An American known for his holiness and learning, spiritual writing and preaching

[Rob2]

St John Neumann​

Celebrated on January 5th

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An American bishop , John Neumann was born in 1811 in what is now the Czech Republic. After studying in Prague, he came to New York at 25 and was ordained a priest. He did missionary work in New York until he was 29, when he joined the Redemptorists and became its first member to profess vows in the United States. He continued missionary work in Maryland, Virginia and Ohio, where he became popular with the Germans.

At 41, as bishop of Philadelphia, he organized the parochial school system into a diocesan one, increasing the number of pupils almost twentyfold within a short time.

Gifted with outstanding organising ability, he drew into the city many teaching communities of sisters and the Christian Brothers. During his brief assignment as vice provincial for the Redemptorists, he placed them in the forefront of the parochial movement. He suffered a stroke and died in 1860 when he was just 49.

Known for his holiness and learning, spiritual writing and preaching, on October 13, 1963, he became the first American bishop to be beatified. Canonized in 1977, he is buried in St Peter the Apostle Church in Philadelphia.

(from ICN)

 

[DisorientingSneeze]

My son was reading us a little bio about him at breakfast. It said he was to be ordained in his home country, but the bishop got sick and they didn’t reschedule deciding they had enough priests. I’d never heard that and thought what a let down that must have been! God had other plans for him.