Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 17.djvu/669

 SAIKT OI.OUD 653 SAINT'DENIS

under the Capuchins of Mt. Calvary, Wisconsin, abroad, and returned amply equipped to take up

and his seminary training was completed at the the many different departments newly created to

American CoUege in Rome, where he received the extend the usefulness of the educational establish-

degree of J. C. D. Upon his return to his native ment under his direction, so that from a small

country he taught for several years at the Seminary college St. John's has taken on the dimensions of a

of St. Paul ana was then recalled to his diocese as university. So widely known and fully appreciated

gastor of the Pro-Cathedral of the Holy Angels in did his personality become among the other Bene-

t. Cloud. His chief pastoral care was the work dictines in the United States that for twelve years

of the schools. He built and brou^t to the highest Abbot Exigel was the President of the American

point of efficiency the Cathedral Hi([h School, which Cassinese Congregation.

has been affiliated with the State University. The death of Bishop Trobe coccurred 15 Decem- To Rev. Cornelius Wittmann,0. S. B., the dio- ber, 1921. The venerable prelate was bom in cese owes the establishment of its first elementary Biluggratz, Carinthia, 16 Julv, 1838. He received school; in fact he is the founder of the first school his elementar^r education in the schools of his home of anjT kind that existed within the territory now village, and his college course in the gymnasium at comprised in the St. Cloud jurisdiction. In his Laibacn. Upon the completion of ^is collegiate honor a commemorative bronze tablet has been studies he entered the Semmary of Laibach. While erected in the new St. Cloud Hig^ School of Me- there he met the saintly Bishop Baraga of Northern chanics and Arts. Bom in Bavaria on 11 October, Michigan, to whose eloquent appeal for workers in 1828, he came to St. Vincent's Abbey in Pennsyl- the American mission field he gave ea«er and gen- vania at the age of twenty-four. Two years later erous response. He arrived in New York 4 April, he came to Minnesota at the request of Bishop 1864, whence he proceeded to St. Vincent's Semi- Cretin of St. Paul, by whom he was ordained priest, nary at Beatty, Pa. Having completed his studies. In 1850 he established the first school in Steams he came to St. Paul, where Bishop Thomas L. County and in October of the same year he erected Grace ordained him to the priesthood 8 September, a building, in what is now the city of St. Cloud, 1865. The first pastoral charge assigned to him that was to serve the twofold purpose of church was at Belle Prairie, Minn., the earliest parish and school. In 1857 he became one of the incor- within the limits of the present Diocese of St. Cloud, porators and the first professors of St. John's Semi- In 1866 he was sent to Wabasha, to which a large nary, which has since developed into St. John's number of missions were attached. Many parishes Umversit^ at CoUegeville. He was activel3r engaged in Southern Minnesota owe their existence to his in parochial and educational work until failing eye- untiring zeal. In 1887 he was called to St. Paul, sight compelled him to return in 1904 from Wash- where he founded and developed St. Agnes' parish, ixigton, whither he had ^one as a volimteer to help After the deaUi of Bishop Marty he was conse- establish the new Benedictine Abbey at Lacey. He crated third Bishop of St. Cloud by the Most Rev. continued to reside at St. John's Abbey, Collegeville, John Ireland, 26 September, 1897. During seven- until his death on 22 September, 1921. t^n years he administered the affairs of the dio- The cause of charity suffered a great loss when cese with the same holy zeal and quiet abilitv that Mother Mary Rose, O. S. F., died at the hospital he had so constantly shown in his pastoral work, in Breckenrid^e, in 1921. She was bom in Canada Monsignor Bernard Richter of Melrose died 18 De- in the little village of Assumption, near Montreal, cember, 1921. Bom in Westphalia in 1853, his 8 Apnl, 1857. Her parents were French Canadians first clerical studies were made at the seminary of and her name in the world was Rose de Lima Ethier. Miinster, in his native province. These studies She was eicditeen years old when she entered a were completed at St. Francis Seminary ^ Milwaukee, convent of Franciscans. At the end of her time of whither he came in 1874. He was ordained in 1877. religious probation she labored for several years in His first field of priestly labor was at White Lake, the negro missions of Georgia^ and then, with a South Dakota. He was then made pastor of the little band of courageous Franciscan Nuns, came to cathedral of St. Cloud by the first bishop, Zardetti. the Diocese of St. Cloud, where they founded the upon whose resignation Fr. Richter was appointed diocesan Franciscan Congregation. Por many years to Melrose. There he spent twenty-seven years of Mother Rose directed the destinies of the little his pastoral activities. He was appomted a Domestic community, whose mother-house and novitiate she Prelate of His Holiness in 1912. established at Little Falls, Minn. The Sisters are In common with their brethren throughout the now in charge of 5 hospitals, 2 homes for the aged, United States, the Catholics of the Diocese of St. an orphan asylum, and an infants' home. Cloud bore their fair proportion of the burden On 27 November, 1921, occurred the death of imposed by the country's participation in the World Right Rev. Peter Engel, O. S. B., fourth Abbot of War. Six of the priests saw service with the army, the Abbey of St. John the Baptist, at Collegeville, Four were overseas and the other two were employed Minn. Bom 3 Febmary, 1856, at St. Nicholas, in camps in the United States. The graduate nurses Wisconsin, he received his early education in the of all the hospitals were prompt in offering their parochial schools of that locality. Taking up his services to the Government, one hospital naving coUegiate course in St. John's University as an the distinction of one himdred per cent. 9f its aspirant for the order, he made his religious pro- eraduates accepted for war work at dome and abroad, fession 19 July, 1875, and was ordained pnest, Catholic young men enlisted in both branches of the 15 December^ 1878. After the demise of Abbot service, and priests and people in their respective Bernard Locnikar, he was elected abbot 28 Novem- localities were active in every kind of war and wel- ber, 1894, and solemnly blessed 11 July, 1895. fare work. In this they followed the example of Under his able and paternal administration the work their iDishop, who has the proud distinction of having and influence of his monastery were very widely been publicly eulogized in the United States Senate extended, and from St. John's sprang the monastery Chamoer by the senior Senator from Minnesota, the of Lacey, Washington, and the Abbey NuUius of Honorable Knute Nelson. St. Peter, Saskatchewan, Canada. Himself a ripe

scholar, he bent every effort to raise the standard Saint-Denis (or Reunion), Diocese op (Sancti

of studies at St. John's University, and in this he Diontbii; cf. C. E., XIII-7344b), includes the

succeeded wonderfully. Many of his young Fathers island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean, 350 miles

were sent to the different universities at home and east of Madagascar. The diocese was formerly a