St JOHN-NEPOCENE-NEWMANN

Bishop and Redemptionist Priest.

This was still very wide open and he was shunted off in a wagon to Lake Ontario Pennsylvania West where German immigrants tended to end up. All very primitive with a shack for a church and mass wherever there was a spare kitchen table.

Here he became a U.S. citizen and joined the Redemptionists. This got him a move to Baltimore and he progressed to becoming Bishop of Philadelphia.

Now he got going on all cylinders. He built ninety churches and started eighty schools. Meanwhile he was learning Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch and Gaelic so he could speak to the immigrants himself.

Small, shabby and hard-up, he was so poor he only ever possessed one pair of shoes — until the day he died. For his funeral he was turned out in a brand new pair, even though there was no longer need to keep body and sole together.