Independence Day Part II

07-06-2025Letter from the PastorFr. Don Kline, V.F.

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

The Catholic Church is now the largest religious denomination in the United States, and it may be hard to imagine that we were once considered missionary territory. However, in the 1840s, Catholic missionaries from Europe responded to the call to help spread the Faith in America. Two French nuns came as missionaries, teaching and serving the people of the Midwestern United States, then the western frontier of our nation. St. Théodore Guérin spread the Faith by founding many schools in Indiana, while St. Rose Philippine Duchesne founded several religious congregations of nuns and ministered to the Native American tribes throughout the Missouri Territory.

Two Redemptorist priests from Germany came to America as missionaries during the start of the great migration from Europe in the 1850s. At one point these two holy men lived in the same rectory in Pittsburgh. St. John Neuman became the fourth Bishop of Philadelphia, and his gift with languages helped the newly arrived immigrants for Europe. His companion, Blessed Francis Xavier Seelos eventually ministered to the Catholics in New Orleans and died there while taking caring of the sick during a yellow fever epidemic.

In Hawaii, St. Damien de Veuster sacrificed his life to care for the victims of leprosy or Hansen’s Disease who were quarantined on the island of Molokai. He had arrived in Hawaii as a missionary from Belgium in 1864. When leprosy became an epidemic in the Hawaiian Islands and those with the disease were sent to Molokai in 1873, he volunteered to live with them, as their priest and care provider. He eventually contracted leprosy, and as he lay dying in 1886, he sent out multiple letters requesting the assistance of nursing nuns to come and take his place. St. Maryanne Cope from Syracuse, New York responded to his call, and her order of nuns still care for the few remaining patients with Hansen’s Disease on Molokai.

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, who founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in northern Italy, came to New York in 1889, specifically at the request of Pope Leo XIII, to help the Italian immigrants who were coming to America. At the time of her death in Chicago in 1917, she had founded numerous schools, orphanages, and hospitals, and she became the first U.S. citizen canonized a saint. Blessed Michael J. McGivney, the son of Irish immigrants, was born in Connecticut, and after becoming a priest, he founded the Knights of Columbus in 1882 as a mutual aid society to provide financial assistance to Catholics who were still struggling to assimilate into the American economy. At the time of his death in 1890, he was also known for his tireless work among his parishioners. Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich was born in Bayonne, New Jersey in 1901. She became a teaching nun who was known for her wisdom and piety.

St. Katherine Drexel was a wealthy Philadelphia heiress who used her fortune to found the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament in 1891, dedicated to working among African-Americans and the Native Americans in the southwestern United States. Blessed Solanus Casey was born in Wisconsin in 1870 and became a Capuchin priest. His greatest ministry was serving as the porter for his monastery in Detroit where he was known as a wise spiritual counselor and miracle worker, healing countless people by the time of his death in 1957. Blessed Stanley Rother was an American priest from Oklahoma who was a missionary to Guatemala and was murdered there for the Faith in 1981.

As we celebrate our nation’s independence this year, spend a few minutes admiring our beautiful apse when you come to Mass. As you thank God for the many freedoms that we enjoy, say a prayer to our Catholic heroes whose many sacrifices firmly made our Catholic Faith a part of the fabric of life in the United States of America, and ask for their intercession so that we can continue to share their legacy of spreading the Faith throughout this great nation. God bless America! I hope you had a happy Fourth of July!

God Bless,

Fr. Don Kline