Msgr. Francis Glenn was Pastor of St. Paul Parish in Butler, PA for a quarter of a century. Msgr. Glenn was a great role model for me on how to be a wise and effective pastor. Over time I learned that he had been the Archivist for the Diocese of Pittsburgh and told me many stories about the Catholic Church in Western Pennsylvania. One day we talked about St. Peter’s Parish in Butler, which was known as the German church because this was where many Catholics from Germany worshiped on Sunday starting in the mid-nineteenth century. The transition to the use of English at St. Peter’s occurred sometime during the First World War. The German immigrants came to the United States because of the civil unrest and lack of opportunity in Germany after the Napoleonic Wars. One of these German couples, Thomas and Josephine Stehle, arrived in Butler in the 1830s. Thomas and Josephine are my great-great grandparents. Msgr. Glenn told me that it was a challenge to find German-speaking priests to minister to the congregation in Butler. At one point the Redemptorist Fathers were stationed at St. Philomena’s church in Pittsburgh took charge of the mission in Butler. St. John Neumann was at the time the Pastor of St. Philomena’s and the Superior of the Redemptorists. Msgr. Glenn said that there is no evidence that St. John Neumann ever ministered in Butler. But one of the Redemptorist priests who did minister at St. Peter’s was Blessed Francis Seelos. Msgr. Glenn told me that the way we know that this is that we can see the signature of Fr. Francis Seelos in the Sacramental Registers of St. Peter’s. Let’s talk about this Redemptorist priest who was known as the cheerful ascetic. Born in Southern Bavaria in 1819, Francis studied philosophy and theology in Munich. In 1843 he came to the United States to minister as a Redemptorist among the German-speaking Catholics. Ordained at the end of 1844, he was assigned to St. Philomena’s Parish in Pittsburgh as the assistant to St. John Neumann. He remained in that role for six years. The next three years Father Seelos was the superior of the same community and novice master. Several years in parish ministry in Maryland followed along with responsibility for training Redemptorist students. In 1860, when Bishop Michael O’Connor, the first bishop of Pittsburgh received permission to retire so that he could enter the Society of Jesus, he recommended Fr. Seelos as his successor. Becoming the Bishop of Pittsburgh was not something that Fr. Seelos desired. When he later learned that he had been passed over due to an anti-German sentiment among the Irish-American Catholics, he organized a celebration for the Redemptorist seminarians, declaring “I would rather be bishop of my students than bishop of Pittsburgh.” During the Civil War Fr. Seelos was worried because only priests and not seminarians were exempt from the draft. When his personal appeal to President Lincoln to exempt seminarians from the draft was not successful, he persuaded the bishop to protect the seminarians from the draft by ordaining them immediately. In 1863 he was appointed superior of the Redemptorists mission band and traveled throughout the country leading retreats. After contracting yellow fever while visiting the sick, Francis Seelos died in New Orleans on October 5, 1867. He was only forty-eight years old at the time of his death. He was beatified in 2000. I am going to finish this column on Blessed Francis Seelos with this quotation made by Pope Saint John Paul II at the beatification homily: “To the abandoned and the lost he preached the message of Jesus Christ, ‘the source of eternal salvation’ (Hebrews 5:9), and the hours spent in the confessional convinced many to return to God. Today, Blessed Francis Seelos invites the members of the Church to deepen their union with Christ in the Sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist.” Until next week, Fr. John