 Fr. Joseph Sadoc Alemany, OP
There is no history more interesting, no romance more fascinating, no tragedy more
touching than the record of the lives and labors of the first missionaries sent from Spain
to Christianize California. Indeed, much has
been recorded of them, though still more is left unsaid.
Historian and novelist, poet and painter, have all drawn abundant material
from the deeds of Junipero Serra and his noble band of followers; whose joys and sorrows,
conquests and persecutions have come to be regarded as inseparably connected with the
literature of the Golden West.
But few and far between are the
tributes paid to another class of missionaries, the apostles of the State of California;
the heroes who tended and watered with their tears the young and struggling
church—the pioneer priests of the archdiocese of San Francisco. They were sons of almost every nation in Europe. Among them were Irishmen, Frenchmen, Germans,
Belgians, Italians and Spaniards. Side by
side they labored, unmindful of racial differences, intent only upon the accomplishment of
one common end, the propagation of Christ’s true Church. But as an army, powerful though it be, can
accomplish little without a strong central figure planning the maneuvers and guiding the
attacks; neither can the forces of the Church pitted against error and falsehood, emerge
victorious unless a master hand direct her movements.
And never was this need more keenly felt than in California at the
dawn of the second half of the nineteenth century. The
country was part of the vast territory wrested from Mexico at the close of the war of
1847. The two chief factors comprising
it’s population, the Spanish-Mexican element and the Americans, were in constant
disagreement. Add to this the discovery of
gold in 1848, which attracted immigrants from every part of the known world. Chaos reigned supreme. There was neither God nor ruler for the
“forty-niner.” Such were
conditions, when on September the ninth, 1850, California entered the Union and law and
order began once more to dwell along the Pacific slope.
The American hierarchy which met at Baltimore in 1849, saw at once
the absolute necessity of ecclesiastical organization, and of a genius capable of
directing it. They petitioned Rome; and her
response was a leader such as the clergy and faithful of California found in the subject
of this sketch. True there had been a bishop
in that region prior to American occupation, but the Right Reverend Francisco Garcia Diego
y Moreno, O. F. M., had gone to his reward on April 30th, 1846, leaving the diocese to be
ruled by a Vicar.
Joseph Sadoc Alemany was born July 13th, 1814, at Vich,
an episcopal city in the Province of Tarragona, Spain.
He received his early education in the schools, which but a short time
before had rung with the triumphs of Jaime Balmes, one of the greatest intellectual
luminaries of the nineteenth century, and while still a youth, sought and obtained
admission to the Order of Friars Preachers.
When in 1835, Christine of Spain, at the instigation of the Jewish
minister Mendizabal, issued the decree of secularization or banishment from the realm, the
Dominicans were among the first to feel the weight of this cruel law. Their Churches, Priories, Houses of Studies and
Novitiates were forced to close their doors and the Religious ruthlessly scattered
broadcast over the continent of Europe. Those
not yet ordained betook themselves to Rome, where they could continue in safety their
interrupted studies. Among these was young
Alemany. For two years he read theology under
the Masters for whom the convent of La Quercia near Viterbo was justly famed, and in 1837
he was raised to the priesthood by Bishop, afterwards Cardinal, Pianetto. According to several historians, Father Alemany
acted for a time as Sub-Master of Novices at Viterbo, but was later transferred to Rome
where he became assistant rector of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, now the titular church of
Cardina1 Farley.
It was not long however before the young Spaniard felt the flame of
divine love urging him on to follow in the footsteps of Saint Dominic, and to devote his
life to the service of the foreign missions. Obedient
to the call, he begged the Master General to send him to the Philippines. The sacrifice was accepted, but under religious
obedience the field of his future activities was changed to the United States where the
harvest was great and the laborers few. Father
Alemany did not hesitate an instant, for to him the voice of the superior was the voice of
God. He had found his destiny. The ocean, the wilderness, the
solitude—nothing daunted him. And in the
early spring of 1840 he left Italy for his new post.
At that date the Province of Saint Joseph embraced Ohio, Kentucky
and Tennessee. In convenient localities central stations had been established, whence the
light of Faith radiated through all the country around.
Hence the priests would set forth on missionary expeditions; hither they
retired, as to an asylum, in times of sickness or when old age laid its heavy hand upon
them. Such was St. Joseph's convent Somerset,
Ohio, where our future bishop began his labors. He
applied himself assiduously to the study of the English language, and ministered to the
spiritual needs of the simple Catholics who dwelt in that vicinity. The quiet atmosphere was most congenial to him. For peace and harmony dwelt within the little
parish; all so edifying was the demeanor of the faithful that the Fathers in their letters
abroad make frequent mention of it, contrasting the piety of these German and Irish
settlers with the tepidity of Catholics of the Old World.
In 1841, he was assigned to Taylorsville, Ohio. And to this period belongs what is probably his
first English letter, written one year after his arrival in the United States and
addressed to the Right Reverend John B. Purcell Bishop of Cincinnati:
I thought good to
write you these few lines, and to beg your assistance, since they tell me that they always
promised some help when this would be called for: and thus we could have our little church
neatly fixed when you would be pleased to visit us. You
know besides how strange it is for a priest come from Rome to celebrate Mass in a wooden,
unplastered church. However Almighty God has
repaid me very well, by giving me the consolation of baptizing two converts. In Zanesville, too, upwards of two dozen have
been taken into the Church since your last Visitation.
Nor did his linguistic attainments end here. He could write and speak Spanish, French, Italian
and Latin with equal facility, and during the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, 1884,
delivered before the assembled Fathers a Latin masterpiece on the Priesthood.
In the early 1800's, Tennessee presented one of the most
unpromising fields for missionary activity in the country.
The faithful were few, poor and
scattered–often separated from each other by mountain ranges, which tended to increase
the hardships ordinarily endured by priests in the discharge of their pastoral duties. The Dominicans who had entered the field at an
early date zealously cooperated with the Bishop in the organization of the diocese. And in 1842, when the curacy at the Cathedral of
the Holy Rosary, Nashville, became vacant, Father Alemany was sent from Ohio to assist the
saintly Bishop Miles, O. P. During the three
years of his labors in Nashville, he endeared himself to all. Though small in stature, every lineament
proclaimed the priest. He was endowed with
one of those magnanimous spirits ever ready to spend and to be spent in its efforts to
implant faith and morals in the hearts of the people.
From Nashville, in 1845, he went to the neighboring city of Memphis, laboring there
until the Provincial Chapter of 1847 assigned him to Kentucky, where he became
Novice-Master of Saint Rose Convent. But his talents, which he ever strove to hide, could
not long escape the notice of his brother religious, who petitioned the General to make
Father Alemany Provincial. A favorable answer
was at once returned, and with it came the official documents appointing him superior of
all the Dominicans in the United States. For
two years the destinies of the Province of Saint Joseph were guided by the holy man in a
spirit of prudence and judgment. But in 1850,
an event occurred which was to change completely the heretofore even tenor of his life.
We have already remarked that the seventh Provincial Council of
Baltimore held during the month of May, 1849, proposed a list of candidates from which the
Holy See was asked to select a bishop for California.
After mature deliberation the Holy Father Pius IX chose the Very Reverend
Charles Pius Montgomery, O. P., former Provincial, and requested that the bulls be sent to
him immediately. In vain was Father
Montgomery begged to accept the dignity, for Fr. Montgomery preferred to labor as a simple
priest on the missions of Ohio.
A General Chapter of the Dominican Order was holding its sessions
during the summer of 1850 in Naples, and Father Alemany, as Provincial, represented the
American Province. Here was a man eminently
suited for the position. A Spaniard by birth,
though an American in spirit as well as by adoption, his ten years of experience had made
clear to him the situation confronting the Church in the United States. The blending of the old and the new would progress
more easily under his administration than under any other. Consequently, on May 31, 1850,
he was appointed to the See of Monterey. The
bishop-elect spent the following month in preparation for the burden of the episcopacy;
and on June 30 he was consecrated in the Church of San Carlo, Rome, by Cardinal Fransoni.
It was an arduous problem which now confronted Bishop Alemany and
one which he immediately undertook to solve—the acquisition of worthy laborers for
the new diocese. Father Vilarrasa, O. P., who had acted as his Socius to the Chapter,
volunteered to accompany him and to establish the Order of Saint Dominic in California. Together they left Civita Vecchia on the evening
of August 5, 1850, crossing to Marseilles, whence they proceeded to Paris. In spite of the earnest representations made for
co-workers, the bishop's Parisian quest appeared, for a time at least, almost fruitless;
the only one to answer the call being Sister Mary de la Croix Goemaere, O. S. D., the
first nun to labor in the present State of California.
Ireland, too, seemed to turn a deaf ear to the pleadings of the young
prelate, but in Father O'Connell, Vice Rector of All Hallows' College, and later Bishop of
Grass Valley, he found a sympathetic friend. Not
only did this zealous Irish priest promise to enlist young men for the mission, but he
himself gave up a brilliant professorial career to work in the Sacramento Valley.
On September 11 Bishop Alemany, Father Vilarrasa, two Dominican
nuns from Toulouse and Mother Mary embarked from Liverpool for America, on the sailing
vessel “Columbus.” The voyage was
long and tedious. But its monotony was somewhat relieved through the kind offices of the
captain, who fitted up a suitable chapel for the celebration of Mass and the
administration of the sacraments. The Bishop preached frequently, and a large and
respectful congregation attended the services.
One month later (October 11) they arrived at New York, and after a
brief stay with Archbishop Hughes, Doctor Alemany proceeded to Baltimore, there to
interview the Primate of the American Church, Archbishop Eccleston. In the meanwhile, Father Vilarrasa hastened on to
Ohio, where the two French nuns were exchanged for Sister Francis Stafford and Sister
Aloysia O’Neil who were to come to Monterey as soon as provision could be made to
receive them.
The little company, now reduced to three, left New York October 28
en route to San Francisco by way of Panama. At
length, after a dreary and uneventful journey of thirty-nine days, Bishop Alemany and his
traveling companions entered the harbor of San Francisco a little before midnight
December 6, 1850.
From every quarter of that cosmopolitan town Catholics hastened
forth to do homage to the newly appointed prelate, whom they greeted with praise and
benediction. This demonstration deeply
touched his kind heart and awoke a sympathetic chord in the soul of the Bishop. At a public reception, given December 10, in the
small schoolroom attached to Saint Francis' Church, he thanked them for the honor they had
shown him and promised that henceforth his every action would be for them and their
spiritual advancement.
True to his word, he left at once for Santa Barbara to obtain from
Father Jose Maria Gonzalez Rubio, O. F. M., who had acted as Vicar General of the diocese
an exact account of the ecclesiastical affairs in California. From the lips of that venerable Franciscan he
learned of the strong opposition which Mexico made to a citizen of the United States
having authority over any portion of Lower California.
And after taking counsel with the Fathers of Santa Barbara he determined to
appoint Father Rubio his vicar in that part of the diocese which lay south of the Mexican
frontier. Spring was now advancing and
anxious for his flock, he turned homeward, bearing the official documents and what little
money his predecessor, Bishop Diego, had left.
Innumerable hardships and inconveniences awaited him. The presidio chapel of San Carlos, at Monterey, at
present the best preserved and most beautiful of all the missions, if we except that of
Santa Barbara, was in a state of decay. Father
Ramirez y Arrellano, a Dominican from Mexico, acted as Pastor, but how the good Father
managed to exist was a problem to all. There
was then no episcopal palace, not even a small adobe, that Doctor Alemany could call his
own. In his diary he notes his arrival in the
following terms: "I established myself at Monterey, receiving board and lodging from
the kind hospitality of the Gonzalez family, and of Don Manuel Jimeno and others."
The Bishop from the first had cherished plans of educational
institutions for the youth of California. The
task of raising colleges for young men he confided to the Jesuit Fathers, reserving for
himself the no less difficult one of acquiring a building suitable for a convent of nuns.
Don Guilermo Hartnell, an English convert and a man of culture, had
in 1834, together with Father Patrick Short, a member of the Picpus Congregation,
established on the Hartnell Rancho of Patrocino an academy which for two or three years
was attended by the sons of a few prominent families.
The attempt was a failure. Nevertheless,
Mr. Hartnell was now willing to deed over for a small consideration a house which he owned
in Monterey, if it could in anyway promote the cause of Christian education. The Bishop purchased it, and in March 1851 Father
Vilarrasa and Mother Mary arrived to begin the work.
The following year Bishop Alemany attended the First Plenary
Council of Baltimore, and on the advice of the Delegate Apostolic, Most Reverend Francis
Patrick Kenrick, and of the assembled bishops, the particulars connected with the Church
in California the recommendation to divide the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the State. In answer to this petition San Francisco was made
an archdiocese, July 29, 1853, while Doctor Alemany was transferred thither to become its
first metropolitan. What a contrast between
the conditions which the first metropolitan of the Far West had to face sixty years ago
and those of the present day! From Santa Cruz
to Oregon and from the Ocean to the Rocky Mountains were the limits of the archdiocese. San Francisco, now the proud metropolis of the
Pacific Coast with its five hundred thousand inhabitants, its commerce with the world and
its magnificent buildings, was then little more than a struggling miners’ settlement.
And yet he of whom we speak achieved through careful toil and much
labor, results whose very enumeration would extend far beyond the limited sphere of this
article. His life and his labors are his best
eulogy. For thirty-five years Archbishop
Alemany devoted all his energy to the extension of the faith in California. He saw San Francisco grow from a town of tents to
a city of marble palaces and churches of stone. He
directed the interests of Catholicity until they expanded from the condition of scattered
missions, with a few half-hearted communicants, to the possession of two hundred churches
with a membership approaching a quarter of a million souls.
The active work of Archbishop Alemany continued down to the year of 1884,
when failing health and advancing years warned him to rest.
At his own solicitation he was relieved of the burden of office and
permitted to retire to the home of his childhood in Spain.
There is no page in California's history more beautiful or more
pathetic than that upon which is inscribed the record of the saintly prelate's
departure—the severing the chain which bound the people of the Golden State to their
first archbishop. The voluntary laying down
of the miter by a high prelate; his retirement to the seclusion of a monastery; and the
self-abnegation involved in such a surrender of ecclesiastical authority is beyond the
comprehension of ordinary mortals. It belongs
to an heroic age. The deeding to his
successor of the vast aggregation of property amounting to many millions of dollars in
value which he had so long held in faithful trust, and his grateful acceptance of a few
thousand dollars to pay his expenses back to Spain, seemed to his contemporaries like the
act of some apostle of olden times. It surely
did not belong to the gay honor-loving life of America.
What more tender or loving words could have been uttered than those
of his final address to the people of San Francisco: "I am naught but a frail human
being. If I remain among you to receive your honors and your adulations I shall forget
that I am an humble disciple and shall learn to value the comforts and luxuries of life. It is best that I go back to the simple Order
whence I came, and to which I have given my vows, that I may continue to the end in lowly
submission to the will of the Great Master." Accordingly,
during the month of May, 1885, he prepared to leave forever the beautiful City by the
Golden Gate—a city that was dear to his heart.
Of all the receptions tendered him none touched him more profoundly
than that given by the Chinese converts. Every
province of the vast Empire was represented. An
Italian missionary, who had spent some years in China, delivered the address to which the
Archbishop responded. Nor was his
English-speaking flock less appreciative. On the afternoon of his departure, Sunday, May
24, 1885, the old ferry building was crowded to its utmost capacity with citizens of every
denomination eager to kiss for the last time the hand that had become worn in their
service. But the final triumph was reserved
for Oakland. As the train on which he took
his departure passed Sixteenth Street Station, the three hundred people who had gathered
there fell instinctively upon their knees and begged his final benediction. In the National Capital, too, he was received with
marked distinction. General Rosecrans
presented him to President Cleveland and the State Department and the deepest reverence
and respect was shown to the aged prelate.
But on reaching Spain he did not retire or take the rest he so well
deserved; instead, he went about performing the duties of a simple priest. It was while hearing confessions in the Church of
Our Lady of the Pillar, Valencia, on Saint Joseph’s Day, March 19, 1888, that he
suffered the cerebral attack which caused his death.
He lingered on until April 14, when his pure and noble soul returned to the
Creator whom it had served so well.
After the solemn obsequies in Valencia, the remains of the
illustrious prelate were borne to his native place, where they lay in state in the chapel
of the Dominican sisters of Vich. On the
morning of the 18th the funeral cortege wended its way to the Cathedral where
Solemn Mass was sung for the repose of his soul. At
its conclusion Canon Vilarrasa, a relative of his life-long friend and fellow religious,
preached the funeral discourse. Once more the
procession passed through the city on its way to the Church of Saint Dominic, where the
final resting place was prepared. There in
ground hallowed by the Saints, whose example he had ever striven to imitate, were interred
the mortal remains of a worthy religious, a zealous priest, an apostolic bishop, a man
beloved by all—Joseph Sadoc Alemany of the Order of Preachers, first Archbishop of
San Francisco.
--Fr. Sebastian Bohan, OP
Dominicana, 1916 |
