Today marks the death of Father Angelo Secchi (1818-1878), Jesuit scientist and inventor. Born in northern Italy, he joined the Jesuits at age sixteen. Ordained in 1847, he was soon assigned to direct the observatory at the Gregorian University, a position he held until his death. His contributions to science were numerous. He was active in oceanography, meterology and physics. He was the first to make systematic use of spectroscopy in stellar classification. He also invented what is known as... Read more

Because so many of the early professional baseball players were Irish Catholics, looking at old Catholic cemeteries is like going through a Who’s Who of Baseball history. Today in 1934 marks the death of Baseball Hall of Fame player and manager John J. McGraw (1873-1934) (seen here on the left), who is buried in a Catholic cemetery, Baltimore’s New Cathedral Cemetery. Looking at Find a Grave, I noticed that there are a total of seventeen baseball players listed as Major... Read more

Today in 1935 marks the day that Raymond A. Kearney (1902-1956) was consecrated an Auxiliary Bishop for the Brooklyn Diocese. Born in Jersey City, his family moved to Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant section when he was a child. He was a parishioner at Nativity of Our Blessed Lord Church, where he attended the parochial school. He then attended the Jesuits’ Brooklyn Preparatory School and went on to Holy Cross in Worcester. He was assigned to the North American College in Rome, where... Read more

Today marks the death of Father Felix Varela (1788-1853), priest, scholar, and Cuban patriot. Orphaned at three, he was raised by his grandfather in Florida. He returned to Cuba at fourteen to study for the priesthood. Ordained at age 23, he became a seminary professor. He would eventually publish seven books on philosophy and social science. In 1821 he was elected to represent Cuba, then a Spanish colony, in Spain at the cortes. There he argued for Cuban autonomy and... Read more

Today marks the day in 1908 that the First Mass was celebrated by Father Nicodemus Petjus at Transfiguration Church in the Maspeth section of Queens. The parish was founded as Queens’ first (and only) Lithuanian Catholic parish. By the turn of the century Lithuanians were moving into western Queens in large numbers, and they wanted a parish to meet their needs. (Brooklyn already had three Lithuanian parishes: St. Mary of the Angels and Annunciation, both in Williamsburg, and St. George... Read more

Today marks the death of Mary Augustine Giesen (1860-1950), foundress of the Sisters of St. Francis of Maryville. Born in Minnesota, she joined the Sisters of St. Mary in St. Louis as a young woman. In 1894 she and six sisters founded a separate community, the Sisters of St. Francis of Maryville. That year they founded a hospital in Maryville. While the Sisters of St. Mary worked largely in the St. Louis urban area, the Sisters of St. Francis worked... Read more

Today marks the death of Bishop Augustin M. Blanchet (1797-1887), the first and only Bishop of Walla Walla. Born in Quebec, he was ordained a priest in 1821. His older brother Francis N. Blanchet also became a priest and an archbishop. For twenty-five years he worked in rural parishes and in Montreal before he was named Bishop of Walla Walla in what was in now Washington State. His brother was archbishop of Oregon City. In 1850 the diocese was canonically... Read more

The website for the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester has a great section on its former presidents, and it seems that the college’s president during the Civil War years was quite an interesting figure. Father James Clark (1809-1885) was the first West Point graduate to join the Jesuits. Born in Pennsylvania, he entered the United States Military Academy in 1825 and graduated with the likes of future Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Joseph E. Johnston in the... Read more

They weren’t actually founded on this day, but Black History Month makes this a good time to talk about the Josephites (advertised here in this 1890’s flyer). Officially named St. Joseph’s Society of the Sacred Heart in 1893, the Josephites are unique among American religious communities. They started as an offshoot of the Mill Hill Fathers, an English missionary society that answered the call to evangelize America’s newly freed slaves. In 1871, the Mill Hills took over St. Francis Xavier,... Read more

Today marks the founding of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary (RSHM), a community founded in 1849 in Montpellier, France. The community was founded by Father Jean Gailhac (1802-1890), a diocesan priest, and Appolllonie Cure (1809-1849), a widow. Their first apostolic work was to run a women’s shelter and an orphanage. Appollonie became the first superior as Mother St. Jean (seen here). The RSHM’s operated schools in France, and by the 1870’s they had moved to other countries.... Read more