Johannes Bapst

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Johannes Bapst (b. at La Roche, Fribourg, Switzerland, 17 December 1815; d. at Mount Hope, Maryland, U.S.A., 2 November 1887) was a Swiss Jesuit missionary and educator. He became the first President of Boston College.

[edit] Life

At twelve he began his studies at the college of Fribourg, and on 30 September, 1835, entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus. He was ordained priest, 31 December, 1846, after the usual course of studies and teaching.

He arrived in New York in 1848 and, ignorant of English, was sent to minister to the Native Americans at Old Town, Maine. They had been without a priest for twenty years. He founded several temperance societies in Maine.

In 1850 he left Old Town for Eastport. His work immediately began to attract attention, both for its results among Catholics and the number of converts who were brought into the Church. As his missions covered a large extent of territory, he became generally known through the State. When the Know-Nothing excitement broke out he was at Ellsworth. He was disliked as a Catholic priest, and particularly because of his efforts to establish a Catholic school there. On 3 June his house was attacked, and on 5 June, 1851, in pursuance of an order of the Town Council, which was directed to be published in the papers, he was dragged out of the residence of one of his people, was tarred and feathered, and ridden on a rail to the woods outside the town, and ordered to leave the neighbourhood. Some acounts have it that there was an attempt to burn him to death, which, for some reason or other, was prevented. He recovered from his injuries and continued his work.

The outrage at Ellsworth met with general condemnation. Father Bapst built the first church at Bangor, Maine, which was dedicated in 1856. He remained there for three years and was then sent to Boston College, as rector of what was at that time the house of higher studies for the Jesuit scholastics. He was afterwards superior of all the houses of Canada and New York, and subsequently superior of a Residence in Providence, R.I..

[edit] References

  • Woodstock Letters, XVI, 324; XVII, 218, 361; XVIII, 83, 1;;29, 304; XX, 61, 241, 406;
  • Shea, Hist. of the Catholic Church in U.S. (New York, 1904).

[edit] External link

This article incorporates text from the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913.