Spiritan Campus Ministry Sunday, January 25 - Saturday, February 7, 2015
DUQUESNE UNIVERSITY Spiritan Campus Ministry Sunday, January 25 - Saturday, February 7, 2015 AN UNUSUAL PATH OF RADICALISM IN REMEMBRANCE of our Spiritan heritage during so that each group received and Founders Week, it is important to look at our second understood the Gospel in the founder, Venerable Francis Libermann, whose feast day is context of their own traditions. celebrated on Feb. 2. Fr. Libermann’s zeal was so Venerable Francis Libermann had a most remarkable inspiring that when seminarians journey of faith. He was born into an orthodox in France heard of the deaths Jewish family in the Alsace region of France in 1802. of some of the first missionaries Libermann was preparing to become a rabbi like his to West Africa, they lined up father, when his studies led him to the New Testament at his door to volunteer as and to Christianity. He was baptized, Francis Mary Paul, replacements. Surprisingly, Fr. Libermann himself never in 1826, at Christmas. Soon he was studying for the went overseas. Yet he inspired and empowered literally Catholic priesthood, but violent attacks of epilepsy put his thousands of missionaries around the globe. vocation on hold. It was fifteen years before he was finally He exhausted himself in the process of leading his great ordained, in 1841. enterprise, and died on Feb. 2, 1852, before his 50th birthday. Fr. Libermann was a pioneer of strategies now More information on Spiritan Founders and Heritage recognized as a blueprint for modern missionary activity. can be found at www.duq.edu/about/centers-and- He urged the Spiritans to “become one with the people” institutes/spiritan-studies/founders.
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