Joseph Salzmann

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Joseph Salzmann, one of the best known Roman Catholic pioneer priests of the Northwest of the USA, was the Austrian founder of several Catholic educational institutions, including the prominent St. Francis Provincial Seminary (St. Francis, Wisconsin) known as the "Salesianum".

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He was born at Münzbach in the Diocese of Linz, Upper Austria on 17 August, 1819. He was ordained in 1842 and laboured very successfully in his home diocese until 1847, when an urgent appeal of the visiting first Bishop of Milwaukee, John Martin Henni ripened his long-felt desire to devote his life to the foreign missions.

Having come to Milwaukee in October, 1847, he was appointed to a small country mission, but soon his extraordinary success induced the bishop to make him pastor of St. Mary's congregation at Milwaukee. There the German free-thinkers resorted to every kind of insult and calumny to thwart the success of this intrepid champion of the Catholic church, and he encountered a long and bitter combat with them. Feeling the lamentable scarcity of priests Salzmann conceived the idea of founding a seminary. To collect the necessary funds he went from state to state, and after many difficulties, on 29 January, 1856, the institution was opened with twenty-five students. Rev. Michael Heiss, afterwards Archbishop of Milwaukee, was its first rector. The seminary became one of the most prominent in the States. Several hundreds of priests and twenty-three bishops call it their Alma Mater.

Salzmann is also the founder of the first Catholic normal school in the United States and of the Pio Nono College. After years of hard struggles the Catholic Normal School of the Holy Family found a solid basis, yearly sending out efficient teachers to parochial schools.

The American branch of the St. Cecilia Society for the promotion of genuine church music owes its existence and growth to him.

Salzmann died at St. Francis, Wisconsin on 17 January, 1874. He was praised as having a noble character full of holy enthusiasm for the cause of God and the Catholic Church, fearless in the defence of truth, an eloquent preacher, a warm friend and father of his students and a wise counsellor to priests and bishops.

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