Leopoldine Foundation
Vienna-based mission society that supported the development of the Catholic Church in North America during the nineteenth century. The foundation, along with the French Society for the Propagation of the Faith (Lyons, 1822) and the Bavarian Ludwig-Missionsverein (Munich, 1838), was one of three major European mission societies of the century.
Both the Leopol- dine Foundation (Leopoldinen-Stiftung) and the Ludwig-Missionsverein were particularly helpful to the German American Catholic population, to whom the societies sent funds and transported German missionary priests.The Leopoldine Foundation originated from the efforts of Bishop Edward Fenwick and his vicar general, Frederic Rese, to secure donations for the diocese of Cincinnati, Ohio. Fenwick had sent Rese (who later became the bishop of Detroit, Michigan) to Rome in 1827. After attending to business in Rome, Rese traveled to Vienna and Munich in 1828. During his
visits in these two cities, Rese described the financial and spiritual troubles facing German Catholics in the United States. The prince archbishop of Vienna, Leopold Maximilian Graf von Firmian, received Rese warmly and helped Rese secure support for the creation of a mission society from the Austrian chancellor, Baron Metternich and the Austrian emperor, Francis I.
After receiving the official sanction of Pope Leo XII in the Bull Quamquam plura sint (January 30, 1829), the Leopoldine Foundation (named after emperor Francis’s favorite daughter, the late Empress of Brazil, Leopoldine) was founded in Vienna on March 13, 1829. The goal of the society was to support Catholics in North America through the donation of funds and spiritual articles. The society drew its resources from membership dues, collections, and donations from the Austrian government. In addition, the society procured and transported German-speaking priests across the Atlantic.
Such efforts were deemed particularly important given the overall shortage of priests, especially German priests, in the United States. German Catholics on both sides of the Atlantic claimed that a great many German Catholic immigrants had lost or were losing their faith because they lacked priests who could administer spiritual care in their native tongue. Officially the statutes of the foundation did not specify that the donations were to be distributed along national lines; rather, they were to go to the American bishops, who in turn were to allocate the funds to the parishes most in need. In practice, however, the majority of the funds were administered to parishes possessing a substantial German Catholic membership. The contributions of the society enabled the construction of many Catholic schools and churches in the United States.American Protestant and nativist critics alleged that the Leopoldine Foundation was part of an Austrian plot (authored by Metternich) to subvert American democracy. The inventor of the telegraph, Samuel F. B. Morse, used his pen most vehemently against the “popery” of a monarchical Austrian state. In his Imminent Dangers to the Free Institutions of the United States through Foreign Immigration and the Present State of Naturalization Laws (1854), Morse argued that Metternich had wished to use the Leopoldine Foundation to undermine the Monroe Doctrine (1823) and spread reactionary sentiment, which dominated Europe after the Congress of Vienna (1815), across the waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Morse’s words carried weight with American nativists, who viewed Catholic Europe’s Ultramontanism as anathema to the American revolutionary tradition of political independence and free thought. Despite such criticisms, the society continued to aid the American Catholic Church until World War I caused its termination in 1914.
Kevin Ostoyich
See also Ludwig-Missionsverein
References and Further Reading
Blied, Benjamin J. Austrian Aid to American Catholics, 1830—1860. Milwaukee, WI, 1944.
Kummer, Gertrude. Die Leopoldinen-Stiftung (1829—1914): Der dlteste osterreichische Missionsverein. Wien: Wiener Dom-Verlag, 1966.
Roemer, Theodore, O. F. M. Cap. The Leopoldine Foundation and the Church in the United States (1829—1839). New York: The United States Catholic Historical Society, 1933.