Without humility other virtues can be neither genuine nor permanent
St. John Neumann
John Nepomucene Neumann CSsR (March 28, 1811 – January 5, 1860) was a Catholic Redemptorist priest born in Bohemia. He immigrated to the United States in 1836, where he was ordained. Joining the Redemptorists in 1840 Neumann became the order’s first professed priest in the United States. Twelve years later he was appointed the fourth Bishop of Philadelphia (1852–1860). John Neumann is the first United States bishop to be canonized. While Bishop of Philadelphia, Neumann founded the first Catholic diocesan school system in the United States. He was canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1977.
Neumann arrived in New York in 1836 with one suit of clothes and one dollar in his pocket. Between 1836 and 1860, the years which Neumann spent in America, 4,300,000 immigrants arrived in the United States and, of these, 1,493,155 were German-speaking. Like Neumann, most arrived impoverished, had no one to meet them at the docks and didn’t really know what they were going to do when they had arrived in the New World. The Church through the efforts of John Neumann and other Redemptorists like him served as an anchor for many of the immigrants – an effort that continues to this day.
See the recent New York Times article, The Very Busy Life of An Immigrants’ Rights Priest in 2018, for an update on Fr Piedra’s work.
See also the excellent articles on St John Neumann’s life and spirituality by Frs. Gilbert A. Enderle, C.Ss.R., and Richard A. Boever, C.Ss.R. (Spicilegium Historicum – Anno 59 (2011) I-II, pgs 1-66), for more about St. John Neumann..