Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons St. Ignatius Collegian University Archives & Special Collections 1906 St. Ignatius Collegian, Vol. 5 (1905-1906) Students of St. Ignatius College Recommended Citation Students of St. Ignatius College, "St. Ignatius Collegian, Vol. 5 (1905-1906)" (1906). St. Ignatius Collegian. Book 3. http://ecommons.luc.edu/st_ignatius_collegian/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the University Archives & Special Collections at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in St. Ignatius Collegian by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. LOYOLA UNIVERSITY LIBRARY REFERENCE Class Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from CARLI: Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in hnois http://www.archive.org/details/stignatiuscolleg05unse REV. ARNOLD DAMEN, S. J. Founder of Holy Family Parish and St. Ignatius College. t. 3lamituts Collegian Vol. V. Chicago, 111., November, 1905 No. 1. The Jesuits in Chicago. A History of Holy Family Church and St. Ignatius College. TO go back to the earliest appearance of the Jesuit in Chicago is to go back to the days of the wilderness when the site of the city was a dreary waste of swamp and sand-dune through which the river made its way sluggishly to the lake. There was lit- tle in Chicago in those days to tempt the missionary or discoverer to rest from his labors ; there was still less which gave promise of the great city which should one day gather to itself the peoples of the Old World to build there their fortunes and their homes. Yet it was in this inhospitable region that Father James Mar- quette, with two attendants, spent the severe winter of 1674-75, the last winter in his broken life, "where," to use the striking words of the Honorable Franklin MacVeagh. "he had nothing to live for but duty and nothing to hope for but death.'' It was here that he rested after his historic voyage of discovery on the great Waterwav of the West. It was here that he concluded for his superiors in Canada the story of his travels and, what was dearer to him, the story of savage tribes made gentle by the preaching of the Gospel and the Christlike kindness of the man of God. When this great missionary laid down his life in the following- May, his body was borne by the devoted Indians to the Mission of St. Ignace where it was laid to rest among his religious brethren. In the following year the Superiors at Montreal appointed Father Claude Allouez as his successor to the Mission of the Illinois. Of the labors and lives of these pioneers among the Indian Tribes, of 4 THE ST. IGNATIUS COLLEGIAN Buisson and Pinet and Bineteau, we cannot pause to speak. No doubt their lives were full of incident and adventure worthy of a place in History—but History retains little record of them beyond their names and the few, brief glimpses afforded by the diaries of travelers who came upon the rude churches in the wilderness and have recorded "with what cordiality and marks of esteem these reverend Jesuit Fathers received and caressed us during the time we had the consolation of staying with them." The deeds of peace have little place in the turbulent history of frontier times and these missionaries spent their days and laid down their lives well content that History should pass them by ; desiring only that the Trader should leave undisturbed the little flocks who received the "black robes" in the simplicity of their hearts, and strove to lead lives that the Great Father would deem worthy, in the life to come, of continued companionship with their guides and friends. Organized Catholicity in Chicago had its beginning in the spring of 1833 when Bishop Rosatti of St. Louis sent Father John St. Cyr to the new settlement. Father St. Cyr was succeeded five years later by Father Michael O'Meara and the place was visited from time to time by Father Maurice de St. Palais of the Diocese of Vincennes. Finally in Ma}- of 1844, the first Bishop of Chicago, the Rt. Rev. William Quarter was consecrated, and during the four brief years of his episcopacy, Catholicism grew and flourished. When Bishop Quarter reached his Diocese in 1844 there were less than twenty priests and but thirty-eight churches ; at the time of his sudden and lamented death in 1848 there were no fewer than sixty- eight churches attended by fifty-three priests. The death of Bishop Quarter brought to Chicago the first Jesuit whose name is identified with the religious work of the diocese, the Rev. James Oliver Van De Velde, second Bishop of Chicago. James Van de Velde, a young student at Mechlin in Belgium, had been moved by the earnest words of the saintly Father Nerinckx to consecrate his life to missionary work in the New World. Filled with the apostolic spirit, he left his native land and entered the Society of Jesus, where he was raised to the priesthood in 1827 and sent to St. Louis. His talents and ability marked him for positions of command and Father Van de Velde filled successively the offices of Vice-President and President of St. Louis University, and finally in the year 1843 became Superior of the Vice Province of Missouri. LOYOLA DNWERS1TY LIBRARY THE ST. IGNATIUS COLLEGIAN. 3 It was while occupying this latter post that word came from Rome bidding him receive the necessary consecration and proceed at once to Chicago to rule the Diocese left vacant by the death of Bishop Quarter. This command filled the good father with dismay. The office was one for which he felt himself incapable ; its acceptance would cut him off at once from the society of his brethren and the religious life of a Jesuit. He therefore sent back to Rome the Papal Bulls of appointment and with them an earnest petition that some one more willing and capable be chosen in his stead. But the papal command was found to be imperative and with many misgivings Father Van de Velde was consecrated at St. Louis in the University Church, February II, 1849, and after taking leave of his brethren, passed to his new charge in the young and thriving city on the shores of Lake Michigan. Difficulties in the Diocese and enfeebled health caused the new- Bishop to beg of the Holy Father in his first visitation "ad limina" that the heavy burden might be taken from him and placed on younger and stronger shoulders. The Bishop's request was granted some years later when he was transferred to the See of Natchez. His shattered constitution grew strong in a more congenial climate and he labored zealously in his new diocese for the space of two years, until he passed away, almost the last victim of the yellow fever which ravaged the South in the summer and fall of 1855. The missionary fathers of the Society during the years that followed, occasionally visited the city, if indeed it could be called a city in these early days. At length, in the year 1855, the Rev. Arnold Damen, who was then in the prime of his life and the fullness of his power, appeared in the pulpit of the old St. Mary's Church on the corner of Wabash Avenue and Madison Street—at that time the pro-cathedral. Here, during the space of a week he conducted the exercises of a mission. Those who best remember Father Damen recall his powerful voice, his splendid presence and the rugged strength and earnest- ness of his appeals. Polished and elegant he was not, and his printed sermons when read to-day suggest little of the powerful and lasting- impression produced in the minds and hearts of his hearers. So great was the fruit of this mission, and so great too, the need of priests in the growing diocese that the Bishop of Chicago, the Rt. Rev. Anthonv O'Reagan. sent an earnest petition to Father J. B. 4 THE ST. IGNATIUS COLLEGIAN. Druyts, the Superior of the Society of Jesus in this part of the country, to found a house of the Order in his Diocese. The request met with a favorable reception in St. Louis. The spiritual needs of the community as well as the prospects of a large Catholic population in the near future, particularly appealed to superiors. Accordingly, Father Arnold Damen and Father Charles Truyens were ordered to Chicago. They arrived here on the 4th of May, 1857, and presented themselves to the Right Rev. Bishop, who received them with gratitude and fatherly kindness. Bishop O'Reagan immediately exerted himself to provide the new fathers with a suitable parish. He first offered to turn over to them the Holy Name Church, with the understanding that the University of St. Mary of the Lake should pass under the control of their Order as soon as the necessary faculty could be provided. This offer was a generous one, but Father Damen, in whom zeal and piety were singularly united with prudence and a far-seeing busi- ness capacity, after careful investigation, declined. To begin with a church already built and a congregation already estblished, did not appeal to the missionary spirit of the zealous priest. He wished, as he expressed it, "to begin from the bottom," to select a site, to build his own church, to open his own schools and to gather around him a congregation of his own choosing.