Rudolph de Landas Berghes

Bishop Rudolph de Landas Berghes

Rudolph Francis Edward St. Patrick Alphonsus Ghislain von Gramont , Hamilton of Lorraine-Brabant , Prince of Landas Berghes and von Rache, Duke of St. Winock (born November 1, 1873 in Naples , † November 17, 1920 in Villanova , Pennsylvania ) was an Austrian nobleman and Old Catholic bishop who resided in the USA.

Life

Rudolph was born on November 1, 1873 in Naples and attended Eton College as well as the University of Cambridge and the University of Paris and Université Libre de Bruxelles in his youth . He successfully completed courses in law , theology and military tactics . He then served for ten years as a captain in the British Army and was involved in fighting the " Mahdi uprising ".

After leaving the army with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel , he entered the Anglican Church and then became a member of the Old Catholic Church . On June 29, 1913 he was promoted to Old Catholic Mission Bishop for Scotland by Old Catholic Bishop of Great Britain Arnold Harris Mathew . With the outbreak of the First World War , as a citizen of Austria-Hungary in Great Britain, he became a hostile person and was to be interned until the end of the war. Due to his excellent service in the British Army, however, he was allowed to travel to the USA in September 1914 .

On November 7, 1914, he reached the United States and became the Metropolitan Archbishop of his group, which had two bishops, 50 priests and 120,000 parishioners. He assisted the Episcopal Church of the United States of America on January 12, 1915 in New York City at the consecration of Hiram Richard Hulse as Episcopal Mission Bishop for Cuba . Rudolph settled at St. Dunstan's Abbey, Waukegan, Illinois. There he ordained Abbot William Henry Francis Brothers, Carmel Henry Carfora ( North American Old Roman Catholic Church ) and the former priest of the Polish National Catholic Church Stanislaus Mickiewicz as bishops in 1916.

On December 22, 1919, he resigned from the Old Catholic Church, converted to the Roman Catholic faith and submitted to the Archbishop of New York Patrick Joseph Hayes in Saint Patrick's Cathedral . On March 13, 1920, he entered the Augustinian Order in Villanova, Pennsylvania and died 8 months later at the age of 47. He was buried with full Roman Catholic honors in the Community Cemetery in Villanova.

Web links

• Rudolph de Landes Berghes at oldcatholichistory.org (as of August 11, 2009)
• Rudolph de Landes Berghes at oldcatholic.org (as of August 11, 2009)