“Father Matthew Kelly”

Today marks the death of Venerable Samuel Mazzuchelli, O.P. (1806-1864), a pioneer missionary priest who established over twenty parishes in the American Midwest Born in Milan, he joined the Dominicans at age seventeen and came to America five years later. In 1828, he was ordained a priest in Cincinnati by the Dominican Bishop Edward Fenwick. Father Mazzuchelli was assigned as a missionary to an area covering Illinois, Iowa and Wisconsin. When he came to America he barely knew English, but by 1833 he published a Winnebago prayer book, and the following year he published a liturgical almanac in Chippewa, the first printed material of any kind in what is now Wisconsin. In 1847, he founded the first community of women religious in Wisconsin, the Dominican Sisters of Sinisawa. A much loved figure, his Irish parishioners called him “Father Matthew Kelly.” In 1864 he died after contracting an illness from a sick parishioner he visited. In 1993 Pope John Paul II declared him Venerable.