July 2, 2023 - "Saint John Neumann"

I am continuing a new series of columns devoted to saints who lived and worked in the United States.  Today we look at the fourth bishop of Philadelphia:  St. John Neumann whose feast day is January 5.  John Nepomucene Neumann was born in 1811 in the Czech Republic.  John undertook seminary studies for the priesthood in Prague.  But when it came time for his ordination, the bishop was ill.  Ordinations were cancelled that year.  When John was told that they did not need any more priests in his home diocese, he departed for New York where Bishop John Dubois accepted him as a candidate for the priesthood and ordained him in 1836.  John was a gifted linguist and worked well with the immigrant populations.  After working with German immigrants in the Rochester area, John joined the newly arrived Redemptorist missionary order whose novitiate was in Pittsburgh in 1840.  Several years after joining the Redemptorists he became the Provincial Superior for North America.  In 1848, Neumann became a naturalized American citizen.  In 1851, when he was forty-one, John Neumann became the fourth bishop of Philadelphia.
 
During the eight years of Bishop Neumann’s administration new parish churches were completed at the rate of nearly one per month.  He was responsible for the creation of Beneficial Bank, a mutual savings bank to support the financial needs of the Catholic community in Philadelphia.  He was particularly interested in providing educational opportunities to immigrant children.  Neumann became the first bishop to establish a diocesan school system, as Catholic parents wanted their children to receive a Catholic education.  Under his administration the number of parochial schools in his diocese increased from one to two hundred.  The catechisms that he published in 1852 became standard texts.  Neumann also introduced the Forty Hours devotion to the United States.
 
Neumann actively invited religious institutes to establish new houses within the diocese to provide educational and social services.  The Christian Brothers and the School Sisters of Notre Dame began to work in Philadelphia with his encouragement.  The School Sisters of Notre Dame had come from Germany.  Once settled in Philadelphia they assisted in religious instruction in the ever-growing number of parishes and schools.  They also staffed an orphanage.  When Bishop Neumann was on a visit to Europe in 1854, he was informed that a young widow and three companions wanted to establish a religious community to serve the needs of the people of Philadelphia.  When he asked the advice of Blessed Pius IX about this new community, the Holy Father suggested that they adopt the Rule of St. Francis.  That marked the beginning of the Franciscan Sisters of Philadelphia.  Later these Franciscan Sisters established missions in Syracuse, Buffalo, New York City, and Pittsburgh which all became diocesan communities under the leadership of the local bishop. He invited some of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary to come east when those Sisters were having trouble with the local bishop. Those Sisters who came east became the basis of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Scranton and Philadelphia.  Bishop Neumann had come to know and respect the Oblate Sisters of Providence, a congregation of African-American women that was founded by Haitian refugees in Baltimore.  As bishop of Philadelphia he intervened to save them from dissolution at a point in time when the Oblates had little support from the local clergy.   
 
Neumann arranged for the Redemptorists to provide spiritual assistance to the Oblates after the Sulpicians were told to withdraw any work with congregations of women religious.
 
Neumann’s fluency in several languages endeared him to the many new immigrant communities in Philadelphia.  As well as ministering to newcomers in his native German, Neumann also spoke Italian fluently.  With the Potato Famine many Irish families came to the United States and settled in the large cities.  Because many of the recently arrived Irish spoke Gaelic, Neumann made the effort to learn the language.  The story is told that he became so proficient at speaking Gaelic that many Irish were convinced that he was actually Irish!  After he had finished giving a talk in Gaelic at one of the parishes established for the Irish immigrants, one woman was heard saying to the other, “Thanks be to God that we now have an Irish bishop here in Philadelphia!”
 
Exhausted from his labors John Neumann died on January 5, 1860.  He was only forty-eight.  He was buried according to his request at St. Peter’s Church in Philadelphia in the undercroft floor below the high altar. Neumann was beatified by Pope St. Paul VI on October 13, 1963, and canonized by him on June 19, 1977.
 
Let me end this column with this quotation from St. John Neumann: “Everyone who breathes…has a mission, has a work. We are not sent into this world for nothing; we are not born at random…. God sees every one of us; He creates every soul…for a purpose. As Christ has His work, we too have ours; as He rejoiced to do His work, we must rejoice in ours also.”
 
Until next week,
Fr. John