QUARTERLY NEWSLETTER OF THE CLERICS OF SAINT VIATOR Volume 6, Number 3
Winter 2002
F A I T H
160 Years in America First Viatorians Arrive in the U.S. in 1842
By Fr. James Fana le, C.S. V
Itis a little known fact that six Viatorian Brothers, including two Americans, arrived in St. Louis, Missouri, on January 31, 1842. 160 years ago Fr. Louis Querbes, our founder, responsed to the entreaties of Bishop Joseph Rosati of St. Louis. The Canadian Viatorians, who arrived at Bourbonnais Grove, Illinois, in September 1865, were not the first sons of Fr. Querbes to labor in the United States as is widely believed. Rosati had been named the first bishop of the newly created diocese of St. Louis in 1827, and by 1840 he had enlisted five communities of religious women to instruct the girls of his diocese. But the situation for the boys was problematic. The Catholic boys of the city, most of them poor, their numbers growing yearly with the waves of German and Irish immigrants, had little opportunity for schooling. St. Louis had one Catholic grammar school for boys
run by Alexander McDonald in a single room over the downtown firehouse. He and a former student, William Shepherd, wanted to form a community of teaching brothers for St. Louis. R1 c hAn L'.&.IJ.&.L'-'1""
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advice to Fr. James Fontbonne, a priest from Lyons, France, who had accompanied the French Sisters of St. Joseph to Carondelet, Missouri. The Sisters had opened a girl's school in Carondelet. In November 1838, Fr. Fontbonne wrote to the Vicar General of Lyons, Fr. Jean Cholleton, with Bishop Rosati's request. Explaining that the human resources of the Marists were stretched thin, Fr. Cholleton suggested another community of brothers, the Viatorians, whose founder, Fr. Querbes, was well known to him. This community had just received the approval of Pope Gregory XVI, with Fr. Cholleton himself as an influential patron. Bishop
Rosati happily accepted the suggestion. For his part, Fr. Querbes, despite the numerous requests already received for his brothers, committed the new congregation to the work of a foreign mission "flo7 ~-1-"h
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and absolute trust in the providence of God. Rosati suggested to Querbes, a novel arrangement. He would send his two American candidates; McDonald and Shepherd, to the motherhouse at Vourles, France, where they would share in the first fervor of the community, making their novitiate, learning French, and teaching English to the brothers destined for the American mission. The Americans arrived at Vourles on June 21, 1839. Shortly after, McDonald would write his Bishop: "We all live happily here. I have been much edified to witness their ready obedience to their director, and the love and charity they have towards one another, and towards
all men. If you can get these brothers established in the diocese of St. Louis, it will be the crowning of all your zeal." Bishop Rosati visited Fr. Querbes and the brothers and Vourles on August 3, 1840, Vv"'f-lcrl fi...-Lal plarLS vv路ere laid for the mission. A building for a school was to be purchased in St. Louis; a farmhouse and sixty acres of property owned by the diocese in southwestern Illinois (Fraire du Long township), about thirty miles south of St. Louis, would be given to the brothers for their novitiate. The priest-director of the mission would be Fr. Fontbonne, who had planned to join the Viatorians. On October 22, 1841, the six brothers set out from Vourles for America. With the two Americans, were Brothers Thibaudier, LaHaye, Pavy, and Lignon. They reached St. Louis on January 31, 1842, but Bishop Rosati was not there to greet them. He was at his missian in Haiti, en route to a C011till11ed 011 Page 5