Edward Dominic Fenwick

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Edward Dominic Fenwick as Bishop of Cincinnati

Edward Dominic Fenwick OP (born August 19, 1768 in Saint Mary's County , Maryland province , † September 26, 1832 in Wooster , Ohio ) was an American Dominican , pioneer of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States and from 1822 to his Death of the first bishop of Cincinnati .

Life

Dominicans and missionary priests

Edward Fenwick came from a Catholic family in Maryland. His father, a wealthy colonel , sided with the colonies in the war of independence . Edward was sent to the Holy Cross College of the English Dominicans in Bornem in the Austrian Netherlands at the age of 16 . There he became a seminarian , studied theology , joined the Dominican Order in 1788 and was ordained priest in 1793 . He then received a teaching position at the same college.

In 1792 the Austrian Netherlands was conquered by French troops and annexed in 1795 . In the course of revolutionary anti-clericalism , the Bornem monastery and its educational institutions were dissolved. Fenwick went to the Dominican Convent in Carshalton , Surrey , England . There he won three confreres for the Catholic mission in the USA. In 1804 they crossed the Atlantic . Bishop John Carroll of Baltimore recommended the under-developed area of Kentucky to them.

Fenwick and his companions found suitable farmland near Springfield , where they established the first Dominican office in the United States, St. Rosa of Lima . As early as 1807, the Superior General Pio Giuseppe Gaddi established the new Order of St. Joseph for the United States under Fenwick. He first returned to Maryland to sell his paternal inheritance and use the proceeds to build the monastery. In the following years the convent building, church and school were built. Fenwick continued to travel as a mission priest through the Midwest , now focusing on Ohio .

Bishop of Cincinnati

In 1821 Pope Pius VII established the diocese of Cincinnati for the entire Ohio area. He appointed Edward Dominic Fenwick as the first bishop , who was ordained episcopal on January 13, 1822 in the convent church of St. Rosa by the Bishop of Bardstown , Benedict Joseph Flaget PSS . At first there were only six priests at the side of the new bishop; all were Dominicans.

In 1823, Fenwick went on a trip to Europe to collect money and equipment to build up his diocese. He was able to win two French, one Spanish and one Swiss priests for his diocesan clergy. The first procathedral was built as a wooden structure. The St. Franz Xaver Seminar was established there in 1829. In 1831 the diocese already had 22 churches, 24 priests, 13 seminarians and a Catholic weekly newspaper.

In 1832 a cholera epidemic broke out in the Great Lakes region . On his annual visitation trip , Bishop Fenwick was infected and died in a hotel room in Wooster.

Web links

Commons : Edward Dominic Fenwick  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ since 1833 Cistercian Abbey of St. Bernhard ( historical schets , odis.be)
  2. ↑ so in Some Notes on the History of the Presbyterate of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati (PDF; 2.8 MB); the German Friedrich Reese is not mentioned there.
predecessor Office successor
- Bishop of Cincinnati
1822–1832 		John Baptist Purcell
personal data
SURNAME Fenwick, Edward Dominic
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fenwick, Edward
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American clergyman, Bishop of Cincinnati
DATE OF BIRTH August 19, 1768
PLACE OF BIRTH Saint Mary's County , Maryland Province
DATE OF DEATH September 26, 1832
Place of death Wooster , Ohio