This Is The Place

Boniface Wimmer, in a letter to young theologian in Germany in 1849:

“Our German youths who want to become priests do not have a single institution where they could study, where they could receive priestly formation, in order to keep their German brothers in their Catholic faith. But, no! They do have one now, through only a single one, one where poor boys also can be formed for the priesthood, even very poor ones, who cannot even bring with them books or clothes. It is St. Vincent, where five Benedictines priests and thirty six Benedictine brothers have toiled in the sweat of their brows to start it, where this year thirteen boys have found education and maintenance, this poor little monastery built with the coins that both family heads and house servants contributed to the mission society.”

—Boniface Wimmer, O.S.B.

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