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Bible Dictionaries
Redemptorists
1910 New Catholic Dictionary
or
Society of missionary priests founded, 1732, by Saint Alphonsus Mary Liguori, at Scala, Italy, for the purpose of laboring among the neglected country people in the neighborhood of Naples. The order was approved by Benedict XIV, in 1749. By 1823 ten houses had been opened in different parts of Southern Italy and Sicily. The congregation was introduced into Poland, in 1786, by Saint Clemens Mary Hofbauer and Father Thaddeus Hubl. Father Hofbauer also made three foundations in Southern Germany, at Jestetten, Triberg, and Babenhausen, but these were eventually suppressed and the fathers banished. At the request of the Emperor Francis I, the first house of the Redemptorists was canonically established in Vienna, 1820. Prior to 1848 six houses had been founded in Austria; the congregation had been introduced into Belgium, where four houses were opened; and it had established itself at Wittem, Holland, 1836. During the same period important foundations were made in North America; the fathers were called to Pittsburgh, 1839; Baltimore, 1840; to New York, 1842; to Philadelphia, 1843; to Buffalo, 1845; to Detroit, and New Orleans, 1847; and to Cumberland, 1849. Meanwhile they had been invited to Bavaria, and four institutes were organized in France. As a result of the revolution that swept over Europe in 1848, the Congregation suffered greatly; in 1847 it had been banished from Switzerland, and in 1848 from Austria. The Congregation spread to Ecuador during the presidency of Garcia Moreno, and a few years later gained a foothold in Peru, Chile, and Colombia. In the United States new communities were organized, so that by 1875 the original American province was divided into the eastern province of Baltimore, and the western province of Saint Louis. Since that time the French province has been divided into three provinces and two vice-provinces, Spain has become a province, the Austrian province has been divided, and provincee have been created for Poland, Canada, Bavaria, Holland, and England. The Irish and Australian houses now form separate provinces independent of England, and several new provinces have been erected recently. In 1899 several missions in the Congo State were entrusted to the Redemptorists. The mother-house is in Rome, where the superior general resides. Some famous heads of the society include Father Peter Paul Blasucci, Father Passerat, Father Rudolph Smetana, Father Nicholas Mauron, Very Reverend Mathias Raus, and Father Patrick Murray, the present superior general.
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Entry for 'Redemptorists'. 1910 New Catholic Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/ncd/r/redemptorists.html. 1910.
