Like St. Elizabeth Ann Seton (whose feast day was yesterday), St. John Neumann is an American saint who made a lasting impact on the Church in this nation by serving immigrants through education—as bishop of Philadelphia, he formally established the first parochial school system.

John was born in 1811 in Bohemia (part of the Austrian empire at the time, and now part of the Czech Republic). He was certain that he was called to the priesthood, and entered the seminary, where he studied theology and furthered his learning of languages so as to serve many different people. By the time he was 24, he had mastered six different languages.

When he was ready for ordination, he ran into an obstacle—Bohemia had a surplus of priests, and ordinations were stopped. John wrote to bishops all over Europe, but no one needed more priests.

So John wrote to a bishop in New York. He had learned English by working in a factory with other English-speaking workers, and the New York bishop was glad to have him. John was ordained just weeks after arriving in America and became one of 36 priests who were serving 200,000 Catholics—a number that was growing thanks to newly arrived Irish, Italian, and German immigrants.

John was sent to serve people in western New York and Pennsylvania—he ministered to Catholics living in farms, villages, and coal-mining towns. People made fun of him when they saw him riding a horse from place to place because he was short and his feet didn’t fit in the stirrups.

The isolation of the rural communities awakened a desire for community within John, so in 1842 he joined the Redemptorist order of priests and brothers. Six years later, he became a naturalized American citizen.

As a Redemptorist priest, he served a parish in Baltimore before being named bishop of Philadelphia in 1852. The city was growing rapidly as a center of industry that drew immigrant labor. During his time as bishop, John established a new parish every month, and he organized a school system to accompany those parishes—the first diocesan school system.

His fluency in languages served him well as he reached out to the various immigrant populations in Philadelphia. He even learned Gaelic in order to hear confessions of Irish people–he learned it so well that some mistakenly thought that he was a native speaker and proclaimed their pride in having an Irish bishop! He also gathered Italian immigrants for regular Mass in his own private chapel. As that community swelled, he established the first Italian national parish for them.

John was known for his simplicity. When he came in from the rain one day, his host told him he should change his soaking boots, but John replied that the only way to do so would be to put his left boot on his right foot—he only owned one pair.

As shepherd to a largely immigrant diocese, John bore the weight of anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic social forces of the time. He once wrote to Rome, asking to be relieved of his position, but the pope encouraged him to stay on, which he did. John enlisted the help of other religious orders to serve the social and educational needs of his diocese and a number of communities of religious sisters received his support for their help.

John died on this date in 1860 when he collapsed from a stroke while out running errands. He was only 48 years old. People immediately began to venerate his remains, and miracles were attributed to his intercession. He was beatified in 1963 and canonized in 1977, and his relics rest in the reliquary chapel in the Basilica. His mitre, pictured above, rests in a display case in the Basilica museum. (St. John Neumann is not to be confused with St. John Henry Newman, the English intellectual.)

St. John Neumann, you established the first diocesan education system to serve new American immigrants, pray for us!