Ferdinand Brossart

Bishop Ferdinand Brossart

The future bishop as a young priest, around 1880

Photo, 1916

Ferdinand Brossart (born October 19, 1849 in Büchelberg , Palatinate, Diocese of Speyer ; † August 6, 1930 in Melbourne (Kentucky) , USA) was a Roman Catholic clergyman, first cathedral pastor, then vicar general and finally bishop of Covington from 1915 to 1923 , Kentucky, USA.

Life

As a toddler, Ferdinand Brossart emigrated to America with his parents from the Palatinate in 1851. The parents were farmers, the father was also called Ferdinand Brossart, the mother Katharina nee. Diesel. The family ended up in New Orleans and wanted to settle there. The outbreak of yellow fever caused her to move to Cincinnati , Ohio . There they belonged to the parish of St. Michael . The boy attended the Catholic school of the same name. In 1861 the emigrants moved to Kentucky and lived there in Gubser's Mill, Campbell County . This area, which was dominated by German immigrants, belonged to the newly formed Diocese of Covington in 1853. Here Ferdinand Brossart attended the German St. Peter and Paul School in the parish of the same name. Then he studied as an alumne in his home diocese of Covington at the St. Mary Seminary in Cincinnati and at the American College in Leuven , Belgium. Augustus Maria Toebbe , the second Bishop of Covington - also a German - ordained Brossart as a priest on September 1, 1872 in the old Cathedral of Covington .

First the new priest was chaplain at the Immaculate Conception Church in Newport, then pastor of the parish of St. Edward in Cynthiana, then of St. Paul in Lexington. During a cholera epidemic in Millersburg and a smallpox epidemic in Lexington, the priest earned a high reputation for selflessly caring for the sick and dying. In 1888 the clergyman was promoted to cathedral pastor in Covington, at the same time he became vicar general . During this time, Brossart also edited the diocesan newspaper The New Cathedral Times and was instrumental in the design of the new cathedral. In 1897 he celebrated his silver jubilee in the pilgrimage site of Lourdes , France. After the death of Bishop Camillus Maes on May 11, 1915, he was appointed vicar capitular of the orphaned diocese a day later .

On November 29, 1915, Pope Benedict XV appointed him . to the Bishop of Covington. He received his episcopal ordination on January 25, 1916 Henry Moeller , Archbishop of Cincinnati. Brossart completed in his episcopate a. a. the new building of the diocesan cathedral of the Assumption of Mary . Attacks because of his German descent caused Bishop Brossart to commit himself patriotically to the United States during the First World War . He also pushed back the other immigrant languages ​​in the ecclesiastical life of his diocese and promoted English. Due to illness, Ferdinand Brossart resigned from his office on March 14, 1923 and retired with the title of titular bishop of Vallis to the St. Anna Convent in Melbourne (Kentucky), where he died in 1930. He is buried in the monastery cemetery there. The burial chapel was designed by himself.

Ferdinand Brossart employed a young African-American chauffeur named Vincent Smith (1894–1952) who wanted to become a priest, which was very difficult at the time, as there was only very limited acceptance of dark-skinned clergy. Brossart personally ensured that he was accepted in St. Joseph's Seminary in Baltimore - despite massive reservations on the part of high clerics . He later became a Trappist at Gethsemani Abbey in Lebanon and was Kentucky's first African-American priest.

In Alexandria, Kentucky, Bishop Brossart High School is named after the Palatine.

Ferdinand Brossart translated several German religious books into English, a. a. Works by Heinrich Denifle , Aloys Schäfer and Albert Meyenberg . The Brossart translations Humanity, its destiny and the means to attain it (Heinrich Denifle 1909); The Mother of Jesus in Holy Scripture (Aloys Schäfer, 1913) and Homiletic and catechetic studies, according to the spirit of Holy Scripture and of the ecclesiastical year (Albert Meyenberg 1912) were reissued in 2007 and 2008.

Web links

• Entry on Ferdinand Brossart on catholic-hierarchy.org
• Memorial page for Bishop Ferdinand Brossart
• Covington Diocese website on past bishops
• Website with a picture of the burial chapel
• Website of the "Bishop Brossart High School"
• Website on the tomb of the bishop's parents

Individual evidence

Commons : Ferdinand Brossart  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

1. ↑ St. Peter and Paul Parish Web site, Gubser's Mill, Campbell County
2. ^ Interracial Review , Volume 28, Catholic Interracial Council, 1955, p. 62; (Detail scan)
3. ^ Biographical webpage on Vincent Smith
4. ^ Victor Conzemius: Albert Meyenberg. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . November 3, 2009 , accessed July 6, 2019 .
5. ↑ Three new editions of Brossart translations  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.