Marquette League

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The Marquette League, which existed from 1904 to 1991, was a Roman Catholic fund-raising organisation in the USA, supporting mission work among Native Americans.

[edit] History

The society was founded in New York, in May 1904, by Rev. H. G. Ganss, of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It had a directorate of twenty-five members, chosen at first from the councils of the St. Vincent de Paul Society. It was a layman's movement to co-operate with the ecclesiastical authorities in helping to preserve the Catholic Faith among the Catholic Indians of the United States, and convert those still living in paganism; to assist in the support of the mission schools; to supply funds for establishing new missions, building chapels and maintaining trained catechists; and to endeavour in every legitimate way to improve the condition, spiritual and material, of the American Indian.

During the first six years of the League's existence (to 1910) it established mission chapels at Holy Rosary and St. Francis missions, South Dakota; for the Moquis Indians of Northern Arizona; for the Winnebagoes of Nebraska; and two chapels on the Fort Berthold Reservation, North Dakota. Several catechists were kept in the mission field, and gifts of clothing and money were sent each year to the mission schools, together with vestments and chalices for the different chapels built by the League. The League worked with the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions, Washington,