Plan Developed

Wimmer Wednesday. The dream of Boniface Wimmer becomes a plan.

“Shortly before Easter 1845 – he was surprised by the visit of a man, who could, like none other, strengthen his interest in the mission life. Not only that, but with lively imagination and a strange, attractive persuasiveness, he explained his plan in greatest detail and with the conviction that it could actually be carried out. And he did this with an ease that charmed Father Boniface and filled him with total confidence in this man.

“This man was the Reverend Peter Heinrich (Henry) Lemke, born in 1796 in Mecklenburg, and between 1834-1837 was assistant to the famous missionary, Prince D. A. Gallitzin, founder and pastor of the little town of Gallitzin-Loretto in Cambria County, Pennsylvania. Around 1830, a wooden church was built about 15 miles from Loretto, under the leadership of Prince Gallitzin, and dedicated to St. Joseph. For several years, they both took care of it as a filial parish, but then Prince Gallitzin suggested to his assistant that he establish himself there full-time so that he might be able to better care for the settlers scattered among the surrounding woods of the Allegheny Mountains. Accordingly, Father Lemke acquired 400 acres of woodland, about three miles from St. Joseph’s Church and erected for himself a log house at the source of the Susquehanna River. This property Father Lemke offered to Father Boniface for carrying out his plans. Through this conversation Father Boniface became rather familiar with the situation in America, especially with that in the wooded region of the Allegheny Mountains, where Father Lemke had established his home.”

—From Boniface Wimmer, Abbot of Saint Vincent in Pennsylvania, translated by Dr. Maria Von Mickwitz and Father Warren Murrman, O.S.B., editor.