my motives and asked: Hand [sic] you any difficulties with your 184 Jonckau (Victoria) to Brondel, December 17, Archives of the Diocese of Helena. The man Jonckau has in mind for a return to Vancouver Island is Brondel who had left Victoria for Montana in May of Jacobini, Domenico Maria ( ), a native of Rome, was appointed Secretary of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith in 1882 under Simeoni. He was made a cardinal in See The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church: Biographical Dictionary, August 6, 2005.

368 339 clergy in Oregon? I answered, none whatever. And who is the candidate you propose to take your place, was the next question. I replied that was not any private business of mine, but the common affair of all the Bishops of the province. Then you love your former diocese? He queried with a tone of great kindness. I said I did; but the principal reason of my conduct was the following: Oregon being a prosperous State, the selection of an Archbishop of Oregon could hardly be attended with great difficulties; whereas the appointment of a bishop to the diocese of Vancouver Island could not but be a difficult matter, as the one, whom the bishop had recommended, refused to accept the mitre. Is he worthy? asked the Holy Father. I said he is. Then, he continued, he must accept. I replied: He is very sick and unable to discharge the office of a Bishop. It is for that reason, I added, I offer myself to be sent to Vancouver Island. I am perfectly willing to remain where I am and be the Metropolitan of Oregon; and I would not think of changing my diocese if the Pope was not in favor of it. When I left Vancouver Island to be Archbishop of Oregon, I did so with much regret, but at the same time, with much readiness, because, being appointed by the Holy See, I considered I was fulfilling the will of God by complying with the will of the Pope. And now, I want to ascertain again what the will of the Pope is; and unless I have the Pope s approbation and the Pope s blessing on my scheme, I shall not consider what I am doing the will of God. My words evidently made a deep impression on the Holy Father.... On this occasion I distinctly saw his eyes moisten, and I noticed him pressing his lips two or three times as if to overcome his emotion. Then with that Pontifical majesty which, in Leo XIII, blends so majestically with his natural simplicity, he said: I approve it. My own feelings at that solemn moment I fail to describe. My offering was accepted; my scheme had received the highest sanction it could receive in the world; and the Pope s blessing on it is an earnest proof that it is in conformity with the will of God. Prepare for me, therefore, a small corner on Vancouver Island, the land which in 1863, I selected as the portion of my inheritence [sic], where I began my missionary career, and where, God willing, I shall terminate it. I will remain Archbishop of Oregon, until having settled all the temporal and spiritual affairs of my present diocese, after which I shall leave Portland to take formal possession of my former See at Victoria. 186 Though Seghers made no mention of his scheme in letters to family, friends, and John De Neve 187 prior to his return to his native country, once there, news of the impending change found its way to Ghent s Catholic journal, Le Bien Public, which was picked up later by the Catholic Sentinel. In the Sentinel s March 27th issue, the following is found: In last week s issue of the Sentinel we informed our readers that according to a statement published in a Belgium journal, our esteemed Archbishop... offered himself to take charge again of the diocese of Vancouver Island, B.C. When we published this quite unexpected news, we entertained serious doubts as to the truth of that statement and did not expect to be soon obliged to make a sacrifice by submitting to the great loss we shall sustain by Archbishop Seghers s departure 186 Catholic Sentinel, April 17, At least among those letters preserved in the Archives of The American College, Louvain, no mention is made by Seghers of his impending change.

369 340 from us. The above statement, however, has been, we say it with sorrow and grief, confirmed by subsequent letters written by the Archbishop himself. 188 Reaction of at least some, and probably most, of the Oregon clergy to Seghers s move back to Vancouver Island is captured in Bertrand Orth s words to John De Neve: We lose our beloved and dear Archbishop. What a loss for Oregon! It is the greatest loss inflicted upon me for a long time. The thought of it gave me the blues for the last two, three weeks in their very worst features. I don t know upon whom to throw the blame in this matter. Most certainly I resign to Rome s ordinances, but a personal feeling cannot be ignored either. We prayed so hard for his happy and safe return, but our fondest hopes are frustrated; a cross almost too heavy to bear. 189 A brief note in Augustine Brabant s journal offered a rather terse summary of the events that had transpired: Bishop Brondel is gone to Montana to become Bishop there. Rev. Father Jonckau was to be his successor, but he does not accept on account of sickness and poor health. I now heard [sic] that Archbishop Seghers had obtained permission to return to his old diocese. 190 Strangely, the obstinacy of John Jonckau was precisely what gave Seghers the platform he needed to take up again his life-long missionary desire to bring the light of the Gospel to the last, dark corner of the world, and in so doing, perhaps, be the eschatological agent of the Last Judgment. Jonckau s victory also set the stage for Seghers s violent death in the frozen hinterlands of Alaska. Perhaps the refusal of Jonckau to accept the episcopal honor commended to him and the ecclesiastical embarrassment it surely caused Seghers and the other Louvain bishops also set the stage for another unexpected turn of events: Seghers s successor in Oregon City would not be one of the many Louvain priests serving throughout the region, or even one of the other priests of the region, some of whom Seghers would surely have recommended to Rome for the post, but an outsider, William H. Gross, 191 Redemptorist bishop of Savannah, Georgia. It was a very big 188 Catholic Sentinel, March 27, Orth (Portland) to De Neve (Louvain), March 29, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 190 Moser, Reminiscences, Gross, William H. ( ) was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. He entered the Redemptorist order in 1857 and was ordained a priest in In 1873, he was named

370 341 sign to anyone who was paying attention that the Louvanists did not have a lock on the province s episcopal thrones. Seghers was not the kingmaker some may have thought him to be. This was an appointment made in Baltimore by America s equivalent of a primate: James Gibbons. Gibbons s appointment of his close friend to Oregon City was important enough to the Baltimore archbishop that he himself traveled by train, in a sort of whistle-stop tour, to Portland for Gross s investiture of the pallium. 192 Though far from over, with Gross s appointment to Oregon City the Louvanists influence over the church on the North Pacific Coast would no longer be exclusive. Abiit in Montana cum festinatione: Brondel Moves to Montana Charles John Seghers s response to word of John Brondel s imminent move to Montana gave rise to a scriptural play on the name of the new apostolic vicariate; to Brondel in congratulations, he wrote, or perhaps fairly ordered his friend, Abiit in Montana cum festinatione. 193 The play on words was a double one since Brondel received his bulls of appointment from the Vatican on the feast of the Visitation, July 2, Seghers, as provincial archbishop, had the privilege of announcing to the clergy and faithful of Montana the glad tidings 195 that the apostolic vicariate of Montana had been established, including now the eastern reaches of the territory, making the province even larger than before. As always, Seghers performed his duty with grand style and plentiful words: bishop of Savannah, Georgia. He attended the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore in 1884 and there learned of his appointment to the see of Oregon City. In Portland, he completed the cathedral building, expanded the number of parishes and founded a congregation of women religious, the Sister of St. Mary of Oregon. See Patricia Brandt, "Gross, William ( )," in The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, ed. Michael Glazier and Thomas J. Shelley (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1997). Also see Brandt and Pereyra, Eden, Brandt and Pereyra, Eden, Luke 1:39. The full verse is: Exsurgens autem Maria in diebus illis abiit in montana cum festinatione in civitatem Iuda.... And Mary rising up in those days, went into the hill country with haste into a city of Judah Palladino, Indian and White, 1st ed., Joseph Van der Heyden, "The Rt. Rev. John Bapt. Brondel: First Bishop of Helena, Montana," The American College Bulletin II, no. 2 (1904): Catholic Sentinel, May 10, 1883.

371 342 Yes, Beloved Brethren, we announce to you, officially, the joyful news that the holy Pontiff, who so nobly wears the Papal tiara, has turned the attention of his mind and the solicitude of his heart to the spiritual condition of your Territory.... By a brief which the Cardinal Prefect of the Propaganda informs me, will soon be issued, and at the instance of the Bishops of the Ecclesiastical Province of Oregon, the Territory of Montana has been separated from the Vicariates Apostolic of Nebraska and Idaho, and committed to the spiritual care of Right Rev. John Baptist Brondel, Bishop of Vancouver Island, to be organized into a Diocese. 196 With Seghers s encouragement and notwithstanding the on-going difficulties with Jonckau in Victoria, Brondel made plans to leave Victoria as quickly as possible. Seghers invited Brondel to join him on his imminent pastoral tour of northeastern Oregon and Idaho. Thereafter, Brondel could continue on to Helena. 197 Brondel accepted the invitation and arrived in Portland on May 14, 1883, only a few days after the publication of Seghers s official announcement of Brondel s appointment had appeared in the Catholic Sentinel. The bishops traveled first to Pendleton and the Umatilla Reservation where they were met by Conrardy, Cataldo and about fifty Indian cavaliers. 198 While in Umatilla, Brondel wrote to his brother, Charles, in Dottignies, advising him personally for the first time of the change in his life and of the work ahead of him: Here I am with the Archbishop among the Indians of Umatilla. Father Thibau is the director of the convent here. I am on my way to Montana. You are doubtless aware that a telegram from Rome on 31 March brought the news that the whole Territory of Montana has been erected into an Apostolic Vicariate.... His Holiness Leo XIII has approved the decisions of the Sacred Congregation of the Propaganda and has named me apostolic administrator to organize [the vicariate] into a diocese and to become its first bishop.... I left Victoria and saw that when one leaves all for God one finds all in him. I witnessed many manifestations of sincere affection and I have found that in the church one finds a true spiritual family. I have need of many things to organize a diocese. I need prayers, money and priests Ibid. The pastoral letter includes an extensive history of the church in the region covering all of the front page of the issue and several column inches of the fourth page. 197 Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., Catholic Sentinel, June 7, Me voici avec Mgr l Archevêque chez les sauvages de Umatilla. Mr Thibau est ici directeur du couvent. Je suis en chemin pour Montana. Vous savez sans doute qu une dépêche télégraphique apporta de Rome le 31 Mars la nouvelle que tout le Territoire de Montana fut érigé en Vicariat Apostolique.... Sa Sainteté Léon XIII a approuvé la décision

372 343 Thereafter, the bishops along with the Jesuits, Joseph Cataldo and Alexander Diomedi, 200 continued onto Lapwai via Walla Walla and Lewiston, followed by travel to the largely German village of Uniontown, Moscow and then to the De Smet Mission among the Coeur d Alene Indians, arriving there on the feast of the Sacred Heart, giving Brondel the opportunity to deliver an eloquent sermon on the Sacred Heart. 201 While on the road Brondel had on his mind one piece of business yet to be settled; from the Sacred Heart mission in Idaho he wrote to his brother, I do not yet know in which city I will establish my see Finally, Seghers and Brondel journeyed to Spokane, where they... admired the beautiful falls, which reminded one of Niagara Here the bishops separated, Seghers returning to Umatilla while Brondel remained in Spokane. While in Spokane, Brondel witnessed first hand the lawlessness and injustice regarding the Native Americans that yet reigned in the region. A heinous crime was committed here last week. A dispute arose between a Spokane Indian and a white man. The Indian was put in jail and tied to the wall. After a while two white men came to the window and lodged about twenty small shot in the poor tied up man. The Indian was taken to his lodge where he died after a week of suffering, leaving an only father childless, a young woman widow, and two baby orphans. Some good-hearted people of Spokane gave him a coffin. He de la S. cong. de la Prop. et m a nommé administrateur apostolique pour l organiser en diocèse et en devenir le premier évêque.... J ai quitté Victoria et vu que lorsqu on quitte tout pour Dieu on trouve tout en lui. J ai vu bien les manifestations de sincère affection et j ai trouvé que dans l église on trouve une vraie famille spirituelle. J ai besoin de beaucoup de choses pour organiser un diocèse. Il me faut des prières, de l argent et des prêtres. Brondel (Umatilla) to his brother (Dottignies), May 18, Archives of the Diocese of Helena. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB. 200 Diomedi, Alexander ( ), a native of Umbria, Italy, was ordained as a Jesuit in 1872 in Wales. In 1874, he arrived in the United States where he soon learned the printer s trade. He was assigned to Saint Ignatius Mission in Montana where he published various Indian language dictionaries and bibles. In 1877, he was transferred to Sacred Heart Mission in northern Idaho. In 1899, he was sent to Brazil but returned to the United States in He lived his later years in California. See: Alexander Diomedi, S.J., Sketches of Indian Life in the Pacific Northwest, trans. Edward J. Kowrach (Fairfield, WA: Ye Galleon Press, 1978). 201 Catholic Sentinel, June 7, Je ne sais pas encore en quelle ville je fixerai mon siège.... Brondel (De Smet) to his brother (Dottignies), June 2, Archives of the Diocese of Helena. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB. 203 Catholic Sentinel, June 21, 1883.

373 344 was buried last Saturday evening by Bishop Brondel assisted by Father Cataldo, Father Joset and Father Jacquet. 204 The following Sunday, Brondel gave a lecture in the town entitled, Religion, Natural and Revealed, then, accompanied by Cataldo, left for Missoula, Montana on the 18th of June. 205 He was met by the civic leaders of Missoula outside of town, then escorted by them to Saint Xavier where he offered benediction and addressed his faithful for the first time. On the feast of Saint John the Baptist, his patron and that of his diocese to be, he celebrated a pontifical mass in Missoula, then traveled to Deer Lodge where he was received by fellow-louvanist, Remigius De Ryckere, their first meeting in eighteen years. After celebrating mass and preaching in Deer Lodge on the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, Brondel moved on to Butte, arriving there on July 1st. 206 By the end of August he reported from Helena to his brother, Here I am, at length, at home, after three months journeying and pastoral visitations. 207 Upon settling into his new home in Helena, Brondel took time to write his first pastoral letter to the faithful of his territory. On September 3, 1883, he wrote: When we were in Rome last year, and devoted considerable time to obtain this extension of the Vicariate and the appointment of a Bishop, as asked for by the Prelates of the Province of Oregon, we never suspected that it would be our lot to take upon our shoulders the administration of the Vicariate and its organization into a diocese. But such is the will of God, and we come to you not with regret but joy. For long is the time since this consummation was desired; great were the distances which separated clergy and people from their respective Bishops; next to impossible was it to visit Montana and provide the people in different localities with spiritual assistance. 208 Further in the letter, he sized up the tasks before him and encouraged the material collaboration of the faithful: We come to organize this Vicariate into a Diocese. We have to undertake great journeys to find the lonely Catholic settler and visit the established missions; we 204 Ibid. 205 Ibid. 206 Catholic Sentinel, July 19, Me voicí enfin chez moi après 3 mois de voyage et de visites pastorales. Brondel (Helena) to Ch. Brondel (Dottignies), August 29, Translation provided by Archives of the Diocese of Helena. Brondel s decision to remain in Helena was not a definitive one. In his first pastoral letter dated September 3rd, he indicated that he would only choose an episcopal see once he had toured the territory. See: Catholic Sentinel, November 15, Catholic Sentinel, November 15, 1883.

374 345 have to procure priests, to build residences, school and churches, to secure church property, to obtain teaching orders, to procure Pontifical books and insignia. To defray these expenses, the priests in charge of the different missions will receive your contributions. 209 Brondel wasted no time commencing those great journeys; the October 18th issue of the Catholic Sentinel reported that at the end of September he and Cataldo had left Helena via the new Northern Pacific railroad, traveling to Fort Keogh where he delivered a lecture to the officers and soldiers stationed there. He continued on to Miles City where he again lectured, said mass and confirmed fifteen adults. He traveled next to Glendive where he received a block of land for a new church and where the local faithful had already raised $1,250 towards the cost of the building s construction. In Billings, he also received land and initiated a fund for a new church. He journeyed on to the Crow Agency, then to Livingstone, at which point Cataldo left him to return to Spokane, while the bishop continued to Bozeman and Virginia City before returning by stagecoach to Helena. 210 Such then was the life of overland travel that was John Baptiste Brondel s as the first pastor of the church in all of Montana. A substantial step forward in the new diocese s development occurred when Joseph Cataldo, on behalf of the Society of Jesus offered to Brondel deeds for all the property they owned in the town of Helena (as if in response to Junger s earlier comments about the Society); Brondel readily accepted the deeds but also invited the Jesuits serving there to remain in their missions. With the property in Helena now his, one of the chief responsibilities of preparing the vicariate for erection as a diocese had been fulfilled. By March 1884, Brondel was able to announce to his faithful that the vicariate had been raised to the status of a diocese , he issued a pastoral letter with the news: On the 14th of October, By Apostolic Letters, dated Rome, the seventh of March, 1884, the Vicariate of Montana was erected into a Diocese, whose episcopal see was established at Helena; the church of the Sacred Hearts was raised to the rank of a Cathedral, and the Apostolic Administrator was appointed the first Bishop of Helena. 209 Ibid. 210 Catholic Sentinel, October 18, 1883, November 8, Details of this trip are also found in: Brondel (Helena) to Ch. Brondel (Dottignies), November 10, Archives of the Diocese of Helena. It is probable that Brondel himself is the author of the various reports of his journeys found in the Catholic Sentinel, often signed with the pseudonym, Catholic. 211 Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest,

375 346 On the 24th of June, Feast of St. John the Baptist, Patron of the new Diocese, we celebrated the first diocesan synod, surrounded by a small but most faithful band of clergymen who had grown old in this portion of the vineyard of the Lord. We visited the diocese and found everywhere proofs of an active faith in the building up of ecclesiastical institutions. 212 Two further concerns occupied Brondel s pastoral letter. The first was a round condemnation of secret societies and the second was a call for prayer for the nation s bishops who would be gathering in Baltimore the following month (November) for the Third Plenary Council. 213 He announced that he would be departing for Baltimore the following week and would be away for the duration of the Council. 214 In writing to his brother with the news of the erection of the Diocese of Helena, Brondel expressed his first long-term goal for the new diocese and where he expected to find the resources to accomplish that goal: The tents of Israel spread in the church of God a new diocese is formed, the bishop has been named and let us pray now so that priests become more numerous. If the Flemish priests who have a vocation to the apostolate knew how much this country, by its beauty of the immense variety of the mountains, by the great desire of the people to be instructed in the doctrines of the church, by the wholesomeness of the dry, fresh air, would make their lives truly apostolic and happy, they would hurry to come here. 215 The eloquence of his words notwithstanding, the view from Helena could not have been encouraging. In his diocese of over 146,000 square miles (378,000 square kilometers), he had 15,000 Catholic faithful, but only four diocesan priests and twelve 212 Catholic Sentinel, October 30, The Third Plenary Council of Baltimore began on November 9, 1884 and terminated on December 7, See: Jacobo Gibbons, Acta et Decreta Concilii Plenarii Baltimorensis Tertii (Baltimore: Typis Joannis Murphy et Sociorum, 1886). Peter Guilday, History of the Councils of Baltimore: (New York: MacMillan (Brown Brothers), 1932). James Hennesey, S.J., American Catholics: A History of the Roman Catholic Community in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), Catholic Sentinel, October 30, Les tentes d Israel se dilatent dans l église de Dieu, un nouveau diocèse est formé, l évêque est nommé et prions maintenant afin que les prêtres deviennent plus nombreux. Si les prêtres flamands qui ont la vocation de l apostolat savaient combien ce pays par sa beauté de l immense variété des montagnes, par le grand désir des peuples d être instruit dans les doctrines de l église, par la salubrité de l air sec et frais, rendrait leur vie vraiment apostolique et heureuse ils se hâteraient de venir ici. Brondel (Helena) to Ch. Brondel (Dottignies), June 4, Archives of the Diocese of Helena. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB.

376 347 religious to serve them. 216 He set his sights on those Flemish priests of whom he wrote to his brother and looked to Louvain s American College to assist him in building up the presbyteral infrastructure of his diocese. Perhaps Brondel s positive evaluation of De Neve before the other bishops of the Oregon Province bore fruit in De Neve assigning to Helena the already mentioned Cyril Pauwelyn of Bruges, a young man who saw the prospect of going to the missions of America as... the dream of my life. 217 Having been ordained a deacon in Louvain by Aegidius Junger, Pauwelyn departed the American College in the company of Junger and newly ordained priest, Remigius Verbeke in August, 1885, arriving in Portland in September. Pauwelyn arrived in Helena by the fourth of October. 218 Within two months of his arrival in Montana, on November 29th, Pauwelyn would have the honor of becoming the first man to be ordained to the diocesan priesthood in Helena. 219 Some months later, Brondel wrote to his brother of his on-going need for priests and, as an aside, his impressions of young Pauwelyn: What pains me most is the lack of evangelical laborers. I could easily enough obtain assistants, but evangelical laborers [emphasis in original] are hard to find. Pray that the Lord may send laborers into His vineyard. The priest whom I obtained from Louvain, a native of your neighborhood, is doing very well. I would like to have a dozen like him. His name is Rev. Cyril Pauwelyn The Right Reverend John B. Brondel, Bishop of Helena: A Memorial (Helena: State Publishing Company, 1904), The full quotation is: J espère, Monseigneur, que votre bonté éclairée par ces renseignements, me donnera, aussitôt que vos occupations le permettront, une réponse qui sera, je l espère, un pas décisif vers l exécution du rêve de ma vie: les missions de l Amérique... Pauwelyn (Bruges) to De Neve, July 30, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 218 Pauwelyn (Helena) to De Neve, October 4, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 219 William Greytak, "The Roman Catholic Dioceses of Montana: An Abbreviated History," in Religion in Montana: Pathways to the Present, ed. Lawrence F. Small (Guilford, CT: Globe Pequot Press, 1995), 41. Cyril Pauwelyn, "The Beginnings and Growth of the Catholic Church in the State of Montana," Acta et Dicta: A Collection of Historical Data Regarding the Origin and Growth of the Catholic Church in the Northwest V, no. 1 (1917): Ce qui me fait souffrir le plus c est le manque d ouvriers évangéliques. Je pourrais bien obtenir des assistants mais les ouvriers évangéliques sont rares à trouver. Priez afin que le Seigneur envoie dans sa vigne des ouvriers. Le prêtre que j ai obtenu de Louvain, natif de vos environs fait très bien, je voudrais en avoir une douzaine comme lui. Son nom est Cyrille Pauwelyn. Brondel (Helena) to his brother, April 29, Translation provided by Archives of the Diocese of Helena.

377 348 Others from Louvain would soon follow: before the end of the decade, seven more Louvanists came to Brondel s aid. 221 Pauwelyn maintained occasional correspondence with John De Neve in the years following his arrival; in one such letter he offered to his rector a description of ministry in the diocese and made an unfavorable comparison to that found among his fellow Louvanists in Oregon and Washington: Fathers Follet and Van den Broeck arrived in Helena in September and each received a portion of my old missions to visit bimonthly, with residence in Helena, and the Bishop appointed me pastor of Miles City with charge of Dawson and Custer counties the two largest counties in the Territory. I landed in Miles on October 28 and found a frame church with addition partitioned off in two rooms and these are my quarters.... Half of the month I am absent traveling up and down the Railroad 80 miles West and 100 East.... As in all Western new towns there are to be found many bad Catholics here who do not go to church at all and many mixed marriages, also a great deal of moral corruption, but we are missionaries here who came to do the good we could and could not expect to find all things in good running order. I am very well pleased here and so far my missionary career in Montana has been blessed by God. During the last two years I traveled regularly 1500 miles every two months visiting 7 churches, 4 of which I built myself, making many improvements in all and saying Holy Mass every day in another place, sectionhouses, farms, mining camps.... I accompanied the Bishop to Portland on the occasion of the conferring of the Pallium on our Metropolitan and there I had the occasion of meeting, I guess, about 40 old students of our Alma Mater; it was a very pleasant meeting and by their conversation I found out that they have much less work to do in Oregon and Washington Territory with more hands than we in Montana. Yes, Monsignor, I could hear that many a priest there has a smaller parish and less work than there is to be found in each of the missions which are visited here only once in two months. 222 With the arrivals of the new men from Louvain, Brondel was able to fill many of his mission stations with pastors. Some are given particular mention by Palladino: Amatus Coopman 223 arrived in Helena on September 13, 1889 and had the distinction 221 Remigius De Ryckere and Gustave Dols were already present in the diocese upon its establishment. Pauwelyn was followed by Henry Van de Ven, Gustave Follet, Victor Van den Broek, Honorius Allaeys, Amatus Coopman, Peter Desiere, and August Lambaere. The following decade of the 90 s saw another nine young priests from Louvain come to Helena: Francis Batens, Peter Van Clarenbeck, Peter Gallagher, Nicholas Snels, Cornelius Van Aken, Joseph Blaere, James Vermaat, Joseph Pudenz and Amatus Van de Velde See Sauter, American College, Pauwelyn (Miles City) to De Neve (Louvain), December 5, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 223 Coopman, Amatus R. ( ), was born in Zwevegem, West Flanders. He studied at the College of St. Louis in Bruges, and was admitted to the American College on September 27, He was ordained a priest on June 29, 1888 by Archbishop Patrick Riordan before traveling to the United States and the Diocese of Helena, arriving there on June 29, He

378 349 of being the only bearded priest in the diocese. He was first attached to the Cathedral in Helena but later was made the first pastor of Bozeman and surrounding areas where he constructed its first church. 224 In 1891 he was transferred by Brondel to Livingston. August Lambaere 225 followed Coopman in Bozeman. 226 Francis Batens 227 was assigned to White Sulpher Springs. 228 Victor Van den Broek 229 followed Pauwelyn in Miles City. 230 Gustave Follet 231 remained with Brondel as died in Anaconda in See Album Alumnorum III, 276. Also see Lawrence B. Palladino, S.J., Indian and White in the Northwest: A History of Catholicity in Montana 1831 to 1891, 2nd ed. (Lancaster, PA: Wickersham Publishing Company, 1922), Palladino, Indian and White, 1st ed., Lambaer, August H. (1865?), was born on December 11, 1865 in Vlamertinge pertaining to the Diocese of Bruges. He was admitted to the American College on September 26, He was accepted by the Diocese of Helena in 1887 and was ordained a priest by Bishop Camilus Maes of Covington on December 27, He first served as an assistant priest at the Helena cathedral. From this post he attended to Great Falls where he built a church. In 1891 he went to Bozeman and then to the mining towns of Philipsburg and Granite Mission. See Album Alumnorum III, 352. Also see Palladino, Indian & White, 2nd Ed., Palladino, Indian and White, 1st ed., Batens, Francis X. ( ), was born in Haasdonk, pertaining to the Diocese of Ghent. He studied humanities and philosophy at the Seminary of St. Nicholas, then entered the American College September 4, 1888 and shortly thereafter found support from Bishop Brondel for the Diocese of Helena. He was ordained a priest by Bishop Glorieux on June 29, 1891 and left for America on the 19th of September of the same year. He arrived in Helena on October 12, He was immediately put in charge of White Sulphur Springs, Boulder and the Missouri Valley settlements. He died in Haasdonck on January 24, Album Alumnorum Collegii americani Immaculatae Conceptionis B.M.V., Pars 4, Archives of The American College, vol. IV (Louvain: ), 112. Also see Palladino, Indian & White, 2nd Ed., Palladino, Indian and White, 1st ed., Van den Broek, Victor J. ( ), was born in Halle, October 16, He studied Latin and philosophy in Mechlin, thereafter entering the American College on August 1, He was ordained to the priesthood on June 24, 1887 in Louvain. He arrived in Montana in September of the same year and was assigned as the assistant priest of the Cathedral, attending as well Great Falls, White Sulphur Srpings, Three Forks and Gallatin and Jefferson valleys. He later served in Butte and Miles City. See Album Alumnorum III, 278. Also see Palladino, Indian & White, 2nd Ed., Palladino, Indian and White, 1st ed., Follet, Gustave (Charles) ( ), was born in Alveringem, West Flanders on April 16,1863. In 1877 he entered the College of Furnes for his humanities studies and the philosophy at the Seminary of Roeselare (Roulers). In September 1884 he entered the American College. He was ordained a priest in Louvain on June 24,1887. He departed for Helena, Montana in August of the same year and upon his arrival was assigned to the Cathedral. His first missionary assignment was to attend Wickes, the Boulder and Missouri Valleys, and Marysville. He was appointed principal of St. Aloysius Boys School. His last assignment was in Butte where he died due to heart trouble on November 3, He was described by Palladino as a fine tall well-built man, an earnest worker, as well as a fluent and pleasing speaker. See Palladino, Indian & White, 2nd Ed., 451. Also see Album Alumnorum III, 292.

379 350 assistant at the Cathedral but attended St. Helena s Church, built by Brondel for the German-speaking Catholics of Helena; 232 Follet also served as principal of St. Aloysius School for boys as well as chaplain to the Good Shepherd sisters. 233 Brondel convened his first diocesan synod in Helena on June 24, 1884; it was a humble affair attended by four secular priests and nine Jesuits. Brondel added a bit of ecclesiastical color to his synod by taking the occasion to lay the foundation stone of the new St. John s Hospital in Helena. A second synod was held in June 1887, again being the occasion for a festive cornerstone ceremony, this time of the new St. Vincent s Academy. Brondel along with the seven secular priests and six Jesuits in attendance agreed to petition the Society of Jesus to establish a college in Helena. The Society agreed to the request, ground was purchased, but, unfortunately, the local Catholic community could not be interested sufficiently in the project for it to move ahead; Palladino comments: Repeated attempts to set on foot and forward the project, have met with no encouragement, and from those of our people most able to assist and make the enterprise a success, nothing more has been elicited than an attitude of cold, shortsighted indifference. 234 Even with these problems Brondel did not give up hope of establishing his college in Helena; in 1889 he wrote to his brother, Charles: I enjoy very good health. All I need now is a college with classical courses, and a sufficient number of good missionaries to please me greatly in to my apostolic life. But I think that with prayer, patience and work, these things will come With two small communities of religious women already at work in his new diocese (Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth in Deer Lodge and the Sisters of Providence in Missoula), Brondel was able to bring to the diocese yet another, the Ursuline Sisters, to assist Pauwelyn in Miles City and tend to the Cheyenne tribe at 232 Brondel (Helena) to Ch. Brondel (Dottignies), May 1, Archives of the Diocese of Helena. 233 Palladino, Indian and White, 1st ed., Ibid., Je jouis d une très bonne santé et il ne me faudrait plus qu un collège des humanités ici et un nombre suffisant de bons missionnaires pour me faire plaisir beaucoup dans la vie apostolique, mais je pense qu avec prière, patience et travail cela viendra.... Brondel (Helena) to Ch. Brondel (Dottignies), May 1, Translation provided by Archives of the Diocese of Helena. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, CSB.

380 351 the St. Joseph Labre Mission. 236 In 1889 he also secured the services of the aforementioned Sisters of the Good Shepherd who dedicated themselves to the care of problem girls. 237 Brondel s daily life throughout his years in Helena were marked by regular visitations of his many parishes and missions; Palladino attests that Brondel traveled 8000 to 9000 miles yearly; from his advent, he has visited each year nearly every settlement of whites and Indians. 238 A random look at almost any series of dates in Brondel s Notebook of Events in the Diocese of Helena reveals that Palladino s claim must be an accurate one; from one two-month period in the year 1891, for example, we find the following: April 5 At Great Falls 8 Conference at Helena 12 At Keogh confirm one 18 At Billings confirm seven 21 At Red Lodge confirm At St. Labre s confirm 37 May3 At Miles confirm 5 7 Lecture at Rink on Jerusalem 10 At Glendive confirm 5 11 Back at Helena 17 Confirm 88 at Helena 24 Confirm 40 at Anaconda 27 Confirm 1 at Philipsburg 30 Confirm 4 at Granite and bless Church of St. Andrew. 239 Of the more personal side of his ministry, Brondel s letters to his brother, Charles, offer a taste of his view of the work in which he was engaged. As one example, in his March 19, 1891 letter he wrote: As to myself, since writing you last, I spent the Lent in Helena and we have had wintry weather up to the present; the snow is going now. 236 Greytak, "The Roman Catholic Dioceses of Montana: An Abbreviated History," Ibid., Palladino, Indian and White, 1st ed., Notebook of Events in the Diocese of Helena, Archives of the Diocese of Helena.

381 352 Many people have died of pneumonia in Butte. Out of a population of 23,000 inhabitants, there were one hundred burials in one month. But now there is a let-up in the ravages of the disease. Thanks be to God the priests and Sisters are all enjoying good health. There has been no death among the Sisters since the death of the novice of which we heard while I was in Europe. The Cheyennes begin to receive the faith. Up to recently the baptisms were almost entirely confined to infants. I baptized an adult advanced in years who has since died. The adult Indians did not bother about religion except from sheer curiosity. St. Labre s mission was established in Last Sunday thirteen adults were baptized. Among the Crows, where the Mission of St. Xavier was established in 1887, there are already one hundred and fifty adult baptisms and it is within the last few weeks that most of these adults have been baptized. You see that the work of evangelizing the Indians is a work of patience. But what consolations come after times of hard labor. 240 The year 1890 marked an exception to his travels and ministrations within the Diocese of Helena; in January of that year he journeyed in pilgrimage to the Holy Land followed by completion of his ad limina visit to Rome. On September 5th, while he was still thirty miles from Helena, he was met by an escort to accompany him into the city consisting of Fathers Palladino, Peter Desiere, 241 De Ryckere, Henry Van de Ven, 242 Follet, Lebaere and Diomedi. 243 He returned to Rome in 1899 and 240 Quant à moi, depuis ma dernière lettre, j ai passé le carême à Helena et l hiver à eu lieu de ce temps. La neige s en va maintenant. Beaucoup de monde est mort à la Butte de la maladie de Pulmonie, en anglais Pneumonia. La ville compte habitants et pendant un mois il y avait 100 enterrements. La maladie a diminué maintenant. Grâce à Dieu prêtres et religieuses sont tous en bonne santé. Il n y a pas eu de décès depuis que cette novice est morte dont nous reçumes la nouvelle en Europe. Les Cheyennes commencent à recevoir la foi. Les missionnaires avaient baptisé les enfants, j avais baptisé un vieux adulte mort déjà. Les adultes ne s inquiétaient pas de religion si ce n est par curiosité. La mission de St. Labre fut établi en Mais Dimanche passé treize adultes ont été baptisés. Chez les Corbeaux où la mission de St. Fr. Xavier fut établi en 1887 il y a déjà 150 adultes baptisés, c est surtout depuis quelques semaines que ce sacrement a été administré aux adultes des Corbeaux. Vous voyez que c est un oeuvre de patience, mais que de consolations après quelque temps de rude travail! Brondel (Helena) to Ch. Brondel (Dottignies), March 19, Translation provided by the Archives of the Diocese of Helena. 241 Desiere, Peter A. ( ), was born at Houtem on April 7, He studied Latin at Furnes, continued his studies in Bruges and was ordained a priest on December 21, He served for twelve years as professor at Dixmude followed by four years as curate in Roeselare (Roulers), then made pastor of Westende. Four years later he chose to follow the vocation of a missionary priest to North America. He entered the American College on January 27, 1887 and departed for Helena on January 17, See Album Alumnorum IV, 70. He was first assigned to Deer Lodge with R. De Ryckere, later was assigned to Butte, and then was appointed as the first resident pastor of Anaconda. In Anaconda he built a neat brick church (Palladino) dedicated to St. Paul, a rectory and a hospital staffed by the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth. See Palladino, Indian & White, 2nd Ed., Van de Ven, Henry J. ( ), was born in s-hertogenbosch, Netherlands, on October 3, He studied Latin at the diocesan seminary of St. Michael at Haaren. He was

382 353 traveled as well to Philadelphia, Boston and New York, preaching in these cities major churches appealing for funds to support his diocese, managing to raise about $10, Two years later he was asked what he would do in Helena if he had ten times that amount. His response was immediate: I d build a mighty cathedral in place of the church we now have. 245 With the pastoral needs of his diocese making prior claim on his resources, Brondel never got the chance to build the cathedral of which he dreamed. By all accounts, Brondel kept up his busy and demanding schedule of pastoral visitations throughout his years as bishop, right up to the days before his death on November 3, On Sunday, November 1st, an announcement was made to the faithful that they should pray for their infirm bishop. The news took the people by surprise for the bishop had recently been seen to be healthy as he walked the streets of the town and carried on his usual business. The summer before he had traveled to twenty-four parishes for confirmations, in October he had gone to Portland for the conferral of the pallium on the new archbishop of Oregon City and met with the other bishops of the province thereafter. When he returned to Helena from Portland, having detoured to Anaconda and Butte first, he appeared in good health though he suffered from chronic bronchitis as he had for years. He complained of tiredness and had difficulty breathing. On October 23rd he wrote a brief circular letter closing it with the words: Everywhere we have witnessed the devotion of the clergy, the piety of the people, and the progress of our holy religion. We have, therefore, reason to thank God and to congratulate our beloved co-laborers wishing them all Godspeed in the great work of building up the holy Catholic church in our diocese. 246 On October 29th, Brondel said mass for the final time though he continued to attend meetings and manage other business through the next day. He was admitted to ordained a priest in the cathedral of his native diocese on June 11, He served in Allen and then St. Odenrode, until he decided to enter the American College in May, 1886, where he dedicated himself to the study of English before sailing for America. He arrived in Helena on Septebmer 7, 1886 and was appointed to St. Patrick parish in Butte, where he remained for many years. See Album Alumnorum IV, 8. Palladino, Indian & White, 2nd Ed., Brondel (Helena) to Ch. Brondel (Dottignies), September 20, Archives of the Diocese of Helena. 244 The Right Reverend John B. Brondel, Bishop of Helena: A Memorial, Ibid., Ibid., 15.

383 354 the hospital but even from his sick bed managed the affairs of the diocese. On the eve of All Saints, his condition worsened dramatically and Extreme Unction was administered. He continued to deteriorate leading his doctors to conclude that he was suffering from fatty degeneration of the heart with oedema of the lungs and brain. 247 In the afternoon of November 3rd, he passed away, twenty years after he had first arrived in Helena. The first liturgy marking his passing was a special mass just for the children of Helena at which the sermon was delivered to the children by Brondel s first diocesan ordinand, Cyril Pauwelyn. Pauwelyn recalled to the children how the bishop enjoyed nothing as much as an opportunity to address a crowd of children and that he always had in store a collection of happy stories that were told on such occasions stories the Helena children loved to hear and repeat. 248 If statistics can tell the story of a life of good work, then those that Brondel left behind speak well of him indeed: Diocesan Priests: 4 38 Regular Priests Churches Hospitals 4 8 Academies 2 7 Parochial Schools 2 9 Orphan s home.. 1 House of Good Shepherd.. 1 Ecclesiastical students 1 13 Indian schools 2 10 Catholic population 15,000 50, Eulogized profusely in the days and weeks after his death, one of the most revelatory statements was that found in The American College Bulletin: If there was trait of his character that shone forth pre-eminently among all others, it was his sterling child-like piety. This virtue he evinced not only in the regular, careful, even punctilious discharge of his daily spiritual exercises, in the minute observance of the liturgical prescriptions at all public church functions... but also 247 Ibid., "Rt. Rev. John Bapt. Brondel: First Bishop of Helena, Montana," The American College Bulletin II, no. 2 (1904): The Right Reverend John B. Brondel, Bishop of Helena: A Memorial, 11.

384 355 in his ordinary every day conversation, which was never so animated as when it turned on devotional subjects. It was quite natural therefore that he should have been known among his fellow priests as Holy John ; for so they banteringly called him and spoke of him, when he was still a priest on the Washington missions.... Though highly esteemed for his religious zeal in all that concerned the spiritual welfare of the people, he was at times, as one who knew him well said, hard to understand and somewhat blunt of manner. This was probably due to his straightforwardness, which is a virtue neither acceptable to the worldly prudent nor to the guilty. 250 Of his enduring care for the missionary college in Louvain from which he had come to the North Pacific Coast, testament is given in a few lines taken from a letter written to John De Neve by Cyril Pauwelyn in 1885: Last night after reading the letter of Gustave [Follet] we talked till after 10 p.m. enjoying the refreshing breeze of the Rockies, recalling in our souvenirs the sweet remembrances of the American College. The Bishop told me all about the first poor buildings and accommodations, how the College progressed and he learned with great joy the news of the new buildings to be put up not long from date [sic]. 251 Alphonse Glorieux Goes to Idaho By 1884, there were early signs that the fortunes of forlorn Idaho might finally be beginning to look up. With the arrival of the railroads to the Idaho Territory, it seemed that its years of isolation and social impoverishment might be coming finally to an end; as new settlers followed the trains in ever-greater numbers, they would need their own bishop. 252 Though neither Seghers nor Brondel in their visits to the Propaganda Fide in Rome had requested that the vicariate of Idaho be fitted with a new apostolic administrator, deeming the timing to be still not propitious, Roman authorities were seemingly uncomfortable with a chronically empty vicariate so went ahead with the change in spite of the local objections "Brondel," Pauwelyn (Helena) to De Neve, June 20, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 252 Bradley and Kelley, Boise, 204. It is terribly unfortunate that the archival materials once held by the Diocese of Boise and which Bradley and Kelley had access to in writing their history of the diocese can no longer be found. Many of the details of Glorieux story, then, are necessarily dependent on Bradley and Kelley s text. 253 Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D.,

385 356 In October of 1884, Rome announced its selection for the position of apostolic vicar of Idaho: the stern schoolmaster of Portland s Saint Michael s College: Alphonse Joseph Glorieux. Even as this news was being received in Portland, looming large on the American church s horizon was nothing less significant than the Third Plenary Council in Baltimore set to begin in November. Only weeks before the opening of the council, Glorieux received word of his appointment but without the papal bulls to make it official. Fellow Louvanist, Camillus Maes, 254 was in the same fix; a priest of Detroit, he had just been named bishop of Covington, Kentucky, but in his case, too, absent the papal bulls. In spite of the lack of paperwork, Archbishop Gibbons invited Glorieux and Maes to join the proceedings in Baltimore. Gibbons s welcome notwithstanding, both Maes and Glorieux had their credentials to sit in the council questioned by a number of the bishops present, so the issue was referred to Rome. The Vatican approved Gibbons s decision, so that finally the two men were allowed to take their places as voting members. 255 With the seating of Glorieux and Maes, the Plenary Council counted among its seventy-five episcopal participants 256 seven Louvanists: Seghers, Junger, Brondel and Glorieux from the North Pacific Coast, John Lancaster Spalding of Peoria, Patrick Riordan of San Francisco, and Maes from Covington. After the council s deliberations ended on December 7th, Glorieux decided to remain in Baltimore and wait there for his official documents. Though dated in Rome February 27, 1885, they did not reach his hand until April 6, Unable to secure Seghers for the honors, Glorieux arranged for Archbishop Gibbons to consecrate him 254 Maes, Camillus ( ), was born in Kortrijk and received his early education there. He studied philosophy and theology at the seminary of Bruges. He entered the American College in December 1866 under the sponsorship of Bishop Peter Paul Lefevere. He was ordained a priest for Detroit in Mechlin in After various parish assignments he was named secretary to Bishop Burgess in 1880 and nominated for the see of Covington in October He was consecrated in January For a number of years he served as the president of the American College s board of bishops and also wrote numerous historical articles concerning the church in America, including the previously cited biography of Charles Nerinckx. He was largely responsible for construction of St. Mary s Cathedral in Covington and was a great supporter of Catholic education. Album Alumnorum Collegii Americanum Immaculata Conceptionis Lovanii, No 2, Archives of The American College, vol. II (Louvain: ), 62. J. De Becker, "The Episcopal Jubilee of the Rt. Rev. Bishop of Covington," The American College Bulletin VIII, no. 1 (1910). 255 Bradley and Kelley, Boise, 204. Also see: Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, There were also six abbots in attendance and one religious superior: the Society of Jesus Joseph Cataldo.

386 357 in the Baltimore cathedral on the 16th of April. 257 The ceremony was reported in the April 30th issue of the Catholic Sentinel; it was recorded that Glorieux s Louvain confrere, Camillus Maes and the newly appointed archbishop of Oregon City, William Gross, served as assistant consecrating bishops. The only other Louvanist present for the celebration was John Brondel. Alphonse Glorieux, the newly consecrated Titular Bishop of Apollonia and Vicar Apostolic of Idaho was only fortyone years of age. Glorieux returned to Portland in the company of his new provincial, William Gross, arriving there on May 23rd. After two weeks tending to his affairs at St. Michael s College, he boarded the train for Kuna, Idaho, the closest terminal to Boise, arriving on June 12th. Francis Hartleib met the new bishop at the Kuna station then conducted him by wagon the twenty arid, sagebrush-filled miles to Boise City, his new home. 258 He found there his cathedral to be nothing more grand than a small wood-frame chapel with a four room attachment on the back, Francis Hartleib s living quarters. The bishop took up residence in a nearby boarding house and spent the next two weeks sizing up the city and meeting some of its citizens. 259 The Sunday after his arrival he preached his first sermon in Idaho, which was evaluated by the local newspaper to be one marked by an... easy graceful delivery... never tedious. 260 What Alphonse Glorieux knew about his vicariate as he settled into Boise was far from encouraging; the vicariate included 650,000 square miles (1,683,000 square kilometers), divided into two very distinct regions, the arid southern area with Boise City at its heart and the timbered and mountainous panhandle sandwiched between Washington and Montana Territories, a region dotted with pristine lakes and silver mines and far closer to Spokane geographically and socially than to Boise City. Glorieux had only two priests at his disposal, Hartleib in Granite Creek and Emanuel M. Nattini 261 in Haily. Additionally, he had the assistance of the Jesuits, Joseph 257 Bradley and Kelley, Boise, Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Nattini, Emanuel ( ) was ordained as a priest of the Society of Jesus in 1846, but left the Society for the Vicariate of Idaho in He served the vicariate in a variety of assignments until he was excardinated in 1886, moving to Salt Lake City where he oversaw

387 358 Cataldo in De Smet, Alexander Diomedi in Lewiston and A. Morvillo and G. Gazzoli in Lapwai. 262 There was nothing to do but get to work; within ten days of his arrival all church properties in southern Idaho had been transferred to his name and he had established in Boise a Committee on Church Repair. In July, Glorieux began his first tour of the vicariate. He traveled first to Nattini s missions in the southeastern corner of the Territory. The only church building in the region was in Hailey; elsewhere he celebrated mass and the sacraments, preached and catechized in halls, homes, boarding houses, ranch, bunk and section-houses. 263 He then proceeded north into the panhandle by way of Montana where he visited Diomedi in Lewiston and the small group of School Sisters of Saint Francis (Minnesota) who conducted St. Aloysius School there. He moved on to Fort Sherman, the forerunner of the city of Coeur d Alene, where he tended to the pastoral needs of the soldiers stationed there. He continued on to Joseph Cataldo s De Smet Mission among the Coeur d Alene Indians where the Sisters of Providence operated a school for Native American girls, and then on to Lapwai where the Nez Perce were settled. 264 Upon his return to Boise City, Glorieux took the time to take the first step in ameliorating his most pressing need; as his episcopal confreres had done, he wrote to the rector of the American College, begging for John De Neve s consideration in the matter of new priests: My most sincere thanks for the interest you take in the Vicariate Apostolic of Idaho.... Enclosed please to find the incorporating certificate of C. Van der Donckt, 265 which I hope, will be satisfactory.... I wish you will inform me when C. Van der Donckt will be ready to start for Idaho; I am very much in need of priests, in fact, I should have 4 or 5 more at once. But patience!... I just returned from an extensive missionary tour through the northern, western and eastern parts, and I found out that 3 churches should be built at once, the Catholics are becoming lukewarm for want of churches, schools and clergymen. I should be very thankful if you could send me at once, a good and zealous priest; the harvest is great, but the All Hallows College, followed in 1888 by a move to Eureka, Nevada, where he remained until his retirement and return to Genoa, Italy in Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Van der Donckt, Cyril ( ), entered The American College from Ghent in September, 1884 and ordained a priest in Louvain for Idaho on June 24,1887. He departed for America on August 27, Album Alumnorum III, 296.

388 359 laborers are few; some have applied to be admitted, but, unhappily, there is always something wrong that does not permit me to do so. 266 Glorieux performed his first confirmations on the first two Sundays of November in Hartleib s missions in Granite, Garden Valley, Quartzburg, Placerville and Idaho City. 267 Most of these towns had already seen their prime and were largely deserted ghost towns left over from the mining claims of previous years. The chapels therein were described as unpainted and measured twenty feet by forty feet with lean-to s of two rooms attached to the back of each church to serve as a place for the priest to live. 268 In early 1886, Glorieux continued his visitation of the three counties he had missed in 1885: Owhee, Lemhi and Cassia Counties. When he was not on the road, Glorieux cared for the Catholic community of Boise as its pastor, 269 Hartleib having been stationed in Granite Creek. With financing from Paris s Propaganda Fide, Glorieux completed construction of his episcopal residence in Boise in the summer of 1886, a simple twostory brick structure with rooms for the bishop, Hartleib and two guests, but no kitchen or dining room due to lack of funds. 270 Glorieux was forced to tend his diocese without new priest recruits until the arrival of Cyril Van der Donckt. Glorieux had requested a dispensation to have the young Van der Donckt ordained nineteen months before he reached the canonical age of 24 so that he might come to his aid as quickly as possible. The dispensation was granted and the young man was ordained in Louvain in June, arriving in Boise on September 22, Van der Donckt had the honor, then, of being the first priest ordained for the Vicariate of Idaho. 271 Van der Donckt wrote about his early experiences in Idaho later in his life by way of a series of articles entitled Sixteen Years in the West that appeared regularly in the early issues of The American College Bulletin. Van der Donckt shared anecdotes, both serious and comical, of his missionary efforts in the forlorn Idaho 266 Glorieux (Boise City) to De Neve (Louvain), October 26, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 267 Bradley and Kelley, Boise, Ibid. 269 Ibid., Ibid.,

389 360 country and gave a very personal view of what he and his bishop experienced in those early days of the diocese. In the first of his articles, Van der Donckt wrote: wrote: On September 22d, 1887, I arrived at Boise, Idaho s capital, then a town of about 4000 inhabitants, so shady as to deserve its French name signifying Wooded or Grove City; and so beautiful that it looked like a veritable oasis in a desert. Though abundantly supplied with horses and carriages, it had neither train nor street-cars. The railroad depot was located one mile from town. To travel or drive this short distance was almost like taking a fifteen minutes sand bath.... Upon my arrival, Father Hartleib, also a Louvain graduate, was the only man I found at the Bishop s house, a recently built two-story neat brick structure. That genial priest received me as a brother, made me feel thoroughly at home, and took me around to introduce me to the thirty-five or forty Catholic families, mostly Irish, whose names proved real jaw-breakers to me. As to my own name it sounded so peculiar to most of my new acquaintances that they simply made no attempt to pronounce it; and after being several years in my chosen field of labor, I had at times the gratification or annoyance of being addressed Vanderbilt.... The first Sunday I spent in Idaho I was agreeably surprised at the beautiful singing of the pro-cathedral choir, which was then, and has been ever since, trained by Bishop Glorieux. At that time His Lordship was on a pastoral tour through the Territory. As soon as he came home, he appointed me as acting rector of the pro-cathedral, and sent Father Hartleib to the neighboring missions. Very few people came to the daily Mass, quite often only one old lady. So pleased was the Bishop with her faithful attendance that he declared we would upon her death honor her with a solemn Mass of Requiem. 272 Of the mission stations beyond Boise City that he attended, Van der Donckt Idaho City, Placerville, and Granite Creek were the points of my destination. They were then, and are now, but mere relics of their former selves. Gold was discovered there in In the course of the following years these towns sprang up through the influx of men. In Placerville alone within that twelve month 4500 claims were staked out, and several million dollars worth of the precious metal taken from the soil.... Idaho City offered little to gladden a priest s heart. To visit Granite Creek, however, was a joy. Many a missionary has been edified by the exemplary piety of that small community. Excellent Catholics that we knew them to be, they surpassed our expectation. The stage leaves the Creek about six o clock a.m. for Idaho City. Thus on the day of our departure Mass was to begin at five o clock. To 271 Ibid., Cyril Van der Donckt, "Sixteen years in the West," The American College Bulletin I, no. 4 (1903):

390 361 our great astonishment, at that early hour the church was filled with well-nigh all the adults and children of the settlement. Such fervor amply compensates the missioner for the many hardships of the trip.... After having spent three or four months in Idaho s capital, I was called to Cleft, so named because of a narrow fissure in a rock extending to a depth of about a hundred feet. This curious freak of nature seems to be a result of volcanic action. As I jumped from the train, I thought I lit right in the cleft; for I clove such a deep layer of mud as to let my rubbers stick in it. Cleft had then, as now, but one dwelling the railroad section house. It seemed strange to me at that time that people should be living so far apart as to have their nearest neighbors eleven miles from then one way and sixteen miles another. Since then I found out that many people in the West live isolated forty, fifty and more miles from their kind.... In June 1888, my missionary life began in earnest. From that date until January 1st, 1894, I could claim my domicile almost anywhere along the rail-and stage-road lines; about one third of my days and one sixth of my nights were spent in cars and coaches. 273 After Van der Donckt, the next Louvanist to come to Idaho was Joseph Van der Heyden, 274 who arrived in September of Shortly after his arrival Van der Heyden wrote to De Neve of his first impressions of Boise and his new bishop: I have always postponed to write to you in order to be able to give you about the Idaho missions some details of interest. I must say that I am well pleased here. Being stationed in Boise City I can always apply for advice and instructions to the Right Rev. Bishop who is very kind and good.... Very few practical catholics [sic] are found here, although there are many who ought to be catholics, principally germans [sic] they have fallen away after having made some money to join one of the fashionable sects. On Sundays we may have sometimes one hundred people congregated at high mass and about 10 at low mass. At the evening services we have more because then Protestants come. Besides English Spanish is about the language most needed.... Near town there are barracks and the soldiers mostly foreigners are our best catholics. 273 Cyril Van der Donckt, "Sixteen Years in the West," The American College Bulletin II, no. 1 (1904): Van der Heyden, Joseph ( ), a native of Roermond, Netherlands, he came to the American College in September of He was ordained to the priesthood on June 29, 1888 and departed for the vicariate apostolic of Idaho on September 15th of the same year. Album Alumnorum III, 366. For ten years he served with Bishop Glorieux in Boise. In 1899, he returned to Louvain after having suffered severe frostbite, leading to loss of a leg. He founded and edited The American College Bulletin, which gave him the opportunity to write the history of the college and preserve the stories of many of its early missionaries. See J. De Becker, "Reverend Joseph Van der Heyden," The American College Bulletin XI, no. 4 (1913):

391 362 We have no parochial school but next spring the Sisters of the Holy Cross, Indiana, intend to pick up a school and convent. Of course they will pay for the expenses themselves, the congregation not being able to raise 200 hundred [sic] dollars. The cathedral church is small but neat and handsome, also the episcopal residence.... I do not think there are any better prospects for this part of the country, because farming is near to impossible on account of the scarcity of water. All the land must be irrigated and of course that requires money and no capitalists seem to take a liking in an undertaking of this kind, although where irrigation has been tried it proved to be quite a success. So I have seen here in Boise City the most beautiful fruits I ever saw before, the whole town is like a garden or rather orchard. Fruit raising is the only occupation of Boise people. I am trying my best to turn some of them towards church and religion but it is hard work. Religion once lost, and not practiced for many and many years is hardly found back again. 275 Much later in life, Van der Heyden shared with the seminarians of the American College his memories of his arrival and first days in Idaho: My way from Ambler was over Philadelphia, Chicago, Omaha to Boise, the capital of the Territory of Idaho, where I arrived on Saturday morning Oct. 19, The journey through the sagebrush and lava desert of Wyoming and Southern Idaho caused my heart to sink within me. I asked myself what there would be for a priest to do in these endless stretches of lava-bed fields and sand wastes. The towns through which we passed were for the most part made up of a few sorry-looking frame buildings denoting anything but comfort and prosperity; and the men, wearing dilapidated overalls and sombrero hats, who were to be seen standing upon the platforms of every depot at which we stopped, set me to wondering what they were there for, and how they lived. Accustomed as I had been to the beautiful fields and gardens lining the railroad tracks of Belgium and Holland, traveling for hundreds of miles without seeing as much as a cabbage or a potato patch, awakened serious doubts in my mind about the propriety of partaking to my heart s content of the eatables spread before us at the eating-houses along the road.... When the bus which I had exchanged for the cars, reached the principal hotel of the city, the Overland, I was hailed by Father Van der Donckt. In his company I repaired to the Bishop s residence. The Bishop himself was on a pastoral tour; but in anticipation of my coming, he had left with the Rev. Father Van der Donckt the Faculties, dated Oct. 5, 1888 and the appointment in virtue of which I labored in Idaho for the next seven years. The exercise of those Faculties was limited only by the Vicariate comprising the then Territory of Idaho. The Faculties and the appointments of the two other secular priests, the Reverend Fathers Hartleib and Van der Donckt, read the same as my own; so that we were left to choose our own fields. So we did, the Bishop tacitly consenting.... We four [Glorieux, Hartleib, Van der Donckt and Van der Heyden] and four Jesuit Fathers, of whom I never saw one, made up all the clergy of a country seven and a half times larger than Belgium. We had not a radish in the house to eat, but plenty 275 Van der Heyden (Boise City) to De Neve, December 22, Archives of The American College. Louvain. Clearly, Van der Heyden s English grammar was in need of further attention.

392 363 of mountain water to drink. For our meals we depended upon the restaurants, plentiful enough in western towns. 276 In describing his first meeting with Bishop Glorieux, Van der Heyden offered a picture of the man s serious temperament: The Bishop s return on the day following Father Van der Donckt s departure put me at ease again. It was not to be for long; for before the end of the week the bishop was off once more and I alone. The coldness of the reception I received at His Lordship s hands considerably awed me. He was not at all given to demonstrations; very stern with himself and stern with others, he was nevertheless of an extreme simplicity of life and manners. To illustrate: one day on leaving the house, I saw His Lordship come down the street swinging a slop-pail, which he had bought at one of the stores on the main street, three blocks away. The sight drew from me an involuntary smile, which the Bishop perceived. He remarked carelessly: I have been shopping, Father. Had I permitted it, he would have fetched his firewood from the shed, made kindling, etc. I used to do that for him when in Boise; but whenever I would go on the mission, and I was gone often from two to five weeks, he would thus wait upon himself.... Absolutely disinterested as far as the material was concerned, he was content with the poorest food, the poorest clothes, for himself; but wanted the best that his means allowed him to procure for the Church.... he would wear a suit of clothes until it would be green and threadbare, but never was there a speck upon it, for he was the personification of cleanliness and order. 277 Glorieux s routine of yearly travel to the missions of his diocese came to an abrupt halt in In July he was visiting the northern area of the territory when he was stricken by typhoid fever. He was taken in haste to Sacred Heart Hospital in Spokane Falls. 278 Van der Heyden reported to De Neve that while at the hospital... he has been very near his end. 279 He slowly recovered but remained in Spokane Falls long enough to witness the great fire of August 4, 1889 that destroyed twentyfive blocks of the town s business center. 280 The bishop traveled thereafter to Astoria, Oregon to further his recuperation before returning to Boise City in October of the same year Joseph Van der Heyden, "My Experiences in Idaho," The American College Bulletin XXI, no. 1 (1928): Ibid., no. 2: In 1891, the city was officially named Spokane. Prior to that year it was known as Spokane Falls. At times prior to 1891, the word Spokane was commonly spelled without the final e ( Spokan ). 279 Van der Heyden (Boise City) to De Neve (Louvain), November 19, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 280 Ibid. 281 Bradley and Kelley, Boise, 257.

393 364 While Glorieux was recuperating from typhoid fever, Van der Heyden was left in charge of the parish in Boise and all diocesan matters. During this period he was able to welcome to the vicariate five sisters of the Holy Cross who intended to open a school in Boise City. Advance word of their arrival had not been forthcoming so at the last minute Van der Heyden had to secure a residence for them. After a week of searching, Van der Heyden and the sisters settled on a three-room cottage that had been available for rent. Meanwhile, the sisters set up their school in the hall Glorieux had constructed next to his church. Some time later, the mother superior visited the community and purchased a block of property in the town center for their school and rented a more ample house for the sister s residence. A year later, the school was named St Theresa s Academy. 282 After his return to Boise Glorieux added a kitchen and dining room to his residence but funds were not sufficient to keep employed a housekeeper. 283 In February of 1891, word came that Glorieux aged mother in Dottignies was ailing and that she wished to see her son before her death. After much hesitation over the cost of such a trip and the necessarily prolonged absence from his vicariate, Glorieux was convinced by Van der Heyden that he should return to Europe, not only to see his mother after twenty-four years but also to make his ad limina visit to Rome. Leaving Van der Heyden as administrator of the vicariate, Glorieux traveled to Belgium arriving there on March 10th only to find that his mother had died on the first of the month. After spending some days in Belgium and taking time to preside over ordinations at the American College, he then traveled through Europe raising much needed funds for his vicariate and fulfilling his episcopal responsibilities in Rome. Upon his return in September he deposited over $3,500 in the Boise bank, the fruit of his European appeals. 284 Slowly but surely, Glorieux was building up the infrastructure of his church, both by way of personnel and in its physical institutions. As regards personnel, Van der Heyden was followed by Louvanists, Remi Keyzer, 285 who arrived in Boise in 282 Ibid. 283 Ibid., Ibid., Keyser, Remigius ( ), a native of s-hertogenbosch, Netherlands, entered the American College in He was ordained a priest on December 20, 1890 by John B. Brondel and departed for the Vicariate of Idaho in September1891. Album Alumnorum IV, 176. Keyser s first assignment was in the silver mine region of northern Idaho (Wallace)

394 and William Kroeger 286 in Keyser was sent to the mining district in the northern panhandle of the territory and appointed pastor of Wallace and the Coeur d Alene Mission and chaplain to the new Providence Hospital then being constructed inwallace. 287 Kroeger was assigned by Glorieux to the closely grouped towns of Cottonwood, Keuterville, Grangeville and the Salmon River mines, a mission area that had previously been staffed by the Jesuits. 288 Glorieux was having success recruiting priests from other quarters as well; William Hendrickx, John Burri, Finton Becker and James Thomas all arrived between 1889 and 1903, bringing the total number of secular priests working in Idaho when the vicariate was raised to the status of a diocese to ten. 289 Glorieux also appealed to other bishops in the United States, Canada and Europe to lend him priests, most of whom left the diocese almost as quickly as they came. 290 Perhaps as a result of his ad limina visit to Rome, Glorieux received word from the Vatican in August 1893 that his poor vicariate was to be raised to the dignity of a diocese with Boise as its see city and, of course, he as its first bishop. 291 At this point in his Idaho mission, Glorieux could be proud of the slow but steady progress the vicariate had made since his arrival in He began with just two diocesan priests, but now had ten. The number of churches and chapels had grown from eleven to twenty-seven. Schools and academies had increased from three to eight; hospitals from none to two. And, finally, his Catholic census had mushroomed from just 1,500 to 7, followed by twelve years as rector of the Cathedral parish in Boise. Twice he served as administrator of the diocese. In 1919, he was named pastor of St. Edward Parish in Twin Falls where he built the church and rectory (the latter at his own expense). He remained in Twin Falls until 1934, thereafter serving as pastor of St. Nicholas Church in Rupert until his death. See: "In Memoriam: Rt. Rev. Msgr. Remi S. Keyser--1891," The American College Bulletin XXXI (1938). 286 Kroeger, William ( ), a native of Hanover, entered the American College in In 1891 he was ordained a deacon by Alphonse Glorieux, his own future bishop, and was ordained a priest in He departed for the Vicariate of Idaho the same year. He died only five years later while in his mission station in Keuterville, Idaho. Album Alumnorum IV, Bradley and Kelley, Boise, Ibid., Ibid., 267, Ibid., Ibid., Ibid.

395 366 It would not be long after the erection of the diocese of Boise that the state of Idaho would begin, finally, to experience substantial growth and development. The railroads offered ever increasing access to the region and further immigration was promoted by a number of federal initiatives. The Forest Reserve Act of 1891 stimulated the development of the lumbering industry in the state s heavily timbered panhandle. 293 In 1895, the Nez Perce Indian Reservation was opened to white settlement after the Indians themselves had been given acreage for their own farming or ranching. The same was done in later years on the Lemhi and Coeur d Alene Reservations. White families from the nation s eastern seaboard settled in all these areas and developed there flourishing farms. 294 The Reclamation Act of 1902 likewise encouraged the development by settlers of previously unproductive land in the southern part of the state, again spurring immigration of thousands of new citizens to the formerly sagebrush covered lands. Financial inducements to raise sugar beets in the arid south further increased the economic prosperity of the region. The result was a census of the state in 1890 of 88,548 persons, by 1900 it had doubled to 161,772, and by 1910 it had risen to 325, Glorieux took his role as a citizen seriously, making himself a leader in the Boise community. By maintaining an attractive garden and yard around the cathedral and episcopal residence, he encouraged his neighbors to transform the sandlots around their homes also into attractive gardens, eventually leading the town to be dubbed, Boise the Beautiful. 296 Glorieux was a founder of the local chamber of commerce dedicated to promoting the economic development of the town and served as an active member until his death. Likewise, he was one of three trustees who represented the city in negotiations over important railroad right of ways in the area. 297 Cyril Van der Donckt described the advancing fortunes of the state in the following terms: 293 On a personal note, the author s own great grand-fathers, William Codd and Charles Sweeny, were significant players in the Idaho panhandle s lumber and silver mine industries, respectively. See John Fahey, The Ballyhoo Bonanza: Charles Sweeny and the Idaho Mines (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1971). 294 Bradley and Kelley, Boise, Ibid., Ibid., Ibid.

396 367 In some places the development has been phenomenal. Scores of towns have sprung up as if by magic. A few of them count the years of their existence by the thousands of their population. Twin Falls, Idaho, e.g., is barely six years old and the 1910 census credits it with nearly six thousand inhabitants. It is a remarkably well-built town, has splendid hotels and stores, and boasts of a court-house which would attract considerable admiration even in cities of several hundred thousand inhabitants.... Its Catholic population numbers about eight hundred. Another illustration, Blackfoot, an old town, had only half a dozen Catholics until about eight years ago; now it has fifty good Catholic families. A like growth has cheered northern Idaho, which is dotted with churches and various Catholic institutions. 298 Even as Glorieux and his priests built churches as fast as possible in growing towns across the state, (from 1885 to 1905, forty-four buildings went up or were enlarged, from 1906 to 1917, another fifty-two were constructed or enlarged 299 ), he also faced continual problems making available clergy to staff them. Joseph Van der Heyden lost a leg to frostbite in 1894 and eventually was forced by his disability to return to Europe. William Kroeger died in November 1897 after only five years in the diocese. In 1897, Francis Hartleib left the diocese due to poor health. 300 Glorieux therefore appealed to various religious orders for support and in time brought to Idaho representatives of the Salvatoran Fathers, the Benedictines of Conception Abbey in Missouri, the Marist Fathers and the Redemptorists. 301 The American College continued to support Glorieux as well, sending to Idaho Bernard Beusmans 302 in 1896, Godfried Frohn 303 in 1897, Francis Van Nistleroy 304 in 1899 and Lambert Godschalx 305 in Cyril Van der Donckt, "Reflections and Reminiscences of an Idaho Missionary," The American College Bulletin X, no. 3 (1912): Bradley and Kelley, Boise, Ibid., Ibid., Beusmans, Joseph ( ) was born in Noorbeek, Netherlands. From the diocese of Roermond, he entered the American College on September 27, 1893 and was ordained a priest on June 29, He departed for Idaho in September of that year. Album Alumnorum IV, Frohn, Godfried ( ), a native of Osnabrück, Prussia, entered the American College in He was ordained a priest in 1897 and departed for Idaho later the same year. Album Alumnorum, V, Archives of The American College (Louvain: ), Van Nistelroy, Francis ( ), a native of s-hertogenbosch, The Netherlands, he entered The American College in He was ordained a priest on July 9, 1899 and departed for Idaho the same year. Ibid., Godschalx, Lambert ( ), another native of s-hertogenbosch, Netherlands, entered the American College in 1897 and was ordained in 1900, departing Belgium that same year for Idaho. Ibid., 280.

397 368 Glorieux worked to recruit religious women to his diocese as well; in 1894 he welcomed the Sisters of the Holy Cross to Boise where they established Saint Alphonsus Hospital, in 1903 the Immaculate Heart of Mary Sisters came to Coeur d Alene in the north and the Sisters of St. Joseph opened a school in Slickpoo. In 1904 the Benedictine Sisters opened their motherhouse, St. Gertrude s, in Cottonwood and in 1908 the Ursulines settled in Moscow. 306 Ten years after the erection of the Diocese of Boise, Glorieux finally called his first diocesan synod, opening it on August 27, Perhaps most important for Glorieux himself was the institution of a cathedraticum, a diocesan tax on all parish income to cover the bishop s expenses; since the loss of funding from Paris s Propaganda Fide, he himself had no personal income. The clergy received for the first time a set salary as well: $500 per year. 307 As the town around Glorieux s cathedral continued to grow, he saw the increasing probablity that a new cathedral would soon be needed to house the expanding Catholic community of the city. In 1902, he purchased new property for the expected cathedral; two years further on, plans for the Romanesque church had been completed. Then a committee was appointed to begin fund-raising and the foundations of the new Saint John Cathedral were dug in 1906 with the cornerstone being laid in November of that year. Unwilling to incur debt for the project, the construction went slowly; he added to the structure only as money was raised; the roof was only completed in The advance of the First World War stopped progress on the church and Glorieux never saw it completed. In fact, the dual towers flanking the triple arched entryway have never been completed to the present day, rising only sixty-five feet above the ground, half of the height originally planned. 309 Always a serious and taciturn man, Glorieux grew more so as the years passed and he endured more and more the ailments of advancing age. His manner did not win him the loyalty of his younger priests. As early as 1900, one of his Louvain 306 Bradley and Kelley, Boise, Ibid., Ibid., Ibid.,

398 369 priests, Bernard Beusmans, 310 reported back to his cousin in Louvain, Joseph Van der Heyden: His Lordship is aging rapidly; long trips are hard on him; of course you know the consequences of his bad liver; really at times he is unbearable whilst on certain occasions he is the very incarnation of kindness and good will; no doubt he is aware of the crosses he inflicts on his inferiors when in bad humor and wants to obliterate or mitigate them when he has regained his better senses. 311 Another disaffected young priest, J. J. Burri (who at the time was attempting to transfer to the Oregon City archdiocese) also wrote with bitterness to Van der Heyden of the difficulties he and others were experiencing in Idaho with their bishop : Father Beusmans wrote me after he was transferred to Wallace. He was much disgusted with Idaho & the treatment he got at the hand of Bish. Gl. that I greatly feared for him. He has not answered my last letter though there are several months hence. Father Godschalkx is in the same predicament. A letter of last week from Judge Sinnott, informed me that Fr. God. was very much discouraged and utterly disgusted on account of the way that the Bishop treated him. Father Van Der Donckt is, as you well know, half of the time enraptured in heavenly things and thus anticipates the joys of paradise which prevents him from experiencing all the insults and illtreatments [sic] of a human being that by shame happens to wear the insignia of a bishop. 312 Glorieux celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of his episcopal ordination in April of 1910 in Saint John s Cathedral with the usual solemn mass, at the end of which Glorieux spoke, perhaps with the disaffections of some of his priests in mind: I acknowledge all of my short-comings, but I have always tried to have nothing but the best intentions. I have tried not to serve from the path of duty, and I have done all these things without fear of criticism. I have always respected the truth wherever I have found it. 310 Beusmans, Bernard ( ), from the diocese of Roermond, entered the American College in He was ordained a priest in 1896 and departed for Boise City the same year. He was cousin to Joseph Van der Heyden. 311 Beusmans (Boise) to Van der Heyden (Louvain), August 29, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 312 Burri (Tillamook) to Van der Heyden (Louvain), July 17, Archives of The American College, Louvain. In an earlier letter to Van der Heyden, Burri refers to Bishop Glorieux as the Bully of Idaho ; Burri (Wallace) to Van der Heyden, July 30, Archives of The American College. As always, it is difficult to evaluate at the distance of over one hundred years how much of Burri s complaints against Glorieux were based on the bishop s own actions and how much Burri might have tended to exaggerate the offences against him and wallowed in his various dissatisfactions.

399 370 I acknowledge that something has been done in Idaho during my episcopacy. The clergy, however, has ever been faithful in the discharge of its religious duty. I thank you all again and want you all to pray for me. 313 Glorieux lived another seven years beyond his silver anniversary, continuing in reasonably good health through April of 1917; in May of that year he began to show signs of heart failure and entered Boise s Saint Alphonsus Hospital. As his condition worsened he was taken to St. Vincent s Hospital in Portland but by August 17th, the fiftieth anniversary of his presbyteral ordination in Belgium, he was so weak that he could not even celebrate a simple anniversary mass to commemorate the occasion. He died on August at the age of seventy-three. 314 At the time of his death, his diocese could boast thirty-five secular priests and eighteen religious. It had thirty-two churches with resident priests and another sixtyone missions. Five academies and nine parochial schools graced the state. The Catholic population was counted at 16,000, almost five times the number the state had when Glorieux arrived in Idaho Territory in In the eulogy given at his funeral, Bishop O Dea 315 of Seattle (formerly Nesqually), spoke of the pioneer bishop of Idaho: When the history [of Bishop Glorieux] is written, as it should be written some day, it will be connected by a golden link with those glorious names, those heroes of Christianity in this far northwest, with the Seghers, with the Demers, with a Gross, and so many others, with the Brondels, with the Lemmens, all these, we might say, forming a glorious galaxy of faith, who devoted their lives in carrying the Cross t this distant land, this great Northwest, this most fertile field of the Church, and in sowing the seeds of Christianity Catholic Sentinel, April 28, Bradley and Kelley, Boise, O Dea, Edward J. ( ) was born in Boston but moved to Portland in 1866 where he attended St. Michael s College (then directed by Alphonse Glorieux). He entered the Grand Seminaire of Montreal in 1876 and was ordained a priest in 1882, the first resident of Oregon to become a priest. In June 1896, he was named the third bishop of Nesqually. In 1904 he transferred the see city from Vancouver to Seattle. See: O Dea, Edward John ( ), Glazier and Shelley, eds., The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, Bradley and Kelley, Boise, 326.

400 371 Five Years of Change and Development With the move in April of 1879 of Charles John Seghers to Oregon City as coadjutor archbishop, a chain of episcopal transition was begun that changed the face of the Catholic Church on the North Pacific Coast making the five years covered by this chapter some of the most significant for the church s development. Following Seghers s move to Oregon, the see of Vancouver Island first had to be filled. The nod went to his best friend, John Baptiste Brondel. At almost exactly the same time, (June, 1879), the younger of the Blanchet brothers, Augustin Magloire, finally let go of the Nesqually diocese over which he had ruled since 1850 (or 1846, if his brief stint as ordinary of the quickly defunct diocese of Walla Walla is counted). A Louvanist, Aegidius Junger, took that open seat as well. By early 1881, when Seghers became ordinary of Oregon City, the entire region stretching from the wintry wastelands of Alaska to the frontier of California and from the shores of the Pacific to the Rocky Mountains was in the episcopal hands of the priests of Louvain s American College. Certainly, the rise of these three men to the hierarchy meant more than geographical bragging rights. It also meant that the entire region was getting a breath of pastoral fresh air and was being infused with new energy after years of everdiminishing leadership under their Canadian founding fathers. Charles John Seghers set the agenda pastorally by initiating his time in Oregon City with a grand tour of the area included in the Oregon City ecclesiastical portfolio, tirelessly traveling to mining camp, Indian village, city and town from the damp coastal areas not far from Portland to the dry interior of Idaho and on into Montana, and back again. In a sense, he was teaching his fellow bishops how to do their job for upon their own appointments, both Junger and Brondel imitated the master and undertook their own pastoral journeys, crisscrossing their dioceses many times over. With Brondel and Junger joining him, Seghers let his priests know who was boss (himself, of course), established a pastoral plan for the entire region at the diocesan and regional synods he orchestrated, then used his influence and power of persuasion to make his will for the church the reality on the ground. The three bishops successful efforts to establish the new diocese of Helena in Montana and the to revive the Apostolic Vicariate of Idaho (later, the Diocese of Boise), not only made ecclesial management of the province much more realistic, it also allowed for further shuffling of episcopal seats in the area, Brondel moving horizontally to Helena from

401 372 Vancouver Island, and Alphonse Glorieux taking responsibility for Idaho. With the addition of all of Montana to the province, the reach of the Louvanists grew even larger, reaching almost to the Midwestern plains of North America. Seghers was also instrumental in negotiating new arrangements between Native Americans and white settlers in Oregon s Umatilla area. One of only two major issues where Seghers failed to impose his will was the refusal of John Jonckau to fill Brondel s seat in Vancouver Island, but that deeply frustrating event gave Seghers the opportunity to return himself to the see and use it as a base for taking Catholicism deep into Alaska, the missionary dream of his life. He was remarkable in his resilience and ability to turn a seeming failure into something great. Through all this, Seghers wrote and wrote and wrote, making the Catholic Sentinel his personal mouthpiece for in-depth descriptions of his travels and a public platform for the dissemination of his teaching. Even in his own time, he became an almost bigger-than-life figure to the people of the region, Catholic and otherwise. Seghers s attempts to wield his influence did not stop at provincial borders. The other great failure to impose his will was the matter of the American College rectorate. Despite all his best efforts, he could not keep John De Neve from re-taking his seat at the helm of the mother seminary in Belgium. One has the impression that he only acceded to the reality once his trusted friend, John Brondel, returned from Louvain and reported back to him personally that there was nothing more to be done and that in the end, De Neve could lead the college sufficiently well. The seriousness of the Louvain bishops response to this second De Neve affair and the reliance of these bishops on their mother seminary for even more priests to come to their pastoral aid, give witness to the fact that the American College and its scions continued to be deeply woven into the fabric of Catholic life on the North Pacific Coast. What was good for the American College was good for the province. Without the college sending more men to these dioceses, their future development would be jeopardized. It was not just clerical economics that moved them to care about the college; it is clear that even after so many years in the missions, many of these men still felt affection for the distant college and knew among themselves a loose but enduring fraternity founded in their common formation in Louvain, thus the reunion of forty men in Portland that newly arrived Cyril Pauwelyn wrote to De Neve about in 1887.

402 373 For Seghers, then, the stage was set in 1885 for his return to Vancouver Island and his dramatic race against death to Nulato. For the other Louvain bishops, Junger, Brondel, and Glorieux, the hard daily work of building up the Catholic Church in their respective dioceses already recorded in this chapter, was to continue for years more. And just one ecclesiastical level below the hierarchs, nearly fifty Louvain priests were now tending their parishes, missions and schools, generally with forbearance, skill and pastoral attentiveness. The Catholic Church on the North Pacific Coast was by the end of 1885 very much a Louvain church. And on the horizon: the Oregon City see would soon pass to a Redemptorist from Baltimore, and further on, two more Louvanists would find themselves rising to the episcopacy in the region.

403 CHAPTER VIII THE LOUVAIN BISHOPS: Seghers s Final Mission The final chapter of this dissertation begins with Charles John Seghers s improbable return to Vancouver Island on April 1, The final chapter of his life story is an important one for it sets the stage for the eventual fading of the era of Louvain bishops on the North Pacific Coast. With Seghers s first step off the steamer, George K. Starr, he was home again in the diocese he so dearly loved. Later that day he told the sisters of Saint Ann that the moment... seemed like a dream 2 an exultation which reveals just how deeply he loved a place that most others saw as a nightmare. He commenced almost immediately his visitations of the various missions on Vancouver Island and made the decision to construct a new cathedral rectory in Victoria to replace the collapsing old house from Demers s days. 3 In late-august, Seghers reported to De Neve on the situation of the diocese as he was discovering it in his travels. Since my arrival, April 1, I have commenced the building of a new residence in Victoria for myself and clergy & have blessed F. Donckele s new Church on Salt Spring Island. F. Donckele is building another new Church in the southern part of his Mission. Fr. Althoff is about to build a new Church in Comox, 60 miles from Nanimo. F. Lemmens took charge of F. Eussen s Mission, and as there is a great influx of settlers towards the West Coast of the Island, he has located himself at 1 Catholic Sentinel, April 9, Gerard George Steckler, S.J., Charles John Seghers, Missionary Bishop in the American Northwest: (Doctoral Dissertation, University of Washington, 1963), Ibid.,

404 375 Alberni, 20 miles from the nearest point of Barclay Sound, so that the Indians will be poorly looked after on the Sound, one Priest not being equal to the task. 4 Having completed his round of visitations on the island, Seghers attention turned again to the frontier of Alaska and the unfinished business of bringing the faith into that distant and last corner of the world. Two Alaskan projects occupied his mind: returning a priest to the southeastern segment of the territory, in Juneau and Sitka (Althoff had been reassigned to Nanaimo on Vancouver Island by Brondel), and placing missionaries in the interior of the western regions of the territory. Time was of the essence in Juneau and Sitka as far as Seghers was concerned; the region had been left to Presbyterian missionaries for far too long without any Catholic response. Seghers left Victoria for Juneau on September 1st. Having arrived in Juneau by steamer, Seghers wrote to De Neve: I am here in a log cabin, 12x12, about 850 miles from Victoria. I did not reach a very high latitude on this trip, as I went only to 59º lat. North. If God spares me, I will go farther north next year. I came to this part of my Diocese with the set purpose of locating three resident Missionaries: two here, and one in Sitka, this very autumn. I have every prospect of success up to, and perhaps beyond my most sanguine wishes. But to carry out my scheme, I shall have to draw on the Clergy of the Island. True, Father Verbeek [sic] will have arrived in the mean time; but there will be one vacuum to be filled as soon as possible. I do not know how far Mr. Leterme is advanced in his course of theology. If he is a Priest or about to become one, the sooner you send him the better. And I hope you will secure me some more courageous, noble-hearted subjects who would rather pluck out their eyes than indulge in grumbling, whom I desire to locate in the Youcon [sic] Country. Communication, since I visited that region in 79, has become twice as easy as heretofore. 5 Seghers spent seven weeks in Alaska before returning to Victoria. Upon his arrival he found a new recruit from Louvain, Remigius Verbeke, 6 already at work in the cathedral parish. With Verbeke in place, he looked to two of his Louvain veterans to 4 Seghers (Victoria) to De Neve (Louvain), August 22, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 5 Seghers (Juneau) to De Neve (Louvain), September 21, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 6 Verbeke, Remigius ( ) came to the American College from the Bruges diocese in Brondel accepted him as seminarian for the diocese of Vancouver Island in1882. He was ordained a priest in December,1884 in Mechlin. Album Alumorum Collegii Americani Immaculatae Conceptinis B.M.V. Lovanii, Pars Tertia, quae incepta est A.D. 1877, Archives of The American College (Louvain: ), 142. Of the newly arrived Verbeke, Seghers wrote to De Neve: F. Verbeek [sic] seems to be contented and happy. I placed him in the Cathedral to replace F. Heynen who goes to Sitka. Seghers (Victoria) to De Neve (Louvain), October 26, Archives of The American College. Louvain.

405 376 staff the new missions in southeast Alaska; William Heynen would go to Sitka and Althoff back to Juneau (and Wrangell). The two men departed for their new stations on the 9th of November. For Althoff, at least, the return to Alaska could not have been anything other than a deeply unpleasant prospect; years later he wrote of his Alaskan years in these sad words: With the best will in the world I could not write of old reminiscences, simply because the Alaska years were singularly free from all that seems worth telling. It was lonesome, lonesome, lonesome in a superlative degree; humanly speaking the result of my life was very barren though I hope God will take into account my good will. Indeed, it is not false humility that makes me say it, but I doubt if ever a priest was situated in an immense country full of corruption and more seriously handicapped than I was At that time, Seghers s attention shifted fully to the other, much more difficult, Alaskan initiative he held dear to his heart: sending missionary priests into the heart of Alaska s interior. He commenced correspondence with Joseph Cataldo in hope of securing assistance from the Society of Jesus by way of a couple priests and/or brothers to accompany him into Alaska, My plan would be to take 2 or 3 of Your Fathers, with Brothers, with me next march, put them in charge of that new field and then, leaving them, sail the Youcon [sic] down to visit the other parts of Alaska. 8. Cataldo offered Seghers just one priest for the mission; Seghers countered that leaving just one priest in the interior would be unwise. Finally, Cataldo offered him two: Pascal Tosi, 9 from the De Smet mission in Idaho, and Aloysius Robaut 10 from the Colville mission in the 7 Althoff to Crimont (Nelson), July 12, Quoted in Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., 444, fn Seghers to Paladino, November 26, As quoted in Ibid., Tosi, S.J., Pascal ( ) was born in Rimini, Italy and was ordained a diocesan priest there in 1861 and entered the Society of Jesus the following year. In 1865 he was assigned to the Rocky Mountain Mission of the Society. He first served with Cataldo among the Spokane Indians. In 1886 he was selected to accompany Seghers in his final mission into Alaska. After Seghers s death, he was eventually assigned permanently to the Alaska mission and made superior. In 1894, Alaska was separated from Vancouver Island and erected as a Prefecture Apostolic; Tosi was named Prefect Apostolic. He served as Jesuit superior and Prefect until September, He died in Juneau in January, See Louis Renner, S.J., Prefect Apostolic Paschal Tosi, S.J., August 17, Robaut, Aloysius ( ) was born at Peillon, France and entered the Society of Jesus in In 1883 he began work at St. Michael s Mission in Spokane, then, in 1885, he was transferred to Colville and, a year later, to the Jesuit mission in Alaska, where he remained, serving in a variety of mission stations, until his death in December See William N. Bischoff, S.J., The Jesuits in Old Oregon: A Sketch of Jesuit Activities in the Pacific Northwest (Caldwell, ID: The Caxton Printers, LTD., 1945),

406 party. 14 Only a month before his scheduled departure, Seghers was honored again with the 377 northeastern part of Washington Territory. Cataldo was unwilling to open a new mission for his order on his own authority and so gave his two men to Seghers on a provisional basis, they were going to Alaska s interior only for a visit. 11 For his part, Seghers seemed to believe it was inevitable that the men would be permanently established in the new mission. 12 Eventually, a third man was added to the prospective party: Frank Fuller, an Irish layman who had been for a brief time a postulant of the Society at Sacred Heart Mission in Idaho and, thereafter, a handyman and occasional teacher among the Jesuit missions. 13 Though Tosi objected strenuously to Fuller s joining the mission, Seghers intervened and ordered that he be allowed to join the pallium in the Victoria cathedral, 15 but even at that grand ceremony, the forthcoming trip to Alaska was never far from his mind; to De Neve, once again, he wrote: Last Sunday I received though unworthy the Pallium from Archbp Gross and the Bps Junger, Brondel and Glorieux. I trust You will select one or two good [triple underline in original] Missionaries from among your young men for this Diocese, some of the viri per quos salus facta est (or fiet) in Israel, ready to shed their blood in Alaska! 16 There is certainly an eerie quality to Seghers s preoccupation with the shedding of blood in this and other letters; it is attributable to the fact that the man had lived with death as a close neighbor since his youth, and in a sense, had an uneasy truce with it, knowing full well that at any time it could take him as it almost had on several occasions before. An arduous trip into the wilderness of Alaska would test his body 11 Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., Ibid. 13 Ibid., Ibid., A handwritten document provided to De Neve by Cataldo in 1887 states that the original plan for the Alaska mission was to travel from San Francisco to the west coast of Alaska but this option was made impossible by the pallium ceremony, thus forcing the party to proceed later in the summer along the Juneau route. The document was probably authored by Joseph R. Crimont, S.J., apostolic vicar of Alaska. Sketch of the Alaska Mission, Archives of The American College (Louvain: 1887). 16 Seghers (Victoria) to De Neve (Louvain), June 4, Archives of The American College, Louvain.

407 378 more than his spirit; he must certainly have known that the risk of dying while pursuing his single-minded mission to the north was very high. Seghers s party departed Vancouver Island on July 11, From the steamer, Ancon, taking him northward Seghers wrote what would be his final letter to his old spiritual father, John De Neve: I am on the way to the interior of Alaska with two Jesuit Fathers and 1 Brother, to establish a permanent Mission, away from the Coast where Missionaries have not yet penetrated. I hope you will pray and make the Students pray for my personal safety, for that of my Companions and for the success of my undertaking. I shall be absent, probably, a year and more. F. Jonckau, in the mean time, holds my place. Be good enough to secure, for my missions, as many good young men as you can find. Belgian or French or Dutch from Limburg will, I believe, answer best. 17 It was a five-day journey to Juneau, where Althoff received the party. Even by then, there were problems with Fuller. A handwritten report on the mission provided to John De Neve by Cataldo in 1887, recorded that already during the trip to Juneau:... Fuller s conduct was often so extravagant that Father Tosi twice counseled the Archbishop to send him (Fuller) back with the same steamer, which would return from Alaska to Portland, for it seemed dangerous to F. Tosi to continue traveling such a long distance with a man of this kind. But the Archbishop, judging his services necessary, both during the voyage and during the winter in that most difficult country, took him along in hopes that the extravagances of Fuller, which arose from a fear that the whites wanted to take his life, would subside as soon as he would be far away from them; and though Fuller s extravagances continued, yet the Archbishop, in his zeal, separated himself from he Fathers, and traveled down he river alone in company with Fuller. 18 Tosi was having his own troubles with Seghers whom he could not convince to proceed more cautiously in his drive northward. He wrote to Cataldo from Juneau: Everyone is talking against our enterprise. The bishop is full of fire and makes the whole thing look easy but from time to time he seems very excited. I do all I can to hold him back. The more he rushes ahead, the slower I go: all the priests I have met have told me to slow him down Seghers (On board steamer Ancon, Lat. 57º N. Alaskan Waters), July 16, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 18 Sketch. 19 Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., 463.

408 379 Seghers proceeded from Juneau on July 19th, steaming north on the Ancon through the Lynn Canal, which is flanked by ranges of lofty peaks, every gorge of which is filled with a glacier almost to the edge of the salt water. 20 The party proceeded from the Presbyterian stronghold of Haines on July 24th, following miners routes to the Chilkoot Pass and using Chilkat Indians as packers through the mountains. 21 At one point in the trek northward, Seghers came close to death while fording the Taiya River: Here we stood at the mouth of the canyon from which the Dayay [sic], nearly fifty feet wide, burst forth at the rate of twelve miles an hour. Some of the Indians formed a chain, taking each other by the hand and marching on a line, which extended down with he current. Preceded by an Indian packer and followed by another, I resolutely marched into the torrent which seemed as if boiling round me. I was very successful until I found myself but a few yards from the other bank, when the velocity of the water forced my feet so wide apart that I felt I could hold the ground no longer. One of my knees bent in spite of me, notwithstanding all the efforts I made to brace myself against the whirling, dashing torrent. One of my Indians saw the danger I was in, and reached me his hand; another took me under the arm; and so I was saved from the wild, furious stream. 22 From Chilkoot Pass the party passed on to Lake Lindeman, which was the terminal point for the Indian packers. The loss of the Indians was less disappointing than the strange disappearance of the French-Canadian cook, Antoine Provost: Next day a serious disappointment happened to us. Antoine Provost who had followed us from Juneau and on whom we relied to help us in building a raft left us and disappeared without saying a word. 23 Though Seghers expressed no suspicions about the man s disappearance, his Jesuit companions later wrote that they felt Fuller had something to do with the matter. 24 By handmade rafts they traveled up Lindeman, Bennett and Tagish lakes. On August 1st, Seghers celebrated mass on the headwaters of the Yukon,... where, I believe, no mass had ever been celebrated. 25 Perhaps his zeal for pushing ever deeper 20 Seghers (mouth of Salmon River) to Jonckau, August 31, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 21 Ibid. Also see Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., Steckler s detailed recounting of the trip is based in large part on the August 31st letter to Jonckau. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid. 24 Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., Seghers (mouth of Salmon River) to Jonckau, August 31, Archives of The American College, Louvain.

409 380 into these unknown lands was motivated by the hope that at some point his celebration of mass in this land might in fact bring the gospel to the last dark corner of the world thus initiating the long-awaited parousia before his very eyes. The party proceeded then into barely known territories, traversing Marsh Lake northward and then another forty miles further north to Lake Laberge and the Yukon River. On August 25th, at the foot of Miles Canyon, about half-way to Lake Laberge, Seghers found for the first time ice in his dishpan; on August 27th, the party endured its first snowstorm. 26 The weather, which had been reasonable until then, was ominously changing. Seghers ended his lengthy letter to Jonckau with these words: We are now about to push on northward and are within five days navigation from the mouth of Stewart River, where we shall decide on selecting our winter quarters; and we are about 261 miles from the salt water, that is from Chilcoot. I am reluctantly compelled to put an end to this letter and as I do not expect t find any time for writing before reaching Stewart River, whence the returning Indians have already started, I cannot find another chance to write to you until next year. Adieu! May God bless you and our good priests and sisters. Continue to pray for me Though Seghers continued to think well of the good hearted Brother 28, the Jesuits, Tosi and Robaut, were at their patience s end with Fuller. Their letters to Cataldo continued to express alarm at the man s behavior and their desire to be completely rid of him. Robaut later wrote that Tosi s futile efforts to convince Seghers of the man s dark character left Tosi with strong feelings about the inexplicably impractical Seghers, to whom Tosi spoke with impertinence and treated Seghers more as... a servant, rather than a bishop. 29 Seghers received news that even as the Presbyterians had already settled further south, the Episcopalians were threatening to move into the very country Seghers had been dreaming of claiming for the Catholics, the Yukon and the village of Nulato where he intended to establish his mission. With the pressure from the Protestants seeming all the more intense to Seghers, he proposed three options to Tosi and Robaut, though he had already decided on his plan of action: he and Fuller would proceed to Nulato, 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. It should be noted that this letter runs to twenty pages. According to a notation at the head of the first page, it had been entrusted at Salmon River to a miner who was returning to Juneau, whence it was delivered to Victoria by steamer. 28 Ibid. 29 Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., 485.

410 381 another 1,100 miles (1,770 kilometers), while the Jesuits would remain where they were. The Jesuits protested the plan heatedly, but it excited Seghers. 30 The Jesuits arguments notwithstanding, Seghers was committed to his scheme. Seghers and Fuller departed on September 8th, heading down the Yukon River with the hope of reaching Nulato or at least Nuklukayet. By September 17th they had reached the Arctic Circle; the weather was worsening, making progress ever more difficult. On October 3rd they had arrived at the trading post of Nuklukayet where they met up with the trader in charge and three miners. From here they could not proceed further until the river had frozen solid allowing them to run sleighs down it. 31 At this point, for the first time, Seghers began to admit that his traveling companion was showing serious signs of instability. Writing in his diary on October 16th, Seghers noted: Peculiar conversation with Brother in which for the third time he gives evidences of his insanity. 32 On November 19th the river was sufficiently frozen for Seghers and Fuller, accompanied by three Indians, to move on to Nulato. Evidence of Fuller s paranoia increased as the days went by: Fuller asks me how it can be that I encourage the Indians to make fun of him. For five years the Indians did the same thing in the [Rocky] Mountains More ominously, on November 21st Fuller asked Seghers,... why I sent one of our Indians ahead to burn the sleigh and himself. 34 Later that day, the party arrived at a trading station with about a dozen men residing within. All agreed that Fuller was insane. 35 The party continued on towards Nulato as the winter weather deepened; Fuller wanted to stop and rest some days while Seghers urged the team onward. On Saturday, November 27th, they had come within forty miles of Nulato giving Seghers hope of reaching his great goal the following day. They made camp on the north bank of the 30 Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., 493. Seghers s diary is in the possession of the American College in Louvain. It has been encased under glass and in a heavily adorned brass frame and fixed within by ribbons and threads as in a reliquary. The diary cannot be removed without dismantling the whole. Thus, we are dependent for the time being on Steckler s quotations from the small pocket diary. 33 Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., 495.

411 382 Yukon at the site of a small smokehouse within which they could sleep. Seghers was in good humor, equaled by Fuller s despondency. What transpired the following morning is recorded in the statement sent to De Neve by Cataldo: They [the Indians accompanying Fuller and Seghers] say also that Fuller was very much excited during the night and seemed not to have slept. At daybreak they saw him get up and go about as if he would start the fire, but did not do it. All at once he called the Archbishop, telling him to get up. The Archbishop arose to a sitting posture, and on seeing Fuller with his gun leveled, folded his arms on his breast and inclined his head when the man shot him. The bullet passed through his forehead near his left eye and came out from the upper part of the neck. The Archbishop died instantly. The Indians witnessing the tragedy got frightened, and fearing that Fuller would kill them also, disarmed him; but Fuller assured them, saying coolly and calmly that he had made up his mind to kill only the Archbishop. Then he and the Indians arranged the body of the dead Prelate, taking away only the pastoral cross and ring, which objects he said he would give to the ecclesiastical authorities in Victoria. 36 Archbishop Seghers was forty-seven years of age at the time of his death. Word of Seghers s murder would take months to make its way to Vancouver Island and the United States. Tosi traveled by steamer to San Francisco, arriving there on July 18, 1887, and from San Francisco sent out the sad dispatches to Jonckau in Victoria, Cataldo in Spokane and several others. 37 Shock and sorrow were the only possible response to the almost-unbelievable news. Brabant wrote to his brother: Is it not terrible, Prudent! Everybody was making ready to give a royal reception to the great missionary Bishop upon his return to Victoria; for at the time that the news of his death was brought, he was expected home in his episcopal city. Priests and Religious weep, and the faithful mourn as for the loss of a father; even the Protestants are saddened in a word, the terrible crime committed by Francis Fuller has thrown gloom and consternation over the whole diocese Sketch. It should be noted that confusion over where Fuller s fatal shot had entered Seghers s body continued even through the trial of Fuller, which took place in Sitka in November and December, Fuller claimed in the trial that he shot Seghers in the chest while one of the Indian witnesses, Snita, claimed it passed through his head; see Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., Brabant (Hesquiate) to Prudent Brabant, August 21, 1887, as quoted in Joseph Van der Heyden, Life and Letters of Father Brabant: A Flemish Missionary Hero (Louvain: J. Wouters- Ickx, 1920), 186.

412 383 The testimonials to the man by civic and religious figures were immediate, manifold and fulsome in Seghers s praise. John Brondel s words to his brother though few, were among the most eloquent: Bishop Charles Jean Seghers was my best friend for the past 24 years, like a brother in the seminary, on the missions, and in the episcopate. We corresponded weekly during the ten years that I was at Steilacoom and I must say that I always loved and respected him for his eminent qualities of heart and soul. He was learned, a faithful and true friend, zealous to the point of heroism and he was a saint. He consecrated me a bishop and last year he invited me to Victoria for the reception of the pallium which he received at the end of March. He left for Alaska in July and wrote to me on the sixth of July: Goodbye, dear Bishop, I am leaving and God knows whether I shall return or not. Pray for me. 39 Perhaps even more eloquent in their agonizing cry were the additional words Brondel wrote to his brother some days later: What a blow, the death of Bishop Seghers! 40 Seghers left behind a diocese that had made progress since his arrival in 1863 but was still in great need. It had 7,000 Catholics out of a white population of over 40,000. He had fifteen priests working in twenty-four churches and chapels. 41 And then there was Alaska: perhaps the greatest legacy of Charles John Seghers is that as a direct result of his final missionary journey into its cold heartland and his death therein, a permanent mission eventually was commenced there by the Society of Jesus, fulfilling the great dream and hope of his episcopal life. Pascal Tosi argued fervently with his superiors for the continuation of his and Robaut s work there; they were, of course, strongly 39 Monseigneur Charles Jean Seghers était mon plus grand ami depuis 24 ans, comme un frère au séminaire, aux missions et dans l épiscopat. Nous tenions correspondance hebdomadaire pendant les dix années que je restais à Steilacoom et je dois dire que je l aimais et vénérais toujours à cause de ses éminentes qualités d esprit, de coeur et d âme. Il était savant, ami fidèle et vrai, il était zélé juscequ à [sic] l héroisme et il était saint. Il me consacra évêque et l année passée il m invita à Victoria pour le réception du pallium qu il a reçu vers la fin de Mars. Il partit pour l Alaska en Juillet et m écrivit le 6 de Juillet: Adieu, cher évêque, je pars et Dieu sait si je retourne ou non. Priez pour moi. Brondel (Helena) to his brother, July 20, Archives of the Diocese of Helena. 40 Quel coup que la mort de Mgr Seghers! Brondel (Helena) to Ch. Brondel (Dottignies), July 28, Archives of the Diocese of Helena. In a postscript to this letter, Brondel describes to his brother the murder of Seghers in almost exactly the same terms as the document sent to De Neve by Cataldo. Translation provided by P. Wallace Platt, C.S.B. 41 Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D.,

413 384 supported by John Jonckau. 42 The Jesuit mission wasn t enough for Jonckau though. He wanted sisters in Alaska as well; only then would Seghers s dream be made permanent. He approached the most logical choice, the ever-faithful Sisters of Saint Ann who had served in the Vancouver Island diocese for years. The sisters in Victoria were personally in favor of the mission but had none of their own to spare. Both Jonckau and the sisters petitioned their superiors in Lachine, Quebec to send more sisters to them so that they could station a few in Nulato. The answer was a firm no. Jonckau was not about to let the matter end there, after all, the dream of his great friend and leader was at stake. Bitter letters from Jonckau to the sisters superior in Lachine followed. Getting nowhere, Jonckau finally wrote to Bishop Edward Fabre 43 of Montreal asking him to exert his influence in the matter. Fabre s favorable opinion of the mission changed the mind of the congregation in Quebec. Word was telegraphed from Lachine: The missions of Alaska and Yukon are accepted. Jonckau wrote back simply: Ten million thanks and more! 44 With that, Jonckau, the perennial Number Two Man of Vancouver Island, could know deep satisfaction in completing the most significant single accomplishment of his life as a priest: with the help of Tosi he had secured the future of the great mission of Charles John Seghers in Alaska. Seghers s importance to the church of the North Pacific Coast is measured not only in the miles he traveled to visit missions or the erudition of his sermons and lectures or even in the planting of the church in Alaska; it can also be seen in the quality of his relationships with those who worked with him. In this regard, the words of his ever-faithful vicar general, John Jonckau, to John De Neve in 1884 offered a personal and rather intimate view: 42 Ibid., Fabre, Charles Edward ( ) was ordained a priest in He gained fame in Montreal as an orator and giver of missions. In 1873, he was appointed auxiliary bishop of Montreal and in 1876 became its third bishop at 49years of age; in 1886, he was named its first archbishop. During his twenty years as ordinary of Montreal, he ordained 210 priests for the diocese. He brought to the archdiocese ten religious communities. He died in 1896, at the age of 69. See Mgr Édouard-Charles Fabre, Archdiocese of Montreal, Also see August 20, Margaret Cantwell, S.S.A., North to Share: The Sisters of Saint Ann in Alaska and the Yukon Territory (Victoria: Sisters of Saint Ann, 1992), 55.

414 385 And now I offer you the wishes of new year, all kind of blessings for you and the college temporal & spiritual, especially many students for the pacific coast where they are most needed, because true missionaries are wanted here; we live here in a state between the comforts of an organized diocese and the abnegation granted in pure missions; and I think such a state is sometimes harder than the life of an Indianmissionary. It is for this reason that it was a great blessing to me to find such a wise, zealous & pious director in the person of Rev. Father Seghers, who is loved and esteemed by all that are good, and honored by many more than the Governor. From the beginning, as you had recommended to me, I put myself entirely under his guidance; and I experienced at once that he had inherited your spirit. I wish to every young priest such a guardian angel to direct his first step in the missions. Without him I would have felt disappointed in this mission, as do many others; but through him I am [undecipherable] pleased and happy, and I hope that God will grant me the grace of perseverance. 45 It would be two years from the time of Seghers s death until his body would return to Victoria for burial; it arrived aboard the steamer Thetis and was received by Seghers s successor as bishop of Vancouver Island, John Lemmens, and Seghers's dearest friend, John Brondel on November 15, Not on hand for the sad reception was John Jonckau, the man who had faithfully served as administrator of the diocese whenever its bishops had been away or when the see was vacant, and who fulfilled the same function once again following Seghers s death. Jonckau s protestations of ill health, the very ones that led to Seghers s return to the diocese, proved true enough, for he died only a few months before Seghers s body was returned to Victoria. 47 Seghers was buried beneath the sanctuary of St. Andrew s 45 Jonckau (Victoria) to De Neve, January 21, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 46 Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., See also: S.S.A. Mary Theodore, Heralds of Christ the King (New York: P.J. Kenedy & Sons, 1939), Brabant wrote to John De Neve of Jonckau s last days and his significance for the diocese and for himself: I consider I have been fortunate to know this saintly man, to have had him as a model and as a guide both in the seminary and on the missions. I am sure, dear Father De Neve, that it has grieved you very much to learn of his death. Much as I still feel the shock it gave me, I cannot but think of the many reasons I have to console myself in the loss I sustained; for, pretiosa in conspectu Domini mores sanctorum ejus; and as the poor Irishman said: if that man has not gone straight to Heaven, the Lord have mercy on us all. You remember the virtues he practiced at Louvain his piety, his humility, his exemplary conduct in all matters of an ecclesiastical student. Nothing of all this, dear Father, was ever in the least contaminated through his contact with the world. The virtues of his youth grew and developed with age; they exercised a most beneficial influence upon those who surrounded him and were made fruitful for the conversion of sinners and unbelievers.

415 386 Cathedral, right next to the tomb of his first bishop, Modeste Demers, and that of his fellow Fleming and long-time co-worker, John Jonckau. 48 John Lemmens Succeeds Seghers John Lemmens had served the Diocese of Vancouver Island faithfully and competently since his arrival in As pastor in Naniamo he had constructed the church there, learned indigenous languages with some proficiency and used his fine voice to teach the Native Americans hymns in both Latin and their native languages. In 1882, he was assigned to the cathedral parish in Victoria with Heynen and Van Nevel assisting him. In 1883, he was assigned to Kuyquot on the west coast of the island, 210 miles from Victoria, where he could once again dedicate himself entirely to the native peoples of the island. Lemmens was so well thought of that he was asked by the clergy of the diocese to represent them at the Third Plenary Council in Baltimore. 49 While in Baltimore he became better known to Archbishop Gross and probably such ecclesial luminaries as Cardinal Gibbons, contacts which would later place him in the front rank of possible episcopal candidates in the region. 50 After the council ended, Lemmens Father Jonckau had been a sufferer of throat-and-lung consumption for the last eight or ten years; but somehow he always managed to get over the worst attacks and relapses. When I arrived in Victoria towards the end of June, he took me aside and requested me to take charge of his parish for a few weeks, telling me under seal of secrecy that he felt very sick. Later he managed to give up the administration of the diocese by sending in his resignation to the Archbishop of Oregon. About a week before his death he told me once more very privately that he felt sure never to be able again to fast of saying mass at a late hour. That much I know; but neither I or any one had any thought of his end being so near. He was jovial, full of life, and, to all outward appearances, no worse than at any previous time... However, two or three days before his death, he looked very much dejected; but he kept at work as usual for all that.... The supreme call came very suddenly to him, that is in our estimation: a knock upon the wall of his room startled us about half past three in the morning; we rushed to his aid and found him sitting on the side of his bed, vomiting blood. I held him up; Father Mandart, his confessor and friend, gave him absolution; Bishop-elect Lemmens anointed him on the forehead and all was over with our dearly beloved friend and brother. Brabant (Hesquiate) to De Neve, August 20, 1888, as quoted in Van der Heyden, Father Brabant, Steckler, Seghers, Ph.D., Vincent J. McNally, "Surviving in Lotus Land: A History of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Victoria, , Unpublished manuscript, p. 84, Archives of the Diocese of Victoria, Victoria, BC. 50 Ibid.

416 387 continued on to Europe where he took time to briefly visit his family in his hometown of Schimmert. Upon returning to Victoria only twenty-seven days later, Lemmens was assigned to the village of Port Alberni, again on the west coast, where he remained until In the wake of Seghers s murder, attention naturally turned to a successor. Lemmens was the unanimous choice of the clergy. 52 The clergy s opinion on the matter was duly approved by Pope Leo XIII in Rome on May 29, With that, John Lemmens became bishop-elect of the Diocese of Vancouver Island. Lemmens, like Jonckau before him, was not pleased with the impending change in his life station and resisted it on the grounds that he too was inadequate to the honor and more particularly that he too suffered ill health due to tuberculosis. On June 5th the news that Lemmens had been appointed bishop-elect reached Augustine Brabant in Hesquiate with the arrival of some schooners headed for the Bering Sea on a fur-trading mission. Brabant recorded the events in his diary: June 5. A couple of schooners called here for a crew and are now off to the Behring Sea on a fur-sealing expedition. The news arrived that Father Lemmens is to be our new Bishop. June 25. Unexpectedly the steamer Maude called in Hesquiat harbor and I took passage on her and went to Victoria. The steamer called at Clayoquot Mission. I went to see the Bishop-elect, whom I found in his shirt sleeves, with an axe in his hands, splitting firewood. After taking a pot of coffee, which he prepared for me in good style, we talked the matter over and we left together for Victoria. July. Here the new Bishop-elect was welcomed by the clergy and especially the Very Rev. J.J. Jonckau, the administrator. This last-named gentleman was very weak and evidently suffered much. Rev. Father Lemmens objected to becoming Bishop, but he was eventually persuaded to accept and his consecration was set for August Vera McIver, "Bishop J. N. Lemmens: 5th Bishop of Victoria, 2002," Unpublished Manuscript, p , Archives of the Diocese of Victoria, Victoria. See also J. H. M. Nijsten, Mgr. J. N. Lemmens: Belevenissen van een Schimmertse Missiebisschop tussen de indianen (Schimmert: Heemkundevereniging Schimmert, 1990). 52 Joseph Leterme, "Lives of Former Bishops," The British Columbia Orphans' Friend Historical Number: , December 1913, 107. See also: Vincent J. McNally, The Lord's Distant Vineyard: A History of the Oblates and the Catholic Community in British Columbia (Edmonton, Alberta: University of Alberta Press and Western Canadian Publishers, 2000), 113.

417 388 On the Sunday previous his administrator, the Very Rev. J. J. Jonckau, died quite suddenly and his funeral, at which I was made to preach, took place on the following Tuesday. 53 In his final great deed for the Diocese of Vancouver Island, the weakening John Jonckau pressured Lemmens into doing what he himself had refused: accepting the episcopal honor and burden in spite of his health concerns and protestations of inadequacy. 54 Jonckau probably had a hand in arranging for Archbishop Gross in Portland to write Lemmens in the strongest terms; of the correspondence, Lemmens wrote to his parents: I would like to thank you for your heartfelt congratulations on my appointment. I did not write you about it because I knew that the Pastor already told you the news, and also because it was not yet confirmed and I did not want to give you any hope as you would be disappointed because from the beginning I had intended to decline; though it appears that refusal will not help. Yesterday I received a letter from the Archbishop, which appointed me already as Administrator of the Diocese, in which he says, that if I refuse, he will ask for a mandamus from Rome, that means an order to be given. So that I out of obedience have to accept. I am not very happy about it, positive as I am that I am not capable of such a high ambition. Though if I have to and it looks that way, I will have to. My only hope of success is with God s help. 55 Lemmens did, in fact, accept the inevitable and was consecrated on August 5, 1889 as the fourth bishop of Vancouver Island. Archbishop Gross served as consecrator with the assistance of Alphonse Glorieux and Aegidius Junger. John Brondel delivered the homily. Above Lemmens s episcopal throne was his new coat of arms, the Sacred 53 Charles Moser, OSB, Reminiscences of the West Coast of Vancouver Island (Victoria, BC: Acme Press, 1926), Leterme, "Lives," Ik dank u allen voor uwe hartelijke gelukwenschen ter gelegenheid mijner benoeming. Ik heb u niet verder hierover geschreven omdat ik wist dat de Heer Pastoor u het nieuws reeds had medegedeeld, en ook omdat het nog twijfelachtig was en ik vreesde u eene hoop te geven die mocht worden te leur gesteld; te meer omdat ik van voornemen was te weigeren. Doch het schijnt dat weigeren niets helpen zal. Gisteren ontving ik eenen brief van den Aartsbisschop mij reeds aanstellende als Administrator van het bisdom, waarin hij zegt dat, indien ik weiger, hij in Rome zal aanvragen dat een Mandamus [emphasis in original] dat will zeggen een bevel [emphasis in original] gegeven worde. Zoodat ik uit gehoorzaamheid zou moeten aannemen. Ik ben hierover geenszins op mijnen schik, overtuigd als ik ben dat ik onder vele opzichten ongeschikt ben voor zulk verheven ambt. Doch indien ik genoodzaakt ben, zoals het schijnt, zal ik moeten. Mijne enige hoop op welslagen zal dan zijn in God s hulp. Lemmens (Victoria) to his parents, July 4, Photostatic copy and translation in Archives of the Diocese of Victoria.

418 389 Heart radiating over a group of islands, 56 and his self-chosen motto: Insulis quae procul sunt (Jeremiah 31:10). 57 Lemmens s words to those gathered in the cathedral expressed his continuing doubts about his suitability even as he humbly accepted all that was being given him to bear: I know that I possess neither the learning nor the piety necessary to the high position which I have tried to evade. With our combined learning and piety we can, with God s help accomplish a great deal, and though now your superior, against my will, please consider me always as one of you. 58 Lemmens s correspondence back to his family in Schimmert diminished almost to the point of disappearing altogether once he had been consecrated bishop, most likely because he began to travel extensively to the missions of the island, often on horseback by himself. 59 Ironically, one of the pieces of unfinished business Seghers left for his successor would become, in the end, the indirect cause of Lemmens s own unfortunate death in a strange and distant land. Seghers had purchased lots for the new cathedral even before he left Victoria for Oregon City. Brondel continued to make plans for the new church while he was bishop of the diocese but did not have sufficient time in the diocese to move them significantly forward. Once Seghers returned to Victoria, he had Jonckau build a temporary pro-cathedral which was a 100 x40 hall; though hardly a cathedral the building gave the growing Catholic population a place where they could worship together. 60 Seghers s brief second term as bishop of Vancouver Island did not 56 Lemmens s coat of arms remains emblazoned in the stain-glass windows of Saint Andrew s Cathedral. 57 The full verse from Jeremiah: Audite verbum Domini gentes et adnuntiate insulis quae procul sunt et dicite qui dispersit Israhel congregabit eum et custodiet eum sicut pastor gregem suum. Hear the word of the Lord, O ye nations, and declare it in the islands that are afar off, and say: He that scattered Israel will gather him: and he will keep him as the shepherd doth his flock. McIver, "Lemmens, p Ibid. 59 In a letter to a Mr. Voncken, Lemmens recounts one such trip in which his horse got away from him in deep woods leaving him stranded. It was the feastday of Saint Mark, so Lemmens prayed to the saint to hold his horse for him. Not long thereafter, he came upon his steed patiently waiting for him in the path. Lemmens (Victoria) to Voncken, May 26, Photostatic copy held by Archives of the Diocese of Victoria. 60 McIver, "Lemmens," p. 25.

419 390 allow for his plans for a new cathedral proper to move ahead during his lifetime. Perhaps out of respect for the hopes of his predecessor, Lemmens took on the project that would become the physical hallmark of his episcopacy. On September 17, 1889, he announced his plans to the Catholics of Victoria and thereafter traveled to Quebec in search of a plan for his new cathedral. He settled on a somewhat smaller version of a neo-gothic building in Vaudreuill, Quebec, and hired the same church architects in Montreal to design his building. 61 His plan called for seating capacity of one thousand with additional lofts that would hold another two hundred worshippers. The cornerstone was laid on October 5, 1890 and the Catholic community could boast that they had subscribed $50,000 of the projected $80,000 cost of the building. Lemmens allowed Bishop Lootens, then residing in Victoria and the most senior cleric in the region, the privilege of presiding over the laying of the five and a half ton cornerstone. The cathedral project seemed hounded by misfortune from the beginning. Lemmens s insistence on fair working hours and pay for the laborers increased the costs. Unfortunately for Lemmens, the average wage of a citizen of Victoria at the time was about $600, so fund raising on such a grand scale proved difficult. 62 Problems among the contractors arose early on, the local architect accusing one of the contractors of using inferior stone for the foundations, an intolerable situation that obviously threatened the integrity of the whole structure. Anonymous letters from local anti- Catholics were sent to Lemmens threatening to burn the church down even before it was completed. Finally, the neighborhood around the new site was a primary area for local prostitutes to ply their trade. Repeated appeals to the city fathers had to be made to clean up the area. 63 Even with those difficulties marring the project s progress, dedication of the new cathedral took place on October 30, The grand festivities of the dedication must have been colored by a fact Lemmens was only too aware of as he presided over the pontifical high mass and listened attentively to Archbishop Gross s one-hour sermon. 65 Cost of the construction 61 McNally, "Lotus Land, p Ibid. 63 Ibid., p McIver, "Lemmens, p Ibid., p. 36.

420 391 had risen beyond expectations to $90,000, leaving Lemmens facing a debt of $40, To temporarily resolve the situation, Lemmens took out a loan for $50,000 at 7% interest, payable monthly. 67 Even though Victoria was showing some external signs of prosperity as evidenced by the construction of its new provincial house, an economic depression in the United States affected western Canada as well, bringing soup kitchens to the city. This endured for five years and made fund-raising all the more difficult for Lemmens. 68 Lemmens left Victoria for Europe in mid-1893, where he visited his family in Schimmert, traveled to Louvain to bless the newly constructed chapel of the American College on September 4th, and managed to recruit two nephews, both seminarians of the Montfort Fathers, to join him in his mission diocese. By October he had arrived in Rome to discuss with the Pope issues related to Alaska s jurisdiction. 69 By May of 1894, he was on his way home again, stopping in Lachine, Quebec to visit the Sisters of St. Anne s motherhouse, where he delivered two young girls from Haarlem to the novitiate. 70 The issue of Alaskan jurisdiction had arisen soon after Lemmens took control of the diocese in August,1888. His ownership of church property in Sitka was disputed on the grounds that he was not an American citizen; the judge in the case ruled that the pastor of the place, John Althoff was a U.S. citizen so the property was deeded to him and his successors. For Lemmens the issue placed in strong relief the fact that his Canadian diocese had jurisdiction over American national territory: Alaska. Sentiment was growing that the time was right to establish Alaska as its own vicariate. It was this issue, then, that Lemmens presented to the pope and the authorities in the Vatican. His lobbying in Rome had its effect for on July 27, 1894, the Apostolic Prefecture of Alaska was erected, Paschal Tosi, S.J. named as its head, and Lemmens was free of the burden 66 Ibid. 67 McNally, "Lotus Land, p Ibid., p McIver, "Lemmens, p. 36. Lemmens s activities and travels in Italy are described by him in a series of three letters: Lemmens (Milan) to Willems (Schimmert), October 1, Lemmens (Rome) to his parents (Schimmert), October 8, Lemmens (Rome) to Willems (Schimmert), October 21, Photostatic copies held by Archives of the Diocese of Victoria. 70 Ibid., p. 37. The visit to Lachine is described by Lemmens in a letter to the pastor of Schimmert: Lemmens (Lachine) to Willems (Schimmert), May 2, Photostatic copy held by Archives of the Diocese of Victoria.

421 392 of tending to the vast area that had taken the life of his predecessor. 71 Lemmens could thenceforward dedicate himself to tending to the pastoral problems of his island diocese. Of his victory in Rome he wrote to the pastor of Schimmert: The biggest news and something very particular is that now finally Alaska has become one Prefectura Apostolica. I received a letter serval days ago from the Propaganda who confirmed it. The borders will temporarily be like I proposed in my letter of March 1893 to Cardinal Ledochowski, the given land of Alaska, but I have to agree with the new Prefect about the definite border,which with approval will be noted. 72 A distinctive feature of Lemmens s pastoral care of his diocese was the attention he offered to issues of labor practices. He is credited with being one of the first persons in British Columbia to actively advocate better working conditions and the development of labor unions to protect the worker. His concern for labor was directly related to what he knew of the working conditions of the coal miners he ministered to in Naniamo and Cumberland where he had served for years. Lemmens took to heart Pope Leo XIII s encyclical, Rerum Novarum, and strongly supported, as mentioned previously, the eighthour work day in particular, and in general, the right of workers to unionize themselves. On May 2, 1890, he was reported by Victoria s newspaper, The Colonist, as saying to the Catholics of the city: Let me in conclusion exhort you to cultivate the spirit of work, to be closely united among yourselves, and to be sincerely attached to your religious duties. Labor, Union, Religion this should be the motto of every working man. Labor will give you proud independence, union will give you strength, and religion will be your consolation, comfort and dignity Ibid., p With Alaska being erected as an apostolic prefecture independent of Vancouver Island Paschal Tosi, S.J. was named its apostolic prefect. 72 Het grootste nieuws en iets zeer partikuleers is dat nu eindelijk Alaska tot eene Prefectura Apostolica herschapen is. Ik kreeg over eenige dagen een brief van de Propaganda die zulks mededeelde. De grenzen zullen voorlopig zijn zoals ik die had voorgesteld in mijn brief van Maart 1893 aan Card. Ledochowski, nl. het geheel grondgebied van Alaska; doch ik moet met de nieuwe Prefect overeenkomen nopens de definitieve grenzen welke met goedkeuring van de Propaganda zullen worden vastgesteld. Lemmens (Victoria) to Willems (Schimmert), September 21, Photostatic copy held by Archives of the Diocese of Victoria. 73 Colonist, May 2, As quoted in McIver, "Lemmens, p

422 393 Lemmens continued to regularly travel to the various missions of his diocese. As just one example of such visitations, Brabant recorded Lemmens s unannounced arrival in his mission in Hesquiate: February, The Right Rev. Bishop Lemmens paid his first visit to the Indians of this district. As the Bishop had not given notice of his arrival, no reception was prepared for him. Most of the Indians were absent, but when they heard of the presence of His Lordship they all came to the mission and on Sunday, January 29th, were all present at the blessing of my new church in the morning and the blessing of the Stations of the Cross in the afternoon. 74 The very size of the debt Lemmens had sunk his diocese into left him with few options for relief. He had raised some funds in Europe but not enough to free the diocese from its burden. In the face of his financial difficulties, Lemmens happened upon a scheme almost as audacious as Seghers s push through the heartland of Alaska. In October 1895, Lemmens traveled to Mexico where he was to participate in celebrations surrounding the traditional feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. At the invitation of the archbishop of Guadalajara, Lemmens accepted responsibility for celebrating confirmations in the vast region of southwestern Mexico, spending five months in the country and confirming some 53,000 people. For Lemmens, the confirmations were not done simply out of pastoral devotion to the missions, there was an economic incentive: with each confirmation there was a stipend attached and it was these he was hoping to bring back to his diocese to relieve its debt. While in Mexico, Lemmens made the acquaintance of the archbishop of Guatemala, Ricardo Casanova y Estrada, 75 who had been in exile from Guatemala since 1887 due to conflicts with the government over its seizure of church property, expulsion of the Jesuits and prohibition of clerical dress. 76 With the archbishop in exile, the faithful of the country had been 74 Moser, Reminiscences, Casanova y Estrada, Ricardo ( ) was a native of Guatemala City, Central America. In 1876 he was ordained a priest and ten years later appointed archbishop of Guatemala City, a position he held until his death. See Catholic Hierarchy.org, accessed July 30, Roger Aubert and others, The Church in the Industrial Age, ed. Hubert Jedin and John Dolan, trans. Margit Resch, X vols., History of the Church, vol. IX (London: Burns & Oates, 1981), 133.

423 394 without the sacrament of confirmation for nine years. Lemmens offered to relieve the want and Casanova y Estrada gave him license to do so throughout the country. 77 Lemmens arrived in Guatemala in October 1896 and the following day was led to the office of the republic s president, Justo Rufino Barrios, 78 the very man who had exiled Archbishop Casanova y Estrada (after the archbishop had already excommunicated the president). The president received the bishop, asked pertinent questions about his purpose in coming, and then... seemed to be quite satisfied that I was not a conspirator Barrios gave Lemmens his approval to proceed with the confirmations but suggested that there not be... any unnecessary ado or noise about it. 80 The vicar general of the archdiocese offered Lemmens a priest to accompany him on his confirmation rounds. He was lodged in the archbishop s rooms in the archdiocesan palace, which, he noted, were so large,... you could turn round with a four-wheeled wagon. 81 He began his confirmation ministry in the archbishop s chapel but quickly moved the ministrations into the cathedral due to the press of the crowds coming forward for the sacrament. On October 29th, Lemmens wrote,... I confirmed steadily without intermission from 11:30 A.M. till 5 P.M. I do not know how many there were but the crowd was immense. 82 The economics of the ministry were odd but effective. Lemmens himself explained to Nicolaye how this strange fund-raising technique worked: 77 McNally, "Lotus Land, p Barrios, Justo Rufino ( ), was a native of San Lorenzo in Guatemala s Department of San Marcos. He studied law in Guatemala City. He participated in the revolt in western Guatemala in 1867 eventually becoming a general in the rebel army centered in Quetzaltenango. In 1871 he and others began efforts to overthrow the country s conservative government. When they succeeded he was made commander of the armed forces. The new government was itself overthrown, leading Barrios and his army to march on Guatemala City and declared war on Honduras which supported the conservative government in Guatemala. In 1873 he was elected president of Guatemala and pursued efforts to unite the countries of Central America into one nation. He oversaw many reforms in the country and extended civil rights and freedoms. Barrios liberal reforms were not well received in neighboring Mexico, which seized the disputed departments of Chiapas and Soconusco. The Mexicans joined forces with the Salvadorans against Guatemala; Barrios was killed while leading his forces against the Salvadorans. See: (August 23, 1005). 79 Lemmens (San José de Guatemala) to Nicolaye (Victoria), October 23, Archives of the Diocese of Victoria. 80 Ibid. 81 Ibid.

424 395 The manner in which the people here pay their contribution makes it unnecessary to count heads; they do not give money, each one brings a wax candle. If the candles were all the same size I would have the tickets counted, so as to prevent any dishonest dealings, but there is a great variety in size, the rich people bringing candles that are worth about a dollar. The poor, the Indians who form the bulk of the population bring smaller ones, but I am told that wax is dear and those smaller ones cost about two bits [25 cents] anyway. The dollar of Guatemala is worth only 46 cents at present but the bigger candles will, I hope, make up for that and bring it about even with the value of the Mexican contribution. The main drawback is that I have no means to control the receipts; but I am told by a young Jesuit here that the priests of Guatemala are very good, and I may suppose that they are at least honest enough not to steal my wax candles. I am told also that it is easy to sell all the wax I can get and turn it into money. 83 There was at least one irritating price to be paid by Lemmens for his candles; the final line of this letter noted: Fleas are bad, and mosquitoes can see in the dark. 84 Within a few weeks, Lemmens had confirmed some 20,000 in the capital city, but found the crowds beginning to thin. 85 He also found that his presence was not appreciated by all. A pamphlet was circulated in the city proposing the possibility that he might not really be a bishop at all. Another urged that he be expelled, like the Jesuits, as... a foreigner who came to fanaticize the people in order to influence the upcoming elections. 86 In April, having just returned from a four-month confirmation tour through the western departments of the country, he wrote Nicolaye again. 87 good news he had to deliver to Nicolaye was that the exiled archbishop had returned on the feastday of St. Joseph, March 19th. The return of Archbishop Casanova y Estrada placed his own mission in question, he explained to Nicolaye, so he asked the archbishop if he should remain in Guatemala carrying on with confirmations or not. The prelate s response was non-committal leaving Lemmens to consider further the The 82 Lemmens (San José de Guatemala) to Nicolaye (Victoria), October 29, Archives of the Diocese of Victoria. 83 Ibid. 84 Ibid. This author can testify from his own experience that this aspect of missionary life in Guatemala has not much changed. 85 Lemmens (Guatemala) to Nicolaye (Victoria), November 12, Archives of the Diocese of Victoria. 86 Ibid. 87 Lemmens (Guatemala) to Nicolaye (Victoria), April 7, Translation from original Dutch provided by the Archives of the Diocese of Victoria. The Dutch text is not available.

425 396 extent of his tour in the country. 88 He reported as well that in one city, Quetzaltenango, he again met opposition from some locals. Just a few days before his arrival a priest had been shot through the heart and few expected Lemmens would present himself in the city thereafter. He was not deterred and arrived with some fanfare on Christmas Eve. 89 In San Marcos he also met opposition from the town s powerful jefes ; liberals distributed... a vicious pamphlet which deprecated our coming. The challenge had no effect for the people of San Marcos who... came in numbers to welcome us, the streets being full of people, not a sign of disrespect was shown, there was music and sky rockets and fire-crackers and noise. And from the time the Confirmation began, it was like a regular procession all day between the two towns If Lemmens s juggernaut through the mountains and valleys of Guatemala was taking a toll on his health, he gave no indication of it until the final paragraph of his Good Friday letter: I have been troubled now for a whole week with the necessity of making short, irregular but frequent trips to a place they call here el excusado. It may be owing to the bad water they have to drink in this place, but I hear, most strangers suffer with this complaint, not at their first arrival, but subsequently. For the rest this is a much healthier climate than is generally supposed. In one place the priest told us: Nobody dies here except very old people and some babies. 91 Lemmens s luck was about to run out; if the regions he had thus far traversed offered... much healthier climate than is generally supposed then the jungle of the Petén, 92 where he was next to travel, would prove to be quite the opposite. Like his predecessor, a combination of zeal and foolishness would lead the young bishop to a very bad end. Lemmens himself explained to Nicolaye the genesis of his upcoming trip: As Archbp. Casanova did not seem to have any preference one way or another as to whether I should continue to give Confirmation or not, I told him I would go home, 88 Ibid. 89 Ibid. 90 Lemmens (Guatemala) to Nicolaye (Victoria), Good Friday, Translation from original Dutch provided by the Archives of the Diocese of Victoria. The Dutch text is not available. 91 Ibid. 92 A tropical region in northern Guatemala covered in heavy jungle and the site of ruins of once great Mayan cities.

426 397 unless I could render him service by visiting some out-of-the-way district which it would be difficult for him to reach. He said he would be very glad if I would go and give Confirmation in the Departamento of Petén. So that is where I am going; I start in a day or two. Petén is by far the largest Depart. of the Republic, but it has not many towns or villages.... There is no railroad or even wagon-road. The distance is to be traveled on horseback or rather mule-back, mules being more sure-footed than horses when climbing mountains or passing ravines.... The whole trip will take at least three months. I do not expect to make much profit financially by this trip, but after the generous permission the Archbp. gave me originally of confirming throughout the whole Republic I am glad to render him this service. There never was a bishop through that country before, and he could likely not go himself for many years, if ever. 93 Some weeks later, Lemmens offered to Nicolaye a report of his travels in the Petén; he had made considerable progress into the region and by then largely completed his mission in a land... where according to the memory of the oldest inhabitants, no bishop ever set his foot. 94 of Guatemala the following day: He announced that he would begin his return trip to the city How long it will take me to get there [Guatemala City] I have no idea. The road by which I came, and which I was told was fairly good, I found to be abominable; the one by which I am to go back they tell me is very bad. This must mean that it is all but impassable. If I get out of this country alive I will do well. Steaming forests and putrid marshes impregnate the air you breathe with a strong flavor of the skunkplant, although the plant itself does not belong to the flora of this country. No wonder strangers suffer much from malaria. I have had the fever three times already. Once my temperature was over 104º. Hence quinine forms part of my daily food. 95 Lemmens did not do well; he did not get out of that country alive. It was a seven week trek from Flores to Coban for the bishop. In 1957 the eldest native of Coban, Mr. Macario Hun, recalled Lemmens arrival and death in Coban:... on the 9th of August, 1897 approximately at 7 p.m. he arrived in a state of agony. As he arrived from the town San Pedro Carcha many people met him at the bridge San Marcos. He was followed by all who met him to the convent of this city; all carried candles. He passed away between 12 and 1 a.m. on the same night that he arrived. The remains were laid upon the largest slab which was to be found in the church of Our Lord of Calvary. Many people came to the wake. On the morrow, 93 Lemmens (Guatemala) to Nicolaye (Victoria), April 22, Translation from original Dutch provided by the Archives of the Diocese of Victoria. The Dutch text is not available. 94 Lemmens (Flores, Petén, Guatemala) to Nicolaye (Victoria), Sunday within Octave of Corpus Christi. Translation from original Dutch provided by the Archives of the Diocese of Victoria. The Dutch text is not available. 95 Ibid.

427 398 Holy Mass was celebrated by Reverend Reginaldo Aquila. About 11 a.m. the funeral procession began, it proceeded along the perimeter of the park La Paz and afterwards returned to the Cathedral where the remains of his Excellency were laid to rest before the statue of the Most Holy Miraculous Virgin. 96 The Fourth Bishop of Vancouver Island, like his predecessor, died in a most inhospitable land. In Lemmens s case there was no Fuller pulling a trigger; it was malaria or yellow fever that took his life at the age of forty-seven years. Like Seghers, Lemmens had let zeal for his mission outrun good sense. His last words, spoken to the attendant holding his hand, José María Fuentes: I am going away. 97 On August 12th, Archbishop Casanova presided over the solemn pontifical requiem in the cathedral of Guatemala at which all the clergy were present. In the late-1950 s an attempt was made to return Lemmens s body to Victoria, but the effort at exhumation failed to locate it. 98 Lemmens s body remains, then, among the indigenous peoples he spent countless hours confirming. His legacy on Vancouver Island was marked in the realm of bricks and mortar by the construction of a beautiful cathedral, but one he could not pay for. In the realm of the pastoral, the young man with the beautiful voice, was, in many ways, a missionary s missionary; he was humble, humorous, prayerful, and possessed by a deep commitment to the people of North America s most disadvantaged diocese, both Native American and white immigrant. He was a labor leader before most labor leaders. Like his predecessor, he was not afraid to go where no one had gone before, even if it might cost him his life. Bertrand Orth: The Last Louvain Bishop following: The only entry for the year 1897 in Augustine Brabant s Reminiscences is the News has reached me that Bishop Lemmens died in Guatemala. So then we are again without a Bishop. It is reported that he died of the fever of that swampy country, where he had gone to collect funds for his new cathedral in Victoria. R.I.P McIver, "Lemmens, p McNally, "Lotus Land, p McIver, "Lemmens, p Moser, Reminiscences, 127.

428 399 So then we are again without a Bishop. Brabant must have written those words with a sense of resignation at what seemed the see s fate of being not only one of the most resource-poor dioceses in North America but also to be one regularly upended by one tragedy or another. In the sixty years since its foundation, Vancouver Island had seen six bishops come and go or come and die (counting Seghers twice). The upsetting pattern would continue. With the death of Aegidius Junger in late-december of 1895, a pattern of episcopal appointments was developing that did not seem to include the men from Louvain. The distant dioceses of the North Pacific Coast were now more clearly under the influence of the American hierarchy from the eastern seaboard. As noted in a previous chapter, Baltimore s archbishop, James Gibbons had placed his man in Oregon, William Gross, and by the later years of the 1890s, the old friends, Gibbons and Gross, were unquestionably the episcopal kingmakers for the region. Though most of the local clergy of Nesqually wanted Hylebos as their next bishop, the nod went instead to Gross s man, the young Edward O Dea, a native of Portland. 100 In the case of Vancouver Island, once again Gross and Gibbons arranged for a priest from well outside the region to succeed Lemmens, Alexander Christie, a priest of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul, Minnesota. 101 If the Louvanists were not out of favor altogether, at least they had now to share their episcopal leadership with others. Christie would not be long for Vancouver Island. He was consecrated bishop on June 29, 1898 in Saint Paul. Less than a year later, on February 12, 1899, Pope Leo XIII appointed him to succeed Gross, who had died in Baltimore on November 14, 1898, 102 as the Archdiocese of Oregon City s fourth archbishop. 103 With Christie s promotion to Oregon City, he was in position to play a primary role in choosing his successor on Vancouver Island. This time, and for the final time, the nod fell on a Louvanist: Bertrand Orth of Portland. 100 Wilfred P. Schoenberg, S.J., A History of the Catholic Church in the Pacific Northwest; (Washington D.C.: The Pastoral Press, 1987), Ibid., Patricia Brandt and Lillian A. Pereyra, Adapting in Eden: Oregon's Catholic Minority, (Pullman, WA: Washington State University Press, 2002), Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, 409. Also see: Brandt and Pereyra, Eden,

429 400 Orth had served in a variety of pastoral positions since his arrival in Oregon in 1872 and had been a capable aide to all three archbishops over the ensuing years. In 1883, as one of his last acts as archbishop of Oregon City, Seghers named Orth founding pastor of Saint Lawrence Church on the south side of Portland, a position he held until his appointment to the episcopacy. He was a successful pastor who developed Saint Lawrence into a large and thriving parish and built there a fine church. In 1884, Orth boasted of his parish to De Neve in the following words: St. Lawrence Church is, though I say it myself, the most beautiful Catholic church in the State of Oregon at present; and I may add, it will not be so very soon second to another. The congregation takes great pride in it and helps me readily. 104 In 1897, Archbishop Gross looked to Orth s managerial and presumed journalistic experience to repair the ailing Catholic Sentinel; Orth, while keeping his parochial responsibilities, was named general manager of the newspaper with a rather grand announcement from the archbishop in the March 18, 1897 issue: To provide our beloved Province with a newspaper capable of all this, we have appointed Rev. B. Orth general manager of the Catholic Sentinel. This reverend gentleman has been residing many years in Portland, and is its oldest priest. He is very well known by the Right Reverend Bishops and clergy of the Province, as also by a large number of the laity. We are, therefore, confident that his appointment will meet approval of the public. Rev. B. Orth s newspaper management in former years has made him thoroughly acquainted with the work he now takes up. Associating with himself a number of able Catholic writers, Rev. B. Orth will succeed in realizing our hopes, and make the Catholic Sentinel a first-class newspaper. 105 Fundamentally, the reasons given for his appointment to the Catholic Sentinel would be quite the same for his appointment to the episcopacy. With the trust of the archbishop, a solid reputation as an effective pastor, and an abundance of name recognition among clergy and laity, Orth was the logical choice for the see of Vancouver Island. 106 On April 19, 1900, Bertrand Orth was named bishop of 104 Orth (Portland) to De Neve (Louvain), March 29, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 105 Catholic Sentinel, March 18, Also see: Wilfred P. Schoenberg, S.J., Defender of the Faith: The History of the Catholic Sentinel (Portland, OR: Oregon Catholic Press, 1993), McNally, "Lotus Land, p. 96. McNally adds that a further reason for his appointment was that he spoke six languages including Chinook, a skill that Rome saw as important for the post.

430 401 Vancouver Island by Pope Leo XIII. On June 10th he was consecrated in St. Andrew s Cathedral, the very one Lemmens had, in a sense, sacrificed his life to pay for. Archbishop Gross was the consecrating prelate assisted by Alphonse Glorieux and Edward O Dea. The island diocese Orth was inheriting was far from rich and had lacked the stable leadership others in the province had enjoyed; still and all, some progress had been made: Out of a population of 20,000, 9,000 were Catholics, including 2,645 natives and 890 Chinese. There were twenty-six churches served by fourteen diocesan priests. Seven parochial schools, two convent schools, one boy s college, two residential schools for Indians and two orphanages graced the diocese. 107 A old but still vexing problem faced Orth as he settled into his new job: the fact that American hierarchs were choosing the bishop of a Canadian diocese rankled both ecclesial and governmental figures in Canada, including the prime minister, Wilfrid Laurier. 108 Laurier with a number of bishops viewed Vancouver Island s suffragan status under Oregon City a political embarrassment as well as an administrative absurdity. 109 One option that had been discussed especially among the Oblates of Canada, was that the diocese be altogether suppressed and the territory amalgamated to New Westminster on the Canadian mainland. Orth along with his diocesan clergy found the notion unpalatable; they did not want to be under the hierarchical authority of the Oblate apostolic vicar of British Columbia, L. J. D Herbomez. Rome quite agreed and the idea went nowhere. 110 A second option was discussed more seriously by all sides: to maintain the diocese but transfer it from the province of Oregon City to that of St. Boniface, Manitoba (also under Oblate leadership). This second option suited Orth better but it still had its problems. Orth believed that St. Boniface was too distant and too French to 107 Ibid., p Laurier, Wilfred ( ), was born in St. Lin, Quebec. While practicing law in Montreal he entered politics as a Liberal. In 1896 he became Canada s first francophone prime minister and served in that position for fifteen years. He was a promoter of Canadian unity and oversaw the rapid development of the western provinces. See Sir Wilfrid Laurier: Biography, Library and Archives of Canada, August 19, McNally, Vineyard, Ibid.

431 402 serve as a proper metropolitan see for the diocese. 111 This he communicated to the Apostolic Delegate in Ottawa, Diomede Falconio, 112 in a series of letters between June and November of Rome was also concerned by the rapid development of British Columbia and by 1902 had come to the conclusion that it should be its own province, consisting of three dioceses: Vancouver, New Westminster, (both on the mainland), and Vancouver Island. Because of its status as provincial capital and its antiquity, Vancouver Island was made the metropolitan see in May of 1903; in September of 1904 the archdiocese s name was changed to that of its see city: Victoria. 114 Rather than losing his diocese, in a matter of three years, Orth had seen the status of his see raised to that of an archdiocese, and by a papal decree dated June 25, 1903, he himself had been raised to the honor of archbishop. 115 Orth had his work cut out for him and he tackled it with vigor. He approved construction of several churches by his priests, most notably a new St. Ann s in Cowichan, the previous building having burned to the ground during Easter celebrations in Also in his first year he was able to introduce the Benedictine fathers to the diocese who were given responsibility for the Christie Industrial School. In 1901, he made his first tour of the west coast of the diocese, blessing a new church built by newly arrived Louvanist, Emil Sobry. 116 Bells were installed in the cathedral and he established a new parish, Saint Mary, Help of Christians, in Ladysmith and named Remigius Verbeke its pastor in the same year. Verbeke built a church immediately but it proved too small for the congregation so he built another, which was blessed by Orth 111 Ibid., Falconio, Diomede, O.F.M. ( ), was ordained a priest in 1886 and named bishop of Lacedonia, Italy in He was named Archbishop of Acerenza-Matera in He served as Apostolic Delegate to Canada from 1899 to He was made a cardinal in See: August 19, McNally, "Lotus Land, p. 98. See particularly fn Ibid. 115 Macchi (Rome) to Orth (Victoria), June 25, Archives of the Diocese of Victoria. 116 Sobry, Emil ( ), hailed from the diocese of Bruges. He was admitted to the American College in August 1885 and assigned to Vancouver Island. He was ordained a priest by Archbishop Patrick Riordan of San Francisco on June 29, 1888 in the American College chapel. He arrived in Victoria on September 4th only to be immediately hospitalized and was considered incurable whatever his malady. He recovered and Bishop Lemmens assigned him as pastor of St. Peter s in Nanaimo where he served until He was transferred then to Cowichan but not long thereafter, sent up the west coast to work exclusively with the Native Americans in Kuyoquot where he remained for fourteen years followed by eight years in Nootka and one year in Hesquiate, all missions on the primitive west coast. Album Alumnorum III, 294. See Emil Sobry, "Father Sobry's Indian Mission," The American College Bulletin II,

432 403 in In 1903 he welcomed the De Montfort fathers to the diocese, giving them responsibility for the town of Duncan and adjacent islands. Orth also gave Francis Leterme 117 responsibility for commencing publication of a diocesan newspaper, The Orphan s Friend, which continued publishing under Leterme s editorship until his death in In 1904, Orth blessed the new church in Cowichan. In 1905, he ordained two new priests for the diocese, Fathers Stanislaus and Rondon and welcomed yet another Louvanist to Victoria: Emil Friedrich. 119 In 1906 Francis Leterme opened a new day school in Comox, while in the same year Orth established a new parish in Victoria, Saint Mary s and in 1907, he built a new bishop s palace in the city. With the sale of properties in Victoria, Orth was able to retire Lemmens s debt on Saint Andrew s Cathedral the same year. 120 Overall, Orth s management of the diocese demonstrated that he was a most able administrator. 121 Accomplished as he was, all was not well; Vincent McNally adds to the image of Archbishop Orth s character a darker shade. He attributes to Orth an autocratic and imperious manner when dealing with his subordinates. Requests became commands. Questions or hesitations were now normally interpreted as a form of insubordination. By 1905, in referring to himself, Orth had even begun to use the imperial plural: we direct, we desire, we demand. 122 According to McNally, Orth made himself feared, but hardly respected. Not surprisingly, he was not popular with many, but no. 3 (1904). Dom Maurus, O.S.B., "Venerable Benedictine Reviews the Life of Old Friend and Co-Labourer: Father Emille Sobry," C.Y.O. Torch, July and August, Leterme, Francis X. ( ) another seminarian from Bruges, entered the American College in 1885 also as a seminarian for Vancouver Island. He was ordained a priest on September 8, 1886 in Louvain and departed for Vancouver Island in August Album Alumnorum III, 188. Except for two years in the missions of the diocese, he spent his whole life working in Victoria, as first assistant then rector of the Cathedral parish. He also served as principal of St. Louis College there. He was made a Domestic Prelate in "Obituary," The American College Bulletin XXVI (1933): The odd name of the paper was due to the fact that all profits from all sales were to go exclusively to assist the diocese s orphans. 119 Freidrich, Emil (1881?) was born in Luxembourg. He studied in the seminary of Luxembourg until he entered the American College in He was incardinated into the archdiocese of Victoria under Betrand Orth. He was ordained a priest in 1905 and departed Louvain for Victoria the same year. Liber Alumnorum Collegii Americani Immaculatae Conceptionis B.V.M., vol. VI (Louvain: Archives of The American College, 1899), Vera McIver, Archbishop Bertrand Orth: Seventh Bishop of Vancouver Island, , Archives of the Diocese of Victoria (Victoria: 1991). These events are largely taken from this list prepared in 1991 by the archivist of the Diocese of Victoria, Vera McIver and kindly shared with this author in McNally, "Lotus Land, p McNally, Vineyard, 231.

433 404 especially with the clergy. 123 In particular, Orth found himself in serious conflict with the vicar general he had inherited from Lemmens and Christie, Joseph Nicolaye. Orth dismissed Nicolaye from his position as vicar general in 1903, ostensibly because Nicolaye had dismissed a young female sacristan whom Nicolaye had accused of flirting with the altar boys. More likely, Nicolaye was fired because he regularly opposed the decisions of the archbishop. 124 At some point, two women, a Mrs. Godfrey and a Miss Florence Crane, accused Orth of having sexually maltreated them. Their somewhat contradictory reports were forwarded to Archbishop Christie. In the accusations of sexual misconduct, Nicolaye had found his means to attack the archbishop. In February 1907, he took it upon himself to call a meeting of the diocesan clergy as a means of investigating the whole affair. 125 Orth threatened Nicolaye with suspension. Nicolaye meanwhile had been writing to the apostolic delegate in Ottawa; he officially accused Orth of Jansenism, a lesser charge meant to avoid official mention of the more scandalous ones. 126 If not Nicolaye, then others among the Louvain clergy of the diocese called on the new rector of the American College, Jules De Becker 127 to bring their concerns about Orth to the Vatican. In a letter of gratitude to De Becker William Heynen, then stationed in Nanaimo, wrote: I have been instructed by Father Verbeke (Rome, Nov 30) to send you 150 dollars to defray the expenses of your trip to Rome. Should you refuse to accept the money for yourself personally, you are requested to use it for the benefit of the American College. 123 Ibid., Ibid. 125 Ibid., Ibid. 127 De Becker, Jules ( ) was born in Louvain where he completed his courses in the classics first in his class; he studied for five years at the University of Louvain, receiving the degree of Doctor of Law. In 1878, he entered the Belgian seminary in Rome where he earned his licentiate in theology and a doctorate in Canon Law. He was ordained a priest in He worked for two years in the Congregation of the Holy Office. In 1885, he was invited by John De Neve to teach canon law and liturgy at the American College. In 1889, he accepted the chair of Canon Law of the University of Louvain while retaining his position at The American College. When Msgr. Willemsen resigned as rector of the college in 1898, De Becker became his successor. He served as rector until his resignation in See: Louis J. De Smet, "Mgr. de Becker and the American College," The American College Bulletin XXX (1937). Pierre De Strycker, "In Memoriam," The American College Bulletin XXX (1937).

434 405 This afflicted diocese owes you a debt of gratitude for the great interest you have taken in its welfare and for the energy and promptness with which you have brought this matter to the attention of the Holy Father. 128 As the year 1907, the seventh of his episcopate, came to an end, Orth suddenly asked Augustine Brabant to take responsibility for the archdiocese as its administrator and to serve as chaplain to the Sisters of Saint Ann in the city. Thereafter, Orth traveled to Rome. 129 Though the Vatican acknowledged contradictions, machinations, exaggerations and perhaps intrigue all hiding in the bottom of... (this) disgraceful affair, 130 the Roman authorities still and all could not risk having an archbishop serving under such a dark cloud of suspicion, innuendo and scandalous accusations. In May of 1908, the Holy See announced that Orth s retirment as archbishop of Victoria had been accepted due to reasons of poor health. 131 Orth remained in Italy, living out the remainder of his life, some twenty-three years, in Fiesole, near Florence. He died there on February 10, Though the official biographies and histories of the diocese have maintained the story of Orth s ill health as the cause for his unexpected and early retirement, it is only with McNally s recent access to the Orth files in the archives of the Propagation of the Faith in Rome, that the details of the archbishop s retirement have been revealed. 132 The truth of the sexual accusations, of course, can never be known. Doubt was cast upon them some years later when Orth s successor, Bishop Alexander McDonald, 133 made the following statement on October 10, 1909 before the eyes of God : 128 Heynen (Nanaimo) to De Becker (Louvain), December 21, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 129 McIver, Orth. 130 McNally, Vineyard, Van der Heyden made much of the supposed illness of Orth in his announcement of the archbishop s retirement in The American College Bulletin. "Our Friends on The Mission: Archdiocese of Victoria," The American College Bulletin VI, no. 3 (1908): McNally, Vineyard, 404, fn 31. McNally cites: Archives of the Propaganda Fide, Acta, vol 281, fols It should also be noted that McNally s earlier (undated and unpublished) history of the Diocese of Victoria simply states of Orth s retirement: By 1908 Orth was worn out with work. In March it was reported that he had left Victoria for Europe due to reasons of health. In May the Holy See announced that, since the Archbishop was seriously ill, he had been permitted to resign. See: McNally, "Lotus Land, p McDonald, Alexander ( ), a native of Mabou, Nova Scotia, attended seminary in Rome then served as a priest teaching the classics in Nova Scotia. He served as a pastor and vicar general. In 1908 he was appointed Bishop of Victoria by Pope Pius X. He took a long pilgrimage to Rome,the Holy Land and European sites before being consecrated in He was the first native Canadian to serve as bishop of the diocese. His administration of the diocese was plagued by financial mismanagement. In 1923, he was called to Rome under

435 406 Archbishop Orth was led to resign the See in Victoria in something of the same way I was. He was summoned to Rome to answer foul charges laid against him. Cardinal Gotti, who examined the charges, himself told me they were without foundation, but the Archbishop elected rather to resign than go back. I believe ill health had a lot to do with the decision. 134 With Orth s resignation, the status of the Archdiocese of Victoria would change once again. It was reduced by Rome to a simple diocese and made a suffragan see to the newly raised Archdiocese of Vancouver. The next bishop, Alexander McDonald, and all his successors would be Canadians. Though a number of American College priests would continue to serve the diocese for many years to come, as far as its leadership, the Louvain Era on Vancouver Island ended with Orth s sad resignation. As an altogether Canadian diocese it would be served only by Canadian bishops from then on. Back in the U.S.A. Significant changes were happening in the American dioceses of the North Pacific Coast that would bring about much the same result. By the end of 1908, Seghers, Junger, Lemmens, and Brondel were dead; Glorieux was aging, and Irish-Americans reigned in Seattle, Helena and Oregon City. Moreover, two new dioceses had been erected, Baker City (1903) and Great Falls (1904), and both of them found themselves with Irish-American bishops as well. By this point, a process of romanization of the American hierarchy was well underway 135 and the men educated in Louvain no longer fit the developing profile for bishops. That the Louvanists no longer fit the bill and might be held in lower regard than in previous times by at least some of the American hierarchy is supported by Archbishop Christie s often strained relationships with his Louvain clergy. In a 1900 letter to Joseph Van der Heyden, Bernard Beusmans wrote: accusations of Modernism. Though the charges were dropped, he was forced to resign his see. See Leterme, "Lives," 111. Also see: McNally, Vineyard, accessed January 2, McIver, Orth. 135 Gerald P. Fogarty, S.J., The Vatican and the American Hierarchy from 1870 to 1965 (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1985),

436 407 Archbishop Christie is cordially hated by all [emphasis in the original] the old Oregon priests namely Orth (he is very reticent about the matter) Hillebrand, DeRoo, Rauw, Verhaag, etc. in fact, by all the foreigners except Irishmen. 136 J. J. Burri, the young priest who had transferred to Oregon City due to his dislike of Bishop Glorieux in Boise, noted: A priest who is in a condition to know confidentially informed me of the reasons for the coolness of his Grace toward me. 1st I had the imprudence to associate too much with the Louvain priests of the diocese at different times and occasions to speak up in defense of the merits of the College. 137 And finally, Louis Verhaag mentioned much the same characteristic in Archbishop Christie: If Archbp Christie would allow it, Father Bronsgeest would stay with me and eventually take my place, but Archbp Christie does not like very much Dutchmen, chiefly when they are not afraid to speak their mind and offer their opinions without any varnish. 138 The tension between Christie and his foreign priests boiled over in one of the most unpleasant events in the history of the church in the region. As was noted in a previous chapter, the erection of the Diocese of Baker in 1903 was met with resistance by the few priests working in the desolate and largely unpopulated eastern side of the state of Oregon. John Heinrich was one of two priests who met the newly arriving Bishop Charles J. O Reilly 139 at the door of the Baker City parish with a gun. 140 move to cut off the eastern portion of the archdiocese was seen by the clergy as Christie s way of getting rid of the priests he did not like, stranding them in the empty The 136 Beusmans (Oregon City) to Van der Heyden (Louvain), March 15, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 137 Burri (Tillamook) to Van der Heyden (Louvain), July 17, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 138 Verhaag (Forest Grove) to Van der Heyden (Louvain), March 2, Archives of The American College, Louvain. 139 O Reilly, Charles J. ( ), was born in St. John, New Brunswick. At the age of 16 he was sent to St. Joseph s University in Memramcook, NB, operated by the Holy Cross Fathers. After his graduation, his family moved to Portland, OR, where he took up a career as a teacher. In 1887, he felt called to the priesthood and took up studies again at the Grand Seminary of Montreal. He was ordained a priest in He thereafter served primarily as pastor of the Church of the Immaculate Heart in Portland. He was named to be the first bishop of the Diocese of Baker and consecrated in He served in Baker for fifteen years until he was transferred to the see of Lincoln, Nebraska in See Dominic O'Connor and Patrick J. Gaire, A Brief History of the Diocese of Baker, 2 vols., vol. 1 & 2 (St. Benedict, OR: Benedictine Press, 1930), Schoenberg, Catholic Church in Northwest, 423.

437 408 reaches of eastern Oregon. Protests of the division followed; of the four priests involved, two were Louvanists, Heinrich and Bronsgeest. Bronsgeest took the matter to the archbishop in Portland telling him in no uncertain terms that the division was a grave mistake and that his clerical rights had been violated. Christie was not pleased and disputed Bronsgeest s claims. As he had previously done over the issue of his beard, Bronsgeest then appealed to the Vatican for support of his claims to no great avail. 141 In May 1904, the matter took a more serious turn with the publication in Portland of a circular letter addressed to the Apostolic Delegate that roundly accused Archbishop Christie of Crimes and Acts of Cruelty, most notably the banishment of priests who had built up the church in Oregon and the importation of runaway or tramp priests in high numbers. 142 It accused Christie of creating a diocese (Baker) that could support neither bishop nor priests and whose population could not justify the erection of a diocese. A second, longer letter appeared thereafter; the signatories to the first seemed to include Heinrich and Bronsgeest, those of the second circular, a long list of persons and institutions of the church supposedly harmed by the archbishop. Later, most of the signatories denied having put their names to the documents. In June, it was reported that formal charges had been filed against Christie. 143 Schoenberg concludes that the perpetrator of the attacks against the archbishop was one of the four aggrieved priests of Baker City, Joseph Schell. In the end, in a letter to the apostolic delegate, O Reilly agreed that the erection of his diocese had been a great mistake for fundamentally the same reasons presented by the complainants, 144 but Rome s decision stood and O Reilly eventually made peace with his priests allowing the new diocese to gradually take shape. Nonetheless, the reputation of the Louvain priests in general certainly was not enhanced in Christie s eyes or those of the Roman authorities. This Baker City imbroglio, combined with the Orth affair just a few years later, must surely have fostered in the minds of some a suspicion that the Louvanists tended to be, in general, unreliable, malcontents, and perhaps not quite respectful enough of ecclesiastical authority. Such suspicion, at a time when the church was romanizing its hierarchy in the United States, certainly contributed to dampening any hope that priests of the American College might have had of following in the footsteps of Seghers, Junger, Brondel, Lemmens, Glorieux and Orth. 141 Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid.,

438 409 The End of an Era The era of Louvain bishops, for the most part, ended with the resignation of Orth, 145 almost exactly fifty years after the American College, the mother seminary to the majority of diocesan priests at work in the region, had been founded with the set purpose of providing clergy to mission dioceses such as those of the North Pacific Coast. The one hundred and ten men who came to the region through the agency of the American College had provided much of the muscle required to move the church from its primitive beginnings to a modernity marked by viable diocesan structures, by educational and health institutions, and as always, by a clerical force disseminated to each diocese s furthest reaches providing sacraments, catechism and charity to its faithful. As a result of Seghers s missionary fever, they had even secured a Catholic beachhead in Alaska. The work of the Louvain priests in the dioceses of the North Pacific Coast would continue well beyond 1907, extending throughout the remaining years of the twentieth century and even into the present century, (in fact, the flow of new priests from Louvain into these dioceses never really ended and, in fact, continues to the present 146 ). Nevertheless, the resignation of Bertram Orth marked a significant dimishment; there would be no more bishops coming from their number and so despite the continuation of the labors of many Louvanists, they would not generally be the ones calling the shots as they had in the recent past. The years of Louvanists serving as the primary movers and shakers in the region, those who built, defined, and provided character to the living church on the ground were running down. Further, it might be fairly argued that the circumstances both of Orth s shameful departure and the troubles some of the Louvanists had experienced with Archbishops Gross and Christie left the Louvain men, in a sense, chastened. Unwilling to be seen within their presbyterates and before their new bishops as upstarts, disrespectful of authority, or as a privileged class for having studied in Louvain, the men from the American College began to keep their heads low, to exercise their influence from behind the scenes, and to be satisfied with blending into the diocesan woodwork, preferring inconspicuousness to prominence. With the passing of further decades, their wish was fulfilled: the fact of their common heritage in Louvain and what they, as a 145 Keeping in mind that Glorieux continued as ordinary for some years beyond 1907, Glorieux dying in The most recent contribution to the region being Rev. Alejandro Zepeda Labastida, who returned to the Diocese of Spokane in June 2006 as parochial vicar of Saint Patrick Parish in Walla Walla.

439 410 fraternity, gave to the Catholic Church in the region gradually slipped from popular consciousness Thus it is, that before commencing this study, I myself, who had spent four years of my life as a seminarian of the American College, twenty as a priest of the Diocese of Spokane, and two as vice-rector of the American College did not know that many of my predecessor pastors in the parishes where I have served, also lived and studied and prepared for priestly ministry on the corner of Naamsestraat and Karmelitenberg in the same venerable Louvain in which I have now spent twelve years of my life.

440 CONCLUSION Your Favorite Portion of the Vineyard This dissertation began by asking about the significance of John De Neve s attitude towards the mission dioceses of the North Pacific Coast, described as his favorite portion of the vineyard. Could it be demonstrated that he and the American College he guided for much of the fifty years covered by this study did, in fact, particularly favor the region? If so, what then might have been the impact of that favoritism on the growing church on the North Pacific Coast? To respond to these questions, we have offered first a brief history of the Catholic presence in that distant corner of North America and the first steps by its three French- Canadian bishops (as well as the few Jesuits and even fewer Oblates in the region) to found the Catholic Church there. One of the dominating aspects of their ministry in those early years was the crying need they faced for additional clergy if a viable missionary effort was to be carried out. We then turned our view back to Belgium and Catholic Europe in an effort to come to know the social and religious context within which the new American College was to be founded. We also explored the cultural and spiritual climate out of which so many of the young priests who would be sent to the North American missions were coming. Catholic Europe, including the still young nation of Belgium, was in the midst of a dramatic religious revival that, in many quarters, was strongly influenced by both a centralizing tendency in the Catholic Church, ultramontanism, and an outgoingness expressed as an explicitly missionary enthusiasm. Catholic Europe had become a very fruitful seedbed of vocations and so was the logical place towards which the eyes of the priest-poor dioceses of North America would turn. We concluded the first part of this study by reviewing the history of the American College s foundation and its first years, looking especially at the nature and quality of

441 412 its communal life and the character of its formation of the young men who soon filled its halls. Under the early direction of Peter Kindekens and, more importantly, that of its second rector, John De Neve, the American College offered something different from other seminaries of its time. Its internal culture was dominated by ultramontanist tendencies and a firm rule and rigid daily order, as were most diocesan seminaries at the time, but it also had a strong missionary vision of itself that was impressed into every aspect of its common life. This missionary vision provided a context for the American College students to understand the deprivations and relative poverty of the place as formative for missionary life. Even more, it supported them in their own missionary zeal and kept their religious eyes directed outwards, not to their own families, friends and fellow nationals, but to a new world, a life among strangers, a place far away. The American College proved to be unique in at least three other ways. First, it was cosmopolitan in its student body, the young men studying there having come from a variety of nations, cultures and native language groups. Second, despite these young men s diversity, they lived together with remarkable concord, as was mandated by their house rule and the guidance of their first rectors. Third, the college s second rector, John De Neve, maintained across many years a very intense personal relationships with his students, both when they were still in the seminary (he was noted for taking walks with them in the garden) and after they had gone to their mission stations thousands of miles to the west. The correspondence he maintained with them was constant and voluminous. He was a beloved father figure for many of them, and he maintained that paternal relationship long after they had left the college. All this amounted to the development within many of the American College missionaries of a great fondness for their mother seminary and a spirit of fraternity among themselves that would endure for decades. How, then, was the favored status of the mission fields of the North Pacific Coast by the leaders of the American College expressed? The second and third parts of this dissertation have attempted to document as much as possible the lives and work of the missionary priests sent to the region by the Louvain seminary, as fully as the archival and published sources have allowed. The chapters of Part Two examined in some detail the first generation of priests to be sent to the North Pacific Coast. It has documented their achievements, concerns and sentiments, as well as their interrelationships and their on-going relationships with the college itself and its rector. We have seen that these men provided to the Catholic Church in the area the clerical manpower it needed to begin the process of institutionalization and development.

442 413 Part Three has focused on the particular ministry of the Louvanists who were chosen to be the second generation of bishops for the dioceses of the region. Without completely leaving behind consideration of the continuously arriving priests from Louvain, the chapters of this third part have related in some detail the accomplishments of the six Louvain bishops who served from 1873 to Particular attention has been given to the life of the extraordinary Charles John Seghers, certainly the single most forceful and influential figure in the province during the fifty-year period of this study. Especially after his appointment as archbishop of Oregon City, Seghers, with Aegidius Junger and John Brondel at his right and left, set the pastoral program for the region during the decade of its most significant development. More personally, he also set the pattern of what being a good bishop and priest could mean by his never-ending travels to every settlement, village and town of his ecclesiastical domain. No place was too small to visit and no personal sacrifice was too great to make to bring the faith to some corner of his vast church. Junger, Brondel, Alphonse Glorieux, and John Lemmens learned from the master and in their own dioceses followed the trail he blazed. For a brief but vital period, the entire region was exclusively in the episcopal hands of the men from Louvain, and many of their priestly laborers were likewise Louvain confreres. That period would not become an era. Seghers and the others could not for long keep the influence of the hierarchs of the Eastern seaboard of the United States from naming their own favored candidates to some of the region s sees. The tragic murder of Seghers in Alaska and, later, the death of Lemmens in Guatemala, left further openings for Irish-American clergy to break the lock the Louvanists had on the ecclesiastical province. It may well be that, additionally, the on-going conflicts some of the Louvanists had in particular with Archbishop Christie in Oregon gave to the whole body a reputation for being too independent minded and not sufficiently respectful of ecclesiastical authority, certainly not the qualities that Vatican and American church leaders were looking for in new bishops. Though Bertrand Orth was named to Vancouver Island (later Victoria) in 1900, his resignation in 1907 because of accusations of sexual improprieties almost certainly spelled the final demise of any return to a Louvain episcopacy in the region. Three Decisive Moments In an effort to grasp in summary fashion the breadth of material in the preceding survey of fifty years and to come to a deeper understanding of the qualities these men

443 414 brought to the church in this vast mission field, a concept borrowed from the art of photography might prove useful. The late photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, when speaking of his craft, referred to an aspect of photography that he called the decisive moment, a matter of capturing on film that split second of action that reveals in a particularly poignant manner the deeper significance of the event. Of all the moments of encounter, activity, and reflection recorded in this dissertation, we might ask: are there a few that are particularly revelatory of the significance of the whole? I would propose three such decisive moments in the history described in this dissertation as especially revelatory moments. (1) Adrien Croquet s arrival on the Oregon Coast in 1859, a decisive moment that represents the first encounters of all the Louvanists with American culture and religion. (2) The Second Provincial Council of Oregon in 1881, a council dominated at all levels by the men from the American College, which charted the Catholic Church s course in the region for years to come. (3) The resignation of Bertrand Orth as archbishop of Victoria in 1907, a decisive moment that represents the end of Louvain s substantive influence in the region, at least insofar as the episcopacy was concerned. Herewith, a few reflections on each of the three. First: Adrien Croquet s Arrival in 1859 By all accounts, Adrien Croquet was a remarkable man. Though famously taciturn, he voluminously wrote letters to family and friends. The old adage claiming still waters run deep was very true in his case; his resistance to idle chatter was an indication of a profound interior life that was obvious to almost all who met him. This interior holiness was the source of his legendary generosity and instinctive selflessness in the face of others poverty or suffering. His sanctity and generosity, as so often is the case in especially holy people, did not make for an efficient administrator; the practicalities of everyday life were largely lost on him. I see Croquet as not only the proto-louvanist on the North Pacific Coast but also the prototypical missionary for those who would follow him from Louvain. This unusual man is, perhaps, an odd choice for such a role, for many others were far better at teaching, administration, and parish-building than was he. Yet, in his personal holiness, his self-sacrificial generosity, and his fidelity to his mission, personal failings notwithstanding, he represented an heroic ideal to the others. In his role as an icon of a holy and self-giving missionary life, Croquet serves well as the prototypical Louvain missionary on the North Pacific Coast.

444 415 There is a second sense in which Adrien Croquet represents the others. In his first encounter with the culture of the North Pacific Coast he found himself meeting face to face a world that was far different from that which he had known in Catholic Belgium. The Oregon country he stepped off the boat into was not too many steps beyond the almost complete wilderness that Modeste Demers and F. N. Blanchet had encountered a few decades before. More important than this, though, was the cultural landscape that Croquet suddenly had to accommodate himself to in this new world. Croquet was now distant from the intellectual fonts of higher learning of his youth in Belgium. The structures of parochial and diocesan life that had been so supportive of him in Belgium were almost nonexistent in Oregon. He was no longer living within a society largely Catholic in character; to the contrary, he found himself as a member of a minority religion, one unprotected and unsupported by the state. Here he had to live cheek by jowl with Protestants and unbelievers and lapsed Catholics indifferent to his ministrations; he had no choice but to live with American-style religious pluralism. Finally, Croquet had to figure out, mostly by himself, how he would serve the indigenous population he was sent to pastor. There were few missionary models available to him beyond that given him by Blanchet: teach the savages using the Sahale Stick ( Catholic Ladder ); if you can t convert the adults at least baptize the children; build a church. Croquet could not be a great teacher, builder, or administrator, for he had little talent for any of that. So he did what he could: he prayed over the sick and dying, visited whoever would have him, and gave whatever he possessed to those who had less. At some point he stopped worrying about how many he baptized or saved and simply tended, day by day, to whomever came his way. After many years of service he came to know the people he once called sauvages as something much more; having returned to Braine-l Alleud in the last years of his life, he was known to chastise friends and family members for using the same word of his beloved faithful in Grand Ronde; in matters of civilization, he scolded them, these savages were fully the equal of the inhabitants of Braine-l Alleud. 1 Croquet s encounter with this new world and its new problems and challenges was a meeting of two worlds really; the Catholic world of old Belgium and a tumultuous new world replete with peoples, ideas, customs, and beliefs very different from anything he had previously experienced in life. Yet, he met the challenge with the gifts he had available to him and in spite of his many limitations; he remained faithful to his mission across the decades of a long life. His encounter was prototypical because it 1 Joseph Van der Heyden, "Monsignor Adrien J. Croquet, Indian Missionary," The American

445 416 would be repeated 103 times over by other Louvanists, each with his own talents and faults and manner of accommodation to the new reality. Croquet, as the first Louvanist to tread this missionary path on the North Pacific Coast, allowed the others to follow and to learn from him what was most fundamental in the missionary vocation. The single image that is the decisive moment in this story comes from the words Croquet wrote to his brother, Anthyme, just days after his arrival in Oregon City (quoted earlier in Chapter VI): However, we pass happily through the bars or banks of sand which are found at the mouth of the Columbia River and which leave a passage way just sufficiently wide for the ships. On Friday, the 21st of October, we come to the fort and the town of Vancouver, on the north shore of the Columbia, where we are received grandly by the Bishop of Nesqually in Washington Territory. There a Te Deum is sung and thanks given for so favorable voyage that God has granted us. After a few hours rest, we return to our ship and leave the Columbia to go up the Willamette River. When we get to Portland, a little city belonging to our diocese, the religious disembark to take possession of the establishment that has been prepared for them. We continue on our way and in the evening we arrive at Oregon City, the residence of the Archbishop. It is a pleasantly situated place on the Willamette River and might have 1000 to 1500 inhabitants. The whole population of Oregon, without counting several Indian tribes spread around, is nearly 60,000. The number of Catholics is not yet considerable. We live here in the midst of infidels and others of every sect and every belief. We need the grace of Heaven to persevere in the faith, and increase in number, the little flock of the faithful dispersed in this vast territory. We are 8 priests to work at this task, but we count on the prayers of the good souls who are interested in the propagation of the true religion; we count on your prayers and on those of the good sisters whom you direct. 2 College Bulletin IV, no. 4 (1906): Cependant nous passons heureusement au milieu des barres ou bancs de sable qui se trouvent à l embouchure du fleuve Colombie et qui ne laissent qu un canal assez étroit pour le passage des vaisseaux. Vendredi matin, 21 octobre, nous abordons au fort et à la ville de Vancouver, sur la rive Nord de la Colombie, où nous sommes reçus au son de la cloche par l évêque de Nesqually dans le territoire de Washington. Là, un Te Deum est chanté en action de grâces pour la traversée si heureuse que Dieu nous avait accordée. Après quelques heures de repos, nous rentrons dans notre vaisseau et nous quittons la Colombie pour remonter la rivière Willamette. Arrivés à Portland, petite ville appartenant à notre diocèse, les religieuses descendent pour prendre possession de l établissement qui leur est preparé. Nous continuons notre route et nous arrivons le soir à Oregon-City, résidence de l archevêque. C est une localité agréablement située sur la rivière Willamette et pouvant contenir de à 1,5000 habitants. La population totale de l Orégon, sans compter plusieurs tribus indiennes qui y sont dispersées, est à peu de 60,000 habitants. Le nombre de catholiques n est pas encore bien considérable. Nous vivons ici au milieu des infidéles et autres de toutes sects et de toutes croyances. Nous avons besoin de la grâce d En-Haut pour soutenir dans la foi et accroître en nombre le petit troupeau des fidèles dispersés sur ce vaste territoire. Nous sommes 8 prêtres pour travailler à cette oeuvre, mais nous comptons sur les prières des bonnes âmes qu s intéressent à la propagation de la vraie religion; nous comptons sur les vôtres et sur celles des bonnes soeurs que vous dirigez. A.

446 417 This image of Adrien Joseph Croquet, dressed in his black soutane, his face shaded by the wide brim of a black clerical hat, stepping onto a dock in Oregon City in October 1859, is the first decisive moment of this study. Second: The Second Provincial Council of Oregon Twenty-two years after Croquet s first step into Oregon City, the situation of the Catholic Church on the North Pacific Coast had changed considerably. In 1881, Croquet was still very much at work on his beloved Grand Ronde Reservation, but he was certainly no longer the lone Louvanist in the region, nor was he still working for the long-lived Blanchet. There was no clearer sign that the ecclesiastical torch had been passed and that those who followed in Croquet s missionary footsteps from Louvain had arrived in a sense much greater than just having stepped off of boats, than the gathering of bishops and clergy in the pro-cathedral of Portland on August 16, 1881, for the Second Provincial Council of Oregon. The procedures and decrees of the council are described in some detail in Chapter VII of this dissertation and are not so important for my present purposes. Of special significance here are the actors in the council. The three ordinaries of the represented dioceses, Charles John Seghers of Oregon City, Aegidius Junger of Nesqually, and John Brondel of Vancouver Island, are all Louvanists. The image of the three of them presiding over the synod represents a decisive moment, for it reveals the influence of the men from Louvain at its apex. The entire region, from the south of Oregon Territory to the northernmost frontier of Alaska, from the Pacific Coast to the Continental Divide in the distant Rocky Mountains, was quite suddenly under the complete episcopal control of Louvain bishops. Their hierarchical hegemony would not last long, but its influence would be felt for years to come. In this synod, the three of them confirmed the church in an ultramontane orthodoxy and orthopraxy that would last for decades. Beyond the council itself, Seghers s dynamism in traveling the length and breadth of his territories set the standard and pattern for Brondel and Junger, who themselves visited every remote parish of their dioceses, often at great cost to their health. All three feverishly established parishes and commissioned the building of churches and schools and recruited new priests and religious congregations to their dioceses. As already noted, Seghers s obsessive longing to bring the light of the Gospel into the depths of Alaska Croquet (Oregon City) to Anthyme Charlier, November 20, Archives of the Association du Musée de Braine-l Alleud, Braine-l Alleud. Translation by P. Wallace Platt, C.S.B.

447 418 resulted not only in his death but, on the positive side, the establishment of a permanent mission there by the Society of Jesus and the Sisters of Saint Anne. The image of the three Louvain bishops at their sedes in the Oregon cathedral in August 1881 is, however, only half the picture that captures this decisive moment. The other half is filled with many more characters. A paragraph from Bertram Griffin s doctoral dissertation on the Oregon councils draws this image clearly: The first solemn session was held on the morning of the 16th, at eight o clock, in the pro-cathedral of Portland. The Archbishop [Seghers] offered Mass in honor of the Holy Spirit and spoke briefly to the gathered clergy and people, exhorting them to pray for the success of the synod. The following officials were selected for the Council: Promotor, Joseph Giorda, S.J.; Chancellor, Peter DeRoo; secretaries, Peter Hylebos and Alphonse Glorieux; Procurator of the clergy, Adrian Croquet [sic]; Hospitality, Francis Fierens and Louis Métayer; Discipline, Bishop Brondel of Vancouver Island; Master of Ceremonies, Bertram Orth; chanters, Fathers Glorieux, L. Schram, Hylebos, Heinrich and Conrardy. Theologians were also designated at this first solemn session: for the Archbishop, Fathers Croquet, Fierens and DeRoo; for Bishop Junger of Nesqually, Fathers Hylebos and Schram; for the Bishop of Vancouver Island, Father Giorda and J. J. Jonckau. The session closed with the Profession of Faith prescribed by the Vatican Council. 3 In this long list of participants in the council, all but Giorda, De Roo, and Métayer hailed from the American College, a testament to the importance of the second rank of Louvain clergy in the synod and how deeply they had been woven into the fabric of church life in the region. These men and the other Louvain priests at work in the region numbered almost forty in 1881; their importance lie not so much in their role in the synod itself but much more in their various parishes, missions, and schools throughout the North Pacific Coast, which they were founding and developing. Their pastoral work at the most fundamental level of church life would endure long after the reigns of Seghers, Brondel, Junger, and, later, Glorieux, Lemmens, and Orth would come to their ends. Both the bishops and their priests, gathered in the pro-cathedral of Portland, ready to chart for their church its course for years to come, coming as it does at the midpoint of this study and at the apex of Louvanist leadership of the region, is the second decisive moment of this dissertation. 3 Bertrand F. Griffin, The Provincial Councils of Portland in Oregon (Doctoral Dissertation, Pontificia Universitas Lateranensis, 1964), 30.

448 419 Third: The Resignation of Bertrand Orth Exactly fifty years and some months after the foundation of the American College, a dark event cast a shadow over the celebration of the college s golden anniversary. Even as the rector of the American College, Jules De Becker, was building a grand new edifice (within which I write these lines) as the crowning glory of the fiftieth anniversary celebration, he was called upon by college alumni at work on Vancouver Island to make a discrete trip to Rome on their behalf. He was asked to do what he was able to persuade Vatican authorities to force the resignation of the most recent Louvanist to rise to the episcopacy, Archbishop Bertrand Orth of Victoria (formerly Vancouver Island). De Becker s journey to Rome and Orth s subsequent resignation from his see, supposedly for reasons of health, mark the final decisive moment of this dissertation, even as they close the study s fifty-year time frame. The details of the Orth resignation have been presented in the previous chapter; what is more important to this Conclusion is the fact that thereafter no further Louvanists would be named to the episcopacy in the region. For Victoria, that was a reasonable eventuality; it was by then seen as a Canadian see, and Canadians alone would thereafter be its bishops; but the effects of the Orth scandal and subsequent resignation rippled to the rest of the region. Confidence in the men from Louvain as potential bishops dissipated among Roman authorities and the increasingly romanized hierarchy elsewhere in the United States. 4 Perhaps they were no longer regarded as bishop material because they were judged too outspoken, too disrespectful of the hierarchy (remembering the Baker City problems), or even too morally lax. Whatever the reasons, no Lovanist was ever again appointed to any of these sees, and it remains so to the present day. The end of Orth marked the end of Louvain bishops in De Neve s favored portion of the vineyard ; strangely, De Neve s successor, De Becker, played a decisive if unanticipated role in this eventuality. The image of De Becker passing through the corridors of the Vatican s congregations working for Orth s resignation could be one way to imagine this final decisive moment in our account; another would be that of Bertrand Orth stepping off the dock in Victoria s harbor onto a boat destined for Fiesole, Italy, never to return to Vancouver Island, broken and bowed under the weight of scandal and the hatred of much of his clergy. The latter wins my nod, as it is a much more interesting counter 4 Gerald P. Fogarty, S.J., The Vatican and the American Hierarchy from 1870 to 1965 (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1985),

449 420 point to the first image of Croquet stepping onto the landing in Oregon City forty-eight years before. Taking the Measure of the Men It is one thing to detail the lives of a host of missionaries and quite another to make the claim that the aggregate of those lives adds up to something significant. What impact did they have? How are things different today because of them? We Americans, typically, like to measure value in numbers. How many? and How much? are our usual questions when it comes to claims of significance, even historical significance. Let us look again, then, at some numbers. During the fifty years of this study, the 103 priests from Louvain were never less than thirty percent of the clergy in any one diocese, including religious priests, while at times the percentage rose to seventy percent (Oregon City in 1875, for example). 5 Six of them became bishops in the region, increasing their pastoral impact exponentially. For six years, 1879 to 1885, the entire North Pacific Coast was under the leadership of the Louvanist bishops (Seghers in Oregon City, Junger in Nesqually, and Brondel in Vancouver Island). A cursory review of the years 1859 through 1907 in Schoenberg s A Chronicle of Catholic History of the Pacific Northwest 6 offers even more numbers to quantify the accomplishments of the men from Louvain: New churches constructed by Louvanists: sixty. Parishes/missions founded, first resident pastors or first masses said in a region by Louvanists: forty-two. Schools or academies founded by Louvanists: ten. Formidable as these statistics are, they are still quite incomplete. Schoenberg s Chronicle does not take into account all that was accomplished on Vancouver Island and Alaska, nor did I include on this list the specific accomplishments of the Louvain bishops across these fifty years. They do not reflect the influence of the Louvanists in bringing into the region the religious congregations of men and women to collaborate in their work. They do not tally in the hospitals, orphanages, or newspapers that were founded with the essential support of these missionaries from the American College. 5 See Appendix III: Clergy Distribution among Dioceses of the North Pacific Coast, Wilfred P. Schoenberg, S.J., A Chronicle of the Catholic History of the Pacific Northwest: (Portland, OR: Catholic Sentinel Printery, 1962).

450 421 The numbers, inadequate as they are, do make some things clear: without the men from Louvain the church on the North Pacific Coast would have been much poorer in every conceivable way. It would be a serious stretch of historical imagination to presume that the few priests who were already in the region before Croquet s arrival and those who came later from elsewhere would ever have been capable of building so much over such a brief period of time. Subtract from the scene described in these pages even just the sixty churches built, the forty-two parishes founded, and the ten schools opened, and it becomes clear that without the Louvanists, parishes and mission stations would have been fewer, almost certainly even today. Without the Louvanists, church property would not have been purchased and buildings never erected, leaving a much smaller material heritage for later churchmen to work with. Without the Louvanists, more pioneer and immigrant families would have been lost to the active practice of their faith; their present-day grand-children and great grand-children (among whom I count myself) would also most probably be lost. Simply put, the lives and works of these onehundred-plus men are the foundations upon which today s Catholics in the region stand, whether recognized or not. The enduring character of their work and perhaps even their legacy to the Catholic Church in the region might be summarized in three qualities: Faithfulness Louvain s first missionary in Oregon, Adrien Croquet, was seen by many after his death and by some even while he was still active as a missionary failure. After all his hard work, it was commented, so few of the Native Americans he ministered to went to communion; there were fewer baptisms than some would have expected after so many years; as already noted, he was a terrible administrator and drove most who worked with him to distraction with his practical incompetence. Yet, through it all, he loved his people. If he could not give them a gospel they could easily understand as their own, at least he gave them the saddle off his horse, the shirt off his back, and even the socks off his feet. He did not count those socks any more than he counted his baptisms or first communions. It didn t matter in the end. He was faithful to his call. He trusted God to take care of the rest. Might not his significance as a missionary be best assessed by his fidelity to the deepest call within him, that is to say, by the pairs of socks, shoes, and overcoats given away to those he loved with no strings attached? Do not those socks, multiplied across a lifetime, make reasonable his unofficial title as the Saint of Oregon?

451 422 Croquet s faithfulness to a fundamental call to humbly serve in good times and in bad may not have been universal to all the men from Louvain, but it was common enough. John Althoff s cry from Wrangell,... lonely, lonely, lonely... expressed the depth of difficulty the missionary vocation could entail. In spite of that thricerepeated cri de coeur, he stayed, did what he could, and gave birth to a parish which lives to this day. Aegidius Junger is barely remembered today after a lifetime of pastoral work, including fourteen years as bishop of Nesqually. Did anyone think his personal correspondence worth protecting so that later generations might gain a sense of the man s heart and soul? Clearly not. It is too bad, but the single memory handed down in Seattle of the oversized man playing his fiddle from his episcopal sede in the middle of some solemn liturgy speaks volumes about the man and his relationship to the people in the pew whom he cared for with his life. He did not work to be remembered; he worked to serve until the day he died. That so many of the Louvanists have been practically forgotten in spite of similar lifetimes of hard work and fidelity to their vocations as missionary priests in spite of having left family, friends, and country for pastoral hardships of all kinds, gives testimony that Croquet s model of faithfulness was one they had plenty of, too. That the church in the region was built with such fidelity, as the mortar between the stones, is one reason the church remains. Pastoral Dexterity The men from Louvain exercised a unique form of pastoral dexterity. Even as they held onto the richness of the tradition they brought with them from Europe they adapted to the world of North America in short order. With feet solidly planted in both worlds they were able to give shape to their new world even as it shaped them. Learned lectures on fine theological or historical points were delivered to approving miners and ranchers in small-town halls. Baroque or gothic flourishes were added to simple American wood-frame churches. European music was taught to American parish choirs. These men became American enough that their parishes grew up as distinctively American parishes, and perhaps even Western parishes. Formalities took second place to practicalities. Laws and rules were flexibly administered when the situation called for it. Neighborly hospitality, even towards Protestant neighbors, was de rigueur. If there was a need for a school, hospital, church hall, they built it. The Louvanists brought to their missions on the North Pacific Coast a pastoral wisdom in which the

452 423 ancient and the innovative, the traditional and the pragmatic, the unchanging and the changeable, the intellectual and the pastoral, a respect for authority and the freedom to challenge were always in play. Some would recognize these qualities in much of the church of the region to this day. Fraternity Finally, the men from Louvain s American College also brought with them a certain spirit of sodality and fraternity, not unlike that of a religious community but lived on a much wider plane and with fewer expectations for some kind of formal common life. The spirit of sodales that remained with them in their years in North America allowed them to tutor, mentor, challenge, and certainly support one another in good times and in hard times. The weekly letters between Seghers and Brondel, the sharing of old stories of the college s first years between old Bishop Brondel and newly arrived Cyril Pauwelyn (with an evening breeze off the Rockies to refresh them), the unabashed encouragement of John Jonckau to John Lemmens to say yes to an episcopal appointment he had himself refused: these and so many other signs of strong relationships speak of their fraternal friendships having deep roots in an old place thousands of miles away that most all rather loved. Except for the final troubles with Bertrand Orth, there is surprisingly little evidence of unsavory competition, envy, or clerical wingeing among them; this is almost surely due to their fraternity as Louvanists. Much of Orth s troubles as a bishop were that he seemingly violated the fraternal spirit of his largely Louvanist presbyterate by lording his authority over them and not treating them with appropriate fraternal consideration. Often enough the fraternal network that existed among the Louvanists had lines extending across the sea, back to Louvain itself; these lines were maintained through fairly constant letter writing, such as that between Seghers and De Neve in the early years or the call on Jules De Becker almost fifty years later to facilitate the Vatican s removal of Bertrand Orth. Throughout these years, the men from Louvain, remarkably, maintained among themselves a strong fondness for their mother seminary in Belgium. When the college found itself in trouble, the church in remote Oregon City, Nesqually, and Vancouver Island trembled (as when De Neve suffered his mental collapse or later returned); likewise, when serious problems beset the church on the North Pacific Coast, the American College used its resources to assist, most often by sending yet more men year after year. The two worlds were not so distinct after all. In spite of the miles and cultural differences separating Louvain from the North Pacific Coast, the two had, in a

453 424 way, become sisters by adoption through the agency of the men who left one to minister in the other. Da Mihi Belgas! The words of Saint Francis Xavier have come up on occasion in the course of this dissertation, Da mihi Belgas! Even in the latter half of the nineteenth century, they still expressed the perception from the mission fields of North America that the Belgians (including those from other nations trained in the American College, in my consideration) were known to be hard workers, willing to go to the most difficult missions, faithful to their church, and extraordinarily adaptable to new milieus. Such was the case with the young priests who left Louvain s American College for Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Alaska, and Vancouver Island. What they accomplished in John De Neve s favored portion of the vineyard is beyond measure. They built a church.

454 EPILOGUE In the course of researching this dissertation, not only have I visited archives in places like Victoria and Seattle, but also, often enough, I have had the opportunity to find myself before a gravestone associated with one of the men mentioned in the preceding pages. In Victoria, British Columbia, I climbed down a steep staircase to the crowded crypt beneath St. Andrew s Cathedral and paused before the large concrete sarcophagi of Charles John Seghers and his friend John Jonckau. In Walla Walla, I made a point of putting my hand to the cornerstone of the town s first Catholic church, Saint Patrick s, where weathered letters name its consecrator: Aegidius Junger. Not long ago, at the request of a priest-friend visiting Louvain from Montana, I went in search of the grave of the first priest to be ordained in his state, Cyril Pauwelyn, and found it in the main cemetery of Kortrijk. In each case, I felt moved with gratitude for these men s lives, lives I have come to know rather personally. I mention these moments as I end this concluding chapter because these lives have blessed my own. In reading their letters, the ink often fading and the handwriting sometimes difficult to decipher, in finding references in one or another historical source to some small moment in their ministry that seemed much like a moment in my own work, or even in holding in my hand the dusty felt derby of Adrien Croquet, I have come to know a fraternity with them in their struggles and joys, their faith and their ministry, that has strengthened me and made me wiser in my own work. I know that on three counts at least I stand on their pastoral shoulders. First, some of these men ministered to my own family in years past. Father Brondel said the first mass in Colfax, Washington, my great-grandparents in attendance. Not long ago my sister found a 1920s photograph of a Codd family gathering in the grand ballroom of a Spokane hotel; scattered among my grandparents and aunts and uncles were several American College priests. Shortly before my mother died, I was chatting with her about my research, having just returned from the archives of the Seattle

455 426 Archdiocese. I happened to mention Father Francis Moens. My mother asked, Fr. Moens: from Yakima? Yes, I said. Oh, I remember him! she enthused, he was nice to us when we were kids! By pastorally touching my parents, grandparents, and even my great-grandparents, they have touched me. Second, though I did not know it at the time, the cathedral church in which I was ordained a priest was conceived and built by two of the men from Louvain. More than that, other Louvanists were my predecessors in parishes where I served as pastor (most notably, St. Patrick s in Walla Walla). Still more contributed in a foundational way to the growth as a whole of the diocese of which I am a presbyter. My vocation as a priest was supported by my childhood pastor, Oakley O Connor, who himself was brought to the priesthood by his childhood pastor, Theophile Pypers. In 1975 Michael Savelesky, a recently returned Louvain priest, encouraged me to forgo the attractions of theological study in Rome in favor of the rigor of Louvain; I have never regretted listening to him. The decision fundamentally changed the direction of my life and the manner of exercising my ministry. And so it goes. Finally, having been theologically formed in Louvain s university and pastorally trained in the same college as all these men, I feel intellectual and pastoral kinship with them. As the present rector of their college, I feel they are with me in spirit as I make the day-to-day decisions that guide the American College through these early years of a new century. Their courage in facing their troubles, their joy in small achievements, and their pride in their alma mater inspire the same in me. They have taught me to value being poor, to see the advantages in smallness, to recognize that in this place there is an enduring communion binding us together that is precious to the church and worth preserving in these difficult years. Because of these many personal, ecclesial, and intellectual relationships to the subjects of this study, writing these pages has been more than an academic project; it has been for me a labor of love and a personal mission to in some small way, albeit belatedly and inadequately, give them their historical due. Once I had begun this work, I was surprised at how forgotten they had become over time. Not only were their individual names and their pastoral work for the most part barely remembered beyond a few local historians, their collective contribution as a sort of Louvain community within the church of the North Pacific Coast was far from appreciated. These hundred-plus men sent to the North Pacific Coast during a period of fifty years accomplished so much and formed such an integral part of the life of the church during this half-century that to let their names and lives be altogether lost to our memory not only would be a personal

456 427 insult to men I now care about, but would also render historical accounts of the time and place they served seriously incomplete. I can only hope that this dissertation helps avoid such a loss. For this I have written it.

457 APPENDIX I: AMERICAN COLLEGE ALUMNI BY DIOCESE Baker City A Campo Year Entered AC: 1904 Hubert Year Departed for Mission 1907 Native Diocese: Mechlin Year of Death: 0 Mission Diocese: Baker City Aalders Year Entered AC: 1904 Matthew Year Departed for Mission 1907 Native Diocese: 's-hertogenbosch Year of Death: 0 Mission Diocese: Baker City Boise City (& V.A. Idaho) Van den Donckt Year Entered AC: 1884 Cyril Year Departed for Mission 1887 Native Diocese: Ghent Year of Death: 1939 Mission Diocese: V. A. Idaho Van der Heyden Year Entered AC: 1885 Joseph Year Departed for Mission 1888 Native Diocese: Roermond Year of Death: 1934 Mission Diocese: V. A. Idaho Keyzer Year Entered AC: 1889 Remi W. Year Departed for Mission 1891 Native Diocese: 's-hertogenbosch Year of Death: 1937 Mission Diocese: V. A. Idaho Kroeger Year Entered AC: 1889 William Year Departed for Mission 1892 Native Diocese: Hanover Year of Death: 1897 Mission Diocese: V. A. Idaho Beusmans Year Entered AC: 1893 Bernard J. Year Departed for Mission 1896 Native Diocese: Roermond Year of Death: 1937 Mission Diocese: Boise City

458 429 Frohn Year Entered AC: 1894 Godfried M. Year Departed for Mission 1897 Native Diocese: Osnabruck Year of Death: 1941 Mission Diocese: Boise City Van Nistelroy (-Rooy, Rooi) Year Entered AC: 1896 Francis Year Departed for Mission 1899 Native Diocese: 's-hertogenbosch Year of Death: 1932 Mission Diocese: Boise City Godschalx Year Entered AC: 1897 Lambert C. Year Departed for Mission 1900 Native Diocese: 's-hertogenbosch Year of Death: 1929 Mission Diocese: Boise City Helena Pauwelyn Year Entered AC: 1883 Cyril H. Year Departed for Mission 1885 Native Diocese: Bruges Year of Death: 0 Mission Diocese: Helena Van de Ven Year Entered AC: 1886 Henry J. Year Departed for Mission 1886 Native Diocese: 's-hertogenbosch Year of Death: 1929 Mission Diocese: Helena Follet Year Entered AC: 1884 Gustave G. Year Departed for Mission 1887 Native Diocese: Bruges Year of Death: 1911 Mission Diocese: Helena Van den Broek Year Entered AC: 1884 Victor J. Year Departed for Mission 1887 Native Diocese: Mechlin Year of Death: 1930 Mission Diocese: Helena Allaeys Year Entered AC: 1888 Honorius B. Year Departed for Mission 1888 Native Diocese: Bruges Year of Death: 0 Mission Diocese: Helena Coopman Year Entered AC: 1884 Amatus R. Year Departed for Mission 1888 Native Diocese: Bruges Year of Death: 1927 Mission Diocese: Helena

459 430 Desiere Year Entered AC: 1887 Peter A. Year Departed for Mission 1888 Native Diocese: Bruges Year of Death: 1918 Mission Diocese: Helena Lambaere Year Entered AC: 1886 August H. Year Departed for Mission 1889 Native Diocese: Bruges Year of Death: 0 Mission Diocese: Helena Batens Year Entered AC: 1888 Francis X. Year Departed for Mission 1891 Native Diocese: Ghent Year of Death: 1933 Mission Diocese: Helena Van Clarenbeck (Van Clarenbeek) Year Entered AC: 1891 Peter F. Year Departed for Mission 1893 Native Diocese: Munster Year of Death: 0 Mission Diocese: Helena Gallagher Year Entered AC: 1893 Peter Year Departed for Mission 1896 Native Diocese: Glasgow Year of Death: 1911 Mission Diocese: Helena Snels Year Entered AC: 1894 Nicholas B. Year Departed for Mission 1896 Native Diocese: 's-hertogenbosch Year of Death: 0 Mission Diocese: Helena Van Aken Year Entered AC: 1893 Cornelius Year Departed for Mission 1896 Native Diocese: Breda Year of Death: 0 Mission Diocese: Helena Blaere Year Entered AC: 1894 Joseph M. Year Departed for Mission 1897 Native Diocese: Bruges Year of Death: 1939 Mission Diocese: Helena Vermaat Year Entered AC: 1894 James M. Year Departed for Mission 1897 Native Diocese: 's-hertogenbosch Year of Death: 1930 Mission Diocese: Helena Pudenz Year Entered AC: 1894 Joseph C. Year Departed for Mission 1898 Native Diocese: Paderborn Year of Death: 0 Mission Diocese: Helena

460 431 Van de Velde Year Entered AC: 1895 Amatus Year Departed for Mission 1898 Native Diocese: Ghent Year of Death: 1900 Mission Diocese: Helena Leitham Year Entered AC: 1899 Augustus Year Departed for Mission 1902 Native Diocese: Buffalo Year of Death: 0 Mission Diocese: Helena Nesqually Junger Year Entered AC: 1859 Aegidius Year Departed for Mission 1862 Native Diocese: Cologne Year of Death: 1895 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Mans Year Entered AC: 1859 Paul A. Year Departed for Mission 1862 Native Diocese: Mechlin Year of Death: 1890 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Brondel Year Entered AC: 1861 John Baptist Year Departed for Mission 1864 Native Diocese: Bruges Year of Death: 1903 Mission Diocese: Nesqually De Ryckere Year Entered AC: 1861 Remigius Year Departed for Mission 1864 Native Diocese: Bruges Year of Death: 1916 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Hylebos Year Entered AC: 1867 Peter F. Year Departed for Mission 1870 Native Diocese: Ghent Year of Death: 1918 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Schram Year Entered AC: 1868 Louis de G. Year Departed for Mission 1872 Native Diocese: Bruges Year of Death: 1898 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Kauten Year Entered AC: 1872 Emil W. Year Departed for Mission 1875 Native Diocese: Namur Year of Death: 1912 Mission Diocese: Nesqually

461 432 Paaps Year Entered AC: 0 Peter A. Year Departed for Mission 1879 Native Diocese: Year of Death: 1890 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Kusters Year Entered AC: 1877 Louis Year Departed for Mission 1880 Native Diocese: Roermond Year of Death: 1918 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Claessens Year Entered AC: 1878 Charles Joseph Year Departed for Mission 1881 Native Diocese: Roermond Year of Death: 0 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Flohr Year Entered AC: 1879 Michael M. Year Departed for Mission 1881 Native Diocese: Cologne Year of Death: 1906 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Demanez Year Entered AC: 1883 Emmanuel Year Departed for Mission 1883 Native Diocese: Tournai Year of Death: 1898 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Simon Year Entered AC: 1878 James Year Departed for Mission 1883 Native Diocese: Year of Death: 0 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Meuwese Year Entered AC: 1882 Aloysius T. Year Departed for Mission 1884 Native Diocese: Year of Death: 1931 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Thoma Year Entered AC: 1881 Joseph Year Departed for Mission 1884 Native Diocese: Freiburg Year of Death: 1899 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Cunifee Year Entered AC: 1885 Peter Year Departed for Mission 1887 Native Diocese: Galway Year of Death: 1917 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Deichmann Year Entered AC: 1884 William Henry Year Departed for Mission 1887 Native Diocese: Cologne Year of Death: 1931 Mission Diocese: Nesqually

462 433 Van Holderbeke Year Entered AC: 1884 Peter Year Departed for Mission 1887 Native Diocese: Ghent Year of Death: 1901 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Achtergael Year Entered AC: 1887 Gustave Year Departed for Mission 1890 Native Diocese: Ghent Year of Death: 1943 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Delannoy Year Entered AC: 1886 Joseph M. Year Departed for Mission 1890 Native Diocese: Bruges Year of Death: 1940 Mission Diocese: Nesqually De Kanter Year Entered AC: 1888 John H. Year Departed for Mission 1891 Native Diocese: 's-hertogenbosch Year of Death: 1927 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Francken Year Entered AC: 1889 Herman A. Year Departed for Mission 1892 Native Diocese: 's-hertogenbosch Year of Death: 0 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Sweens Year Entered AC: 1892 John J. Year Departed for Mission 1892 Native Diocese: 's-hertogenbosch Year of Death: 1949 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Verhagen Year Entered AC: 1889 Alphonse M. Year Departed for Mission 1892 Native Diocese: 's-hertogenbosch Year of Death: 1938 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Verwilghen Year Entered AC: 1889 Felix S. Year Departed for Mission 1892 Native Diocese: Ghent Year of Death: 1915 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Moens Year Entered AC: 1892 Francis A. Year Departed for Mission 1895 Native Diocese: Ghent Year of Death: 1945 Mission Diocese: Nesqually De Malsche Year Entered AC: 1895 Augustine Year Departed for Mission 1898 Native Diocese: Ghent Year of Death: 1922 Mission Diocese: Nesqually

463 434 Pypers Year Entered AC: 0 Theophile Year Departed for Mission 1901 Native Diocese: Year of Death: 0 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Kreutzer Year Entered AC: 0 Mathias Year Departed for Mission 1907 Native Diocese: Year of Death: 0 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Mertz Year Entered AC: 0 Nicolas Year Departed for Mission 1907 Native Diocese: Year of Death: 0 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Oregon City Croquet Year Entered AC: 1859 Adrian J. Year Departed for Mission 1859 Native Diocese: Mechlin Year of Death: 1902 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Fierens Year Entered AC: 1859 John F. Year Departed for Mission 1860 Native Diocese: Mechlin Year of Death: 1893 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Dieleman Year Entered AC: 1858 Leopold Year Departed for Mission 1862 Native Diocese: Ghent Year of Death: 1907 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Vermeersch Year Entered AC: 1861 Adolphe G. Year Departed for Mission 1862 Native Diocese: Ghent Year of Death: 1892 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Goens Year Entered AC: 1860 Sebastian Year Departed for Mission 1863 Native Diocese: Mechlin Year of Death: 1884 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Thibau Year Entered AC: 1866 Gustave Year Departed for Mission 1866 Native Diocese: Bruges Year of Death: 1892 Mission Diocese: Oregon City

464 435 Glorieux Year Entered AC: 1863 Alphonse J. Year Departed for Mission 1867 Native Diocese: Bruges Year of Death: 1917 Mission Diocese: Oregon City De Craene Year Entered AC: 1865 Jules Year Departed for Mission 1869 Native Diocese: Ghent Year of Death: 1873 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Gibney Year Entered AC: 1868 Patrick Year Departed for Mission 1869 Native Diocese: Meath Year of Death: 1924 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Heinrich Year Entered AC: 1867 John Year Departed for Mission 1870 Native Diocese: Brno Year of Death: 1908 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Orth Year Entered AC: 1868 Bertram Year Departed for Mission 1872 Native Diocese: Year of Death: 1908 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Verhaag Year Entered AC: 1869 Louis Year Departed for Mission 1872 Native Diocese: Roermond Year of Death: 1914 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Conrardi Year Entered AC: 1874 Lambert Louis Year Departed for Mission 1874 Native Diocese: Liège Year of Death: 0 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Van Lin Year Entered AC: 1870 Gerard B. Year Departed for Mission 1874 Native Diocese: Roermond Year of Death: 1894 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Bronsgeest Year Entered AC: 1872 Alphonse Year Departed for Mission 1875 Native Diocese: Year of Death: 1918 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Dols Year Entered AC: 1871 James Year Departed for Mission 1875 Native Diocese: Roermond Year of Death: 1899 Mission Diocese: Oregon City

465 436 Capelle Year Entered AC: 1874 Victor M. Year Departed for Mission 1878 Native Diocese: Namur Year of Death: 1906 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Stampfl Year Entered AC: 1877 Peter Year Departed for Mission 1879 Native Diocese: Brixen Year of Death: 1907 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Hartlieb Year Entered AC: 1877 Francis Year Departed for Mission 1880 Native Diocese: Fulda Year of Death: 1927 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Faber Year Entered AC: 1880 Dominic Year Departed for Mission 1882 Native Diocese: Cologne Year of Death: 1926 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Rauw Year Entered AC: 1879 James Year Departed for Mission 1882 Native Diocese: Cologne Year of Death: 1919 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Straeten Year Entered AC: 1883 Michael J. Year Departed for Mission 1883 Native Diocese: Roermond Year of Death: 1936 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Hillebrand Year Entered AC: 1883 Anthony Year Departed for Mission 1885 Native Diocese: Munster Year of Death: 1940 Mission Diocese: Oregon City De Decker Year Entered AC: 1883 Charles S. Year Departed for Mission 1886 Native Diocese: Ghent Year of Death: 1873 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Baert Year Entered AC: 1889 Henry Year Departed for Mission 1889 Native Diocese: Bruges Year of Death: 0 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Strevens (Stravens) Year Entered AC: 1890 Martin Year Departed for Mission 1893 Native Diocese: Minnesota Year of Death: 0 Mission Diocese: Oregon City

466 437 Vancouver Island Seghers Year Entered AC: 1862 Charles John Year Departed for Mission 1863 Native Diocese: Ghent Year of Death: 1886 Mission Diocese: Vancouver Island Haupts Year Entered AC: 1861 Leonard H. Year Departed for Mission 1865 Native Diocese: Cologne Year of Death: 1907 Mission Diocese: Vancouver Island Jonckau Year Entered AC: 1865 John J. Year Departed for Mission 1867 Native Diocese: Year of Death: 1888 Mission Diocese: Vancouver Island Brabant Year Entered AC: 1865 Augustin J. Year Departed for Mission 1869 Native Diocese: Bruges Year of Death: 1912 Mission Diocese: Vancouver Island Leroy Year Entered AC: 1870 John J. Year Departed for Mission 1874 Native Diocese: Liège Year of Death: 1882 Mission Diocese: Vancouver Island Lemmens Year Entered AC: 1872 John N. Year Departed for Mission 1876 Native Diocese: Roermond Year of Death: 1897 Mission Diocese: Vancouver Island Nicolaye Year Entered AC: 0 Joseph Year Departed for Mission 1876 Native Diocese: Year of Death: 0 Mission Diocese: Vancouver Island Donckele Year Entered AC: 1874 Gustave T. Year Departed for Mission 1877 Native Diocese: Bruges Year of Death: 1907 Mission Diocese: Vancouver Island Althoff Year Entered AC: 1875 John Year Departed for Mission 1878 Native Diocese: Roermond Year of Death: 1925 Mission Diocese: Vancouver Island

467 438 Eussen Year Entered AC: 1875 Louis Year Departed for Mission 1878 Native Diocese: Roermond Year of Death: 1886 Mission Diocese: Vancouver Island Van Nevel Year Entered AC: 1876 John Alphonse Year Departed for Mission 1879 Native Diocese: Ghent Year of Death: 1917 Mission Diocese: Vancouver Island Heynen Year Entered AC: 1877 William Year Departed for Mission 1880 Native Diocese: Roermond Year of Death: 0 Mission Diocese: Vancouver Island Verbeke Year Entered AC: 1881 Remigius F. Year Departed for Mission 1885 Native Diocese: Bruges Year of Death: 1936 Mission Diocese: Vancouver Island Leterme Year Entered AC: 0 Francis X. Year Departed for Mission 1887 Native Diocese: Bruges Year of Death: 1932 Mission Diocese: Vancouver Island Van Goethem Year Entered AC: 1888 George C. Year Departed for Mission 1891 Native Diocese: Ghent Year of Death: 1935 Mission Diocese: Vancouver Island Vullinghs Year Entered AC: 1891 Adrian Year Departed for Mission 1893 Native Diocese: 's-hertogenbosch Year of Death: 0 Mission Diocese: Vancouver Island Sobry Year Entered AC: 1885 Emil H. Year Departed for Mission 1896 Native Diocese: Bruges Year of Death: 0 Mission Diocese: Vancouver Island Kremers Year Entered AC: 1896 Henry A. Year Departed for Mission 1897 Native Diocese: Haarlem Year of Death: 1907 Mission Diocese: Vancouver Island Fisser Year Entered AC: 1900 William Year Departed for Mission 1906 Native Diocese: Bruges Year of Death: 0 Mission Diocese: Vancouver Island

468 439 Friedrich Year Entered AC: 1904 Aemilius Year Departed for Mission 1907 Native Diocese: Luxembourg Year of Death: 0 Mission Diocese: Vancouver Island

469 APPENDIX II: AMERICAN COLLEGE ALUMNI ON THE NORTH PACIFIC COAST BY DEPARTURE DATE, Year Departed AC: 1859 Croquet Year of Birth: 1818 Adrian J. Year Entered AC: 1859 Native Diocese: Mechlin Year of Death 1902 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Year Departed AC: 1860 Fierens Year of Birth: 1828 John F. Year Entered AC: 1859 Native Diocese: Mechlin Year of Death 1893 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Year Departed AC: 1862 Dieleman Year of Birth: 1833 Leopold Year Entered AC: 1858 Native Diocese: Ghent Year of Death 1907 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Junger Year of Birth: 1833 Aegidius Year Entered AC: 1859 Native Diocese: Cologne Year of Death 1895 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Mans Year of Birth: 1839 Paul A. Year Entered AC: 1859 Native Diocese: Mechlin Year of Death 1890 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Vermeersch Year of Birth: 1834 Adolphe G. Year Entered AC: 1861 Native Diocese: Ghent Year of Death 1892 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Year Departed AC: 1863 Goens Year of Birth: 1828 Sebastian Year Entered AC: 1860 Native Diocese: Mechlin Year of Death 1884 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Seghers Year of Birth: 1839 Charles John Year Entered AC: 1862 Native Diocese: Ghent Year of Death 1886 Mission Diocese: Vancouver Island

470 441 Year Departed AC: 1864 Brondel Year of Birth: 1842 John Baptist Year Entered AC: 1861 Native Diocese: Bruges Year of Death 1903 Mission Diocese: Nesqually De Ryckere Year of Birth: 1837 Remigius Year Entered AC: 1861 Native Diocese: Bruges Year of Death 1916 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Year Departed AC: 1865 Haupts Year of Birth: 1839 Leonard H. Year Entered AC: 1861 Native Diocese: Cologne Year of Death 1907 Mission Diocese: Vancouver Island Year Departed AC: 1866 Thibau Year of Birth: 0 Gustave Year Entered AC: 1866 Native Diocese: Bruges Year of Death 1892 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Year Departed AC: 1867 Glorieux Year of Birth: 1844 Alphonse J. Year Entered AC: 1863 Native Diocese: Bruges Year of Death 1917 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Jonckau Year of Birth: 0 John J. Year Entered AC: 1865 Native Diocese: Year of Death 1888 Mission Diocese: Vancouver Island Year Departed AC: 1869 Brabant Year of Birth: 1845 Augustin J. Year Entered AC: 1865 Native Diocese: Bruges Year of Death 1912 Mission Diocese: Vancouver Island De Craene Year of Birth: 1843 Jules Year Entered AC: 1865 Native Diocese: Ghent Year of Death 1873 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Gibney Year of Birth: 1840 Patrick Year Entered AC: 1868 Native Diocese: Meath Year of Death 1924 Mission Diocese: Oregon City

471 442 Year Departed AC: 1870 Heinrich Year of Birth: 1849 John Year Entered AC: 1867 Native Diocese: Brno Year of Death 1908 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Hylebos Year of Birth: 1846 Peter F. Year Entered AC: 1867 Native Diocese: Ghent Year of Death 1918 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Year Departed AC: 1872 Orth Year of Birth: 1848 Bertram Year Entered AC: 1868 Native Diocese: Year of Death 1908 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Schram Year of Birth: 1847 Louis de G. Year Entered AC: 1868 Native Diocese: Bruges Year of Death 1898 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Verhaag Year of Birth: 1845 Louis Year Entered AC: 1869 Native Diocese: Roermond Year of Death 1914 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Year Departed AC: 1874 Conrardi Year of Birth: 0 Lambert Louis Year Entered AC: 1874 Native Diocese: Liège Year of Death 0 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Leroy Year of Birth: 1835 John J. Year Entered AC: 1870 Native Diocese: Liège Year of Death 1882 Mission Diocese: Vancouver Island Van Lin Year of Birth: 0 Gerard B. Year Entered AC: 1870 Native Diocese: Roermond Year of Death 1894 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Year Departed AC: 1875 Bronsgeest Year of Birth: 0 Alphonse Year Entered AC: 1872 Native Diocese: Year of Death 1918 Mission Diocese: Oregon City

472 443 Dols Year of Birth: 1849 James Year Entered AC: 1871 Native Diocese: Roermond Year of Death 1899 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Kauten Year of Birth: 1852 Emil W. Year Entered AC: 1872 Native Diocese: Namur Year of Death 1912 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Year Departed AC: 1876 Lemmens Year of Birth: 1850 John N. Year Entered AC: 1872 Native Diocese: Roermond Year of Death 1897 Mission Diocese: Vancouver Island Nicolaye Year of Birth: 0 Joseph Year Entered AC: 0 Native Diocese: Year of Death 0 Mission Diocese: Vancouver Island Year Departed AC: 1877 Donckele Year of Birth: 1851 Gustave T. Year Entered AC: 1874 Native Diocese: Bruges Year of Death 1907 Mission Diocese: Vancouver Island Year Departed AC: 1878 Althoff Year of Birth: 1854 John Year Entered AC: 1875 Native Diocese: Roermond Year of Death 1925 Mission Diocese: Vancouver Island Capelle Year of Birth: 1854 Victor M. Year Entered AC: 1874 Native Diocese: Namur Year of Death 1906 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Eussen Year of Birth: 1855 Louis Year Entered AC: 1875 Native Diocese: Roermond Year of Death 1886 Mission Diocese: Vancouver Island Year Departed AC: 1879 Paaps Year of Birth: 1852 Peter A. Year Entered AC: 0 Native Diocese: Year of Death 1890 Mission Diocese: Nesqually

473 444 Stampfl Year of Birth: 1848 Peter Year Entered AC: 1877 Native Diocese: Brixen Year of Death 1907 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Van Nevel Year of Birth: 1855 John Alphonse Year Entered AC: 1876 Native Diocese: Ghent Year of Death 1917 Mission Diocese: Vancouver Island Year Departed AC: 1880 Hartlieb Year of Birth: 1854 Francis Year Entered AC: 1877 Native Diocese: Fulda Year of Death 1927 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Heynen Year of Birth: 1856 William Year Entered AC: 1877 Native Diocese: Roermond Year of Death 0 Mission Diocese: Vancouver Island Kusters Year of Birth: 1857 Louis Year Entered AC: 1877 Native Diocese: Roermond Year of Death 1918 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Year Departed AC: 1881 Claessens Year of Birth: 1856 Charles Joseph Year Entered AC: 1878 Native Diocese: Roermond Year of Death 0 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Flohr Year of Birth: 1857 Michael M. Year Entered AC: 1879 Native Diocese: Cologne Year of Death 1906 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Year Departed AC: 1882 Faber Year of Birth: 1857 Dominic Year Entered AC: 1880 Native Diocese: Cologne Year of Death 1926 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Rauw Year of Birth: 1854 James Year Entered AC: 1879 Native Diocese: Cologne Year of Death 1919 Mission Diocese: Oregon City

474 445 Year Departed AC: 1883 Demanez Year of Birth: 1848 Emmanuel Year Entered AC: 1883 Native Diocese: Tournai Year of Death 1898 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Simon Year of Birth: 1858 James Year Entered AC: 1878 Native Diocese: Year of Death 0 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Straeten Year of Birth: 1858 Michael J. Year Entered AC: 1883 Native Diocese: Roermond Year of Death 1936 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Year Departed AC: 1884 Meuwese Year of Birth: 1859 Aloysius T. Year Entered AC: 1882 Native Diocese: Year of Death 1931 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Thoma Year of Birth: 1853 Joseph Year Entered AC: 1881 Native Diocese: Freiburg Year of Death 1899 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Year Departed AC: 1885 Hillebrand Year of Birth: 1859 Anthony Year Entered AC: 1883 Native Diocese: Munster Year of Death 1940 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Pauwelyn Year of Birth: 1863 Cyril H. Year Entered AC: 1883 Native Diocese: Bruges Year of Death 0 Mission Diocese: Helena Verbeke Year of Birth: 1860 Remigius F. Year Entered AC: 1881 Native Diocese: Bruges Year of Death 1936 Mission Diocese: Vancouver Island Year Departed AC: 1886 De Decker Year of Birth: 1863 Charles S. Year Entered AC: 1883 Native Diocese: Ghent Year of Death 1873 Mission Diocese: Oregon City

475 446 Van de Ven Year of Birth: 0 Henry J. Year Entered AC: 1886 Native Diocese: s-hertogenbosch Year of Death 1929 Mission Diocese: Helena Year Departed AC: 1887 Cunifee Year of Birth: 1844 Peter Year Entered AC: 1885 Native Diocese: Galway Year of Death 1917 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Deichmann Year of Birth: 1862 William Henry Year Entered AC: 1884 Native Diocese: Cologne Year of Death 1931 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Follet Year of Birth: 1863 Gustave G. Year Entered AC: 1884 Native Diocese: Bruges Year of Death 1911 Mission Diocese: Helena Leterme Year of Birth: 1862 Francis X. Year Entered AC: 0 Native Diocese: Bruges Year of Death 1932 Mission Diocese: Vancouver Island Van den Broek Year of Birth: 1863 Victor J. Year Entered AC: 1884 Native Diocese: Mechlin Year of Death 1930 Mission Diocese: Helena Van den Donckt Year of Birth: 1865 Cyril Year Entered AC: 1884 Native Diocese: Ghent Year of Death 1939 Mission Diocese: V. A. Idaho Van Holderbeke Year of Birth: 1863 Peter Year Entered AC: 1884 Native Diocese: Ghent Year of Death 1901 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Year Departed AC: 1888 Allaeys Year of Birth: 1842 Honorius B. Year Entered AC: 1888 Native Diocese: Bruges Year of Death 0 Mission Diocese: Helena Coopman Year of Birth: 1863 Amatus R. Year Entered AC: 1884 Native Diocese: Bruges Year of Death 1927 Mission Diocese: Helena

476 447 Desiere Year of Birth: 0 Peter A. Year Entered AC: 1887 Native Diocese: Bruges Year of Death 1918 Mission Diocese: Helena Van der Heyden Year of Birth: 1866 Joseph Year Entered AC: 1885 Native Diocese: Roermond Year of Death 1934 Mission Diocese: V. A. Idaho Year Departed AC: 1889 Baert Year of Birth: 0 Henry Year Entered AC: 1889 Native Diocese: Bruges Year of Death 0 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Lambaere Year of Birth: 1865 August H. Year Entered AC: 1886 Native Diocese: Bruges Year of Death 0 Mission Diocese: Helena Year Departed AC: 1890 Achtergael Year of Birth: 1895 Gustave Year Entered AC: 1887 Native Diocese: Ghent Year of Death 1943 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Delannoy Year of Birth: 1867 Joseph M. Year Entered AC: 1886 Native Diocese: Bruges Year of Death 1940 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Year Departed AC: 1891 Batens Year of Birth: 1866 Francis X. Year Entered AC: 1888 Native Diocese: Ghent Year of Death 1933 Mission Diocese: Helena De Kanter Year of Birth: 1868 John H. Year Entered AC: 1888 Native Diocese: s-hertogenbosch Year of Death 1927 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Keyzer Year of Birth: 1866 Remi W. Year Entered AC: 1889 Native Diocese: s-hertogenbosch Year of Death 1937 Mission Diocese: V. A. Idaho

477 448 Van Goethem Year of Birth: 1868 George C. Year Entered AC: 1888 Native Diocese: Ghent Year of Death 1935 Mission Diocese: Vancouver Island Year Departed AC: 1892 Francken Year of Birth: 1866 Herman A. Year Entered AC: 1889 Native Diocese: s-hertogenbosch Year of Death 0 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Kroeger Year of Birth: 1855 William Year Entered AC: 1889 Native Diocese: Hanover Year of Death 1897 Mission Diocese: V. A. Idaho Sweens Year of Birth: 0 John J. Year Entered AC: 1892 Native Diocese: s-hertogenbosch Year of Death 1949 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Verhagen Year of Birth: 1869 Alphonse M. Year Entered AC: 1889 Native Diocese: s-hertogenbosch Year of Death 1938 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Verwilghen Year of Birth: 1869 Felix S. Year Entered AC: 1889 Native Diocese: Ghent Year of Death 1915 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Year Departed AC: 1893 Strevens (Stravens) Year of Birth: 1864 Martin Year Entered AC: 1890 Native Diocese: Minnesota Year of Death 0 Mission Diocese: Oregon City Van Clarenbeck (Van Clarenbeek) Year of Birth: 1867 Peter F. Year Entered AC: 1891 Native Diocese: Munster Year of Death 0 Mission Diocese: Helena Vullinghs Year of Birth: 1867 Adrian Year Entered AC: 1891 Native Diocese: s-hertogenbosch Year of Death 0 Mission Diocese: Vancouver Island

478 449 Year Departed AC: 1895 Moens Year of Birth: 1870 Francis A. Year Entered AC: 1892 Native Diocese: Ghent Year of Death 1945 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Year Departed AC: 1896 Beusmans Year of Birth: 1871 Bernard J. Year Entered AC: 1893 Native Diocese: Roermond Year of Death 1937 Mission Diocese: Boise City Gallagher Year of Birth: 1872 Peter Year Entered AC: 1893 Native Diocese: Glasgow Year of Death 1911 Mission Diocese: Helena Snels Year of Birth: 1867 Nicholas B. Year Entered AC: 1894 Native Diocese: s-hertogenbosch Year of Death 0 Mission Diocese: Helena Sobry Year of Birth: 1861 Emil H. Year Entered AC: 1885 Native Diocese: Bruges Year of Death 0 Mission Diocese: Vancouver Island Van Aken Year of Birth: 1872 Cornelius Year Entered AC: 1893 Native Diocese: Breda Year of Death 0 Mission Diocese: Helena Year Departed AC: 1897 Blaere Year of Birth: 1874 Joseph M. Year Entered AC: 1894 Native Diocese: Bruges Year of Death 1939 Mission Diocese: Helena Frohn Year of Birth: 1873 Godfried M. Year Entered AC: 1894 Native Diocese: Osnabruck Year of Death 1941 Mission Diocese: Boise City Kremers Year of Birth: 1868 Henry A. Year Entered AC: 1896 Native Diocese: Haarlem Year of Death 1907 Mission Diocese: Vancouver Island Vermaat Year of Birth: 1871 James M. Year Entered AC: 1894 Native Diocese: s-hertogenbosch Year of Death 1930 Mission Diocese: Helena

479 450 Year Departed AC: 1898 De Malsche Year of Birth: 1873 Augustine Year Entered AC: 1895 Native Diocese: Ghent Year of Death 1922 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Pudenz Year of Birth: 1874 Joseph C. Year Entered AC: 1894 Native Diocese: Paderborn Year of Death 0 Mission Diocese: Helena Van de Velde Year of Birth: 1874 Amatus Year Entered AC: 1895 Native Diocese: Ghent Year of Death 1900 Mission Diocese: Helena Year Departed AC: 1899 Van Nistelroy (-Rooy, Rooi) Year of Birth: 1874 Francis Year Entered AC: 1896 Native Diocese: s-hertogenbosch Year of Death 1932 Mission Diocese: Boise City Year Departed AC: 1900 Godschalx Year of Birth: 1874 Lambert C. Year Entered AC: 1897 Native Diocese: s-hertogenbosch Year of Death 1929 Mission Diocese: Boise City Year Departed AC: 1901 Pypers Year of Birth: 0 Theophile Year Entered AC: 0 Native Diocese: Year of Death 0 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Year Departed AC: 1902 Leitham Year of Birth: 0 August Year Entered AC: 0 Native Diocese: Pennsylvania Year of Death 0 Mission Diocese: Helena Year Departed AC: 1906 Fisser Year of Birth: 1872 William Year Entered AC: 1900 Native Diocese: Bruges Year of Death 0 Mission Diocese: Vancouver Island

480 451 Year Departed AC: 1907 A Campo Year of Birth: 1884 Hubert Year Entered AC: 1904 Native Diocese: Mechlin Year of Death 0 Mission Diocese: Baker City Aalders Year of Birth: 1884 Matthew Year Entered AC: 1904 Native Diocese: s-hertogenbosch Year of Death 0 Mission Diocese: Baker City Friedrich Year of Birth: 1881 Aemilius Year Entered AC: 1904 Native Diocese: Luxembourg Year of Death 0 Mission Diocese: Vancouver Island Kreutzer Year of Birth: 1879 Matthew Year Entered AC: 1904 Native Diocese: Year of Death 0 Mission Diocese: Nesqually Mertz Year of Birth: 1883 Nicholas Year Entered AC: 1904 Native Diocese: Luxembourg Year of Death 0 Mission Diocese: Nesqually

481 APPENDIX III: CLERGY DISTRIBUTION AMONG DIOCESES OF THE NORTH PACIFIC COAST Oregon City Vancouver Is. Nesqually Regular Clergy? 0 12 Secular Clergy? 3 3 Total Clergy Oregon City Vancouver Is. Nesqually Regular Clergy? Giorda, SJ 5 Bandon OMI, McGucken OMI, Rondeau OMI, Pandos OMI, Duzieu 6 Non- Louvain Secular Clergy Louvain Secular Clergy 6 +F.N. Blanchet, Piette,Lebas, F.X. Blanchet, Poulin, Mesplie 5 Croquet, Fierens, Dieleman, Vermeersch, Goens OMI 4 +Demers, Mandart, Maloney 1 Seghers Total Clergy A.M.A. Blanchet, 4 Junger, Mans, Brondel, DeRyckere 1 The Metropolitan Catholic Almanac and Laity's Directory for the United States with an Appendix Containing the Canadian Directory etc. (Baltimore: John Murphy & Co., 1860). 2 Sadlier's Catholic Directory, Almanac and Ordo: 1860 (New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co., 1860).

482 Oregon City Vancouver Is. Nesqually Regular Clergy 0 2 Durien OMI, Villemar OMI 3 Chirouze OMI, Richard OMI, Joset Non-Louvain Secular Clergy Louvain Secular Clergy 6 +F.N. Blanchet, Delahanty, Piette, Lebas, F.X. Blanchet, Mackin, 8 Croquet, Fierens, Deileman, Vermeersch, Thibau, Goens, Glorieux, Gibney, 4 +Demers, Maloney, Mandart, Rondeault 4 Seghers, Haupts, Jonckau, Brabant Total Clergy 14 11? 12 SJ,? 5 +A.M.A.Blanchet, St. Onge, Prefontaine, Brouillet, Duffy 4 Junger, Mans, Brondel, DeRyckere Oregon City Vancouver Is. Nesqually Regular Clergy Vanzina SJ, Tosi SJ, Guidi SJ, Camana SJ?, Grassi SJ, Richard OMI, Chirouze OMI Non-Louvain Secular Clergy Louvain Secular Clergy 6 +F.N. Blanchet, McCormick, Lebas, F.X. Blanchet, Macken, DeRoo 13 Fierens, Delorme, Van Lin, Verhaag, Glorieux, Thibau, Conrardi, Vermeersch, Dieleman, Croquet, Heinrich, Orth, Gibney, ( Goens allowed to return to Louvain. Sadliers Catholic Directory, 1875, p.90-93) 4 +Demers, Mandart, Rondeault, Kirley 4 Seghers, Brabant, Jonckau, Leroy, Total Clergy A.M.A. Blanchet, Brouillet, Boulet, Richard, Prefontaine, Duffy 4 Junger, Schram, Hylebos, Brondel, (Mans goes to SJ s), (DeRyckere???) 3 Sadlier's Catholic Directory, Almanac and Ordo: 1870 (New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co., 1870). 4 Sadlier's Catholic Directory, Almanac and Ordo: 1875 (New York: J. D. Sadlier & Co., 1875).

483 Oregon City Vancouver Is. Nesqually Vic. Idaho Regular Clergy 0 7 Canistrelli SJ, Joset SJ, Grassi SJ, Diomedi SJ, Caruana SJ, Raiberti SJ, Parodi SJ, 12 Tosi SJ, Giorda SJ, Joset SJ, Cataldo SJ, Morillo SJ, Gazzoli SJ, Van Gorp SJ, Bandini SJ, Folchi SJ, Menestrey SJ, D Aste SJ, Non-Louvain Secular Clergy Louvain Secular Clergy 11 +F.N. Blanchet, Delorme, Metayer, McCormick, Lebas, Archambault, Maken, F.X. Blanchet, Herman, Gaudon, DeRoo, 15 +Seghers, Fierens, Orth, Glorieux, Thibau, Vermersch, Dols, Capelle, Stampfl, Van Lin, Heinrich, Croquet, Gibney, Dieleman, Bronsgeest, +Brondel, Althoff in Alaska Others not reported in U.S. section. 6 Cesari, Prefontaine, Manicouloux, Duffy, Boulet, 6 +Junger, Schram, Kusters, Kauten, Hylebos, Paaps, Total Clergy Ravalli SJ, 2 +Lootens, (ret), Mesplie, 2 Verhaag, De Ryckere, 5 Sadlier's Catholic Directory, Almanac and Ordo: 1881 (New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co., 1881).

484 Oregon City Vancouver Is Nesqually Vic. Idaho Helena Regular Clergy Non- Louvain Secular Clergy Louvain Secular Clergy Total Clergy 6 Wachter OSB, Held OSB, Oder? OSB, Hovat OSB, Frei OSB, Ruettiman OSB 11 O Dea, Metayer, Lebas, Macken, Delorme, White, F.X. Blanchet, Hermann, De Latte, DeRoo, Marceau, 15 +Seghers, Fierens, Thibau, Gibney, Orth, Vermeersch, Capelle, Heinrich, Croquet, Dieleman, Bronsgeest, Rauw, Conrardi, Faber, Straeten Mandart, Rondeault, Donkele Jonckau (administrator), Van Nevel, Heynen, Altlhoff, Brabant, Eussen, Lemmens, 8 Cataldo SJ, Jacquet SJ, Canestrellig SJ, Folchi SJ, Caruana SJ, Raiberti SJ, Parodi SJ, Robaut SJ 8 Becker, Boulet, Prefontaine, Manicouloux, Duffy, Cesari, Frei, Verbrugge? 11 +Junger, Schram, Meuwese, Kauten, Claessens, Hylebos, Kusters, Flohr, Paaps, Simon, Demanez, Tosi SJ, Tornielli SJ, Morvillo SJ, Diomedi SJ, Joset SJ, +Lootens (ret.), Hartlieb +Glorieux (VA elect), (Verhaag?) Guidi SJ, Daimani SJ, Bendini SJ, Jenna SJ, Ebersville SJ, Paladino SJ, Van Gorp SJ, Prando SJ, Menetrey sj D Aste SJ, Barcelo SJ 2 Halton, Lindesmith 3 +Brondel, DeRyckere, Dols, 6 Sadlier's Catholic Directory, Almanac and Ordo: 1885 (New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co, 1985).

485 MAPS Map I: Belgium and Western Europe from 2430 m Altitude Google Earth, Accessed January 10, Europa Technologies, Image 2007 NASA, Image 2007 TerraMetrics

486 Map II: North Pacific Coast from 2430 m Altitude Google Earth, Accessed January 10, Europa Technologies, Image 2007 NASA, Image 2007 TerraMetrics 457

487 458 Map III: Alaska from 1711 m Altitude Google Earth, Accessed January 10, Europa Technologies, Image 2007 NASA, Image 2007 TerraMetrics

488 Map IV: Idaho and Montana from 715 m Altitude Google Earth, Accessed January 10, Europa Technologies, Image 2007 NASA, Image 2007 TerraMetrics 459

489 460 Map V: Oregon from 551 m Altitude Google Earth, Accessed September 10, Europa Technologies, Image 2007 NASA, Image 2007 TerraMetrics

490 Map VI: Vancouver Island from 436 m Altitude Google Earth, Accessed January 10, Europa Technologies, Image 2007 NASA, Image 2007 TerraMetrics 461