Saint John Neumann

Passio Christi Conforta Me

St. Augustine Church in Elkridge, Maryland is a rare church in the United States that has had one of its own singled out for the honor and recognition of the Church through canonization. John Neumann ultimately became the fourth Bishop of Philadelphia. Along the way, this short man with an iron will, served the people of St. Augustine as pastor. Even before that, his story crossed paths with another community that today is in neighboring Relay, MD: The Oblate Sisters of Providence.

Father John Helps Save the Oblate Sisters of Providence

Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange (d. 1882), whose cause for beatification is currently under investigation, founded the first religious order for women of Color in the U.S., the Oblate Sisters of Providence in 1828. (Today, their Mother House is in Relay, Maryland, across and a little upstream on the Patapsco River from St. Augustine’s.) In those early days, the order was very poor and had to beg for food and funds. Father d’Ubia was their Ecclesiastical Director from 1843 –1845. (The Ecclesiastical Director is more or less as the parish priest for an order.) After his death in 1845, the order had no one to act in the capacity of Ecclesiastical Director.

The financial picture was so bad that Elizabeth took in washing and ironing to support the sisters and the orphans they cared for. The Archbishop of Baltimore, seeing the poverty of the sisters, ordered them to disband. Elizabeth Lange refused to give up. Public opinion was on the side of the Archbishop, yet the Archbishop did not use his power to dissolve the community. Elizabeth Lange was a determined woman.

Poor and seemingly abandoned, the community of sisters was in danger of being disbanded. John heard of their plight and, true to his congregation’s mission, he stepped forward to help the sisters by appointing a Redemptorist priest, Father Thaddeus Awander, as Ecclesiastical Director, thus saving the order from certain extinction.

Father John Comes to St. Augustine

John was sent to Pittsburgh where he drove himself tirelessly and ate poorly. He developed a persistent hacking cough and fell into poor health. John was sent back to Baltimore. He stayed in a little room by the door at St. Alphonsus where he wrote catechisms. It was during this time that John prayed the short prayer that became his motto: "Passio Christi Conforta Me" (May the Passion of Christ strengthen me!). While in Baltimore, John became a U.S. citizen.

In 1849, John was appointed the third pastor of St. Augustine Church in Elkridge, a small town on the Patapsco River about fifteen miles from Baltimore. By 1851, John had baptized 26 children, recording the entries in his own hand in the first volume of St. Augustine’s records. His simple lifestyle and hard-headed dedication to his calling endeared him to the hard working people of rural Anne Arundel County (now Howard County).