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The cradle of Capuchin activity in North America is the land of Acadia, Nova Scotia, where the first Capuchin missionaries arrived in 1632 and set to work among the white settlers and Indians. A chain of mission stations, churches and schools soon developed and the Indians grew to love their "barefoot" friends. The faith flourished in the missions until those dark days when the Puritans drove the Indians back to the forest, exiled and imprisoned the missionaries and killed Father Leonard of Chartres at Port Royal in 1655. Father Leonard gave himself as the first Capuchin martyr of North America. Some of the friars followed the red man into the forest to minister to him, but the year 1655 closely marks the premature end of this Acadian Mission—its finale written in blood by fanaticism.
Farther south on the Atlantic seaboard, Capuchins had arrived in Virginia in 1650 to serve the Catholic settlers there. Their zealous work as convertmakers aroused the anger of some colonists who took to "hunting" them in the manner then current in the mother country. One friar of special significance in the Virginia colony was the Irish Capuchin, Father Christopher A. Plunkett. After ten fruitful years as a missionary he was captured in the winter of 1689-90, then imprisoned on an island off the coast of Virginia, submitted to torture and privations until he died, the second Capuchin martyr in America, after seven years of sufferings.
A visitor at the historic St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans will notice a marble plaque in the vestibule with the names of the priests who have served as rectors since the very beginning. From 1722 to 1829 there is a continuous listing of Capuchins whose lives were interwoven with the colorful history of New Orleans. The last of the friars mentioned is Fray Antonio de Sedella, better known as Pere Antoine. The street in the shadow of the cathedral still bears the name of the controversial figure who worked there more than forty years.
In the Revolutionary War, when the colonies were fighting for their independence, France proved herself a strong ally of the infant country across the sea. A hundred Catholic chaplains came to America with the French army and navy. Twenty of those were Capuchins, four of whom made the supreme sacrifice. After a heroic wartime record, some of these friars either remained in America or returned later to help the Church in the new country.
Another Capuchin missionary to America, Father Lawrence S. Phelan, worked tirelessly during Philadelphia's dread yellow fever epidemic in the 1790's. His work was truly heroic, reminiscent of the friars of former days in ministering to the plague-stricken. The first Catholic church west of the Allegheny Mountains, a log church standing at Sugar Creek, Pennsylvania, was built a century and a half ago by Father Phelan. This zealous worker spent twenty-one years in the American mission before returning to his native Ireland.
The first permanent foundation of the Capuchins in the United States was established by two diocesan priests from distant Switzerland. Over one hundred years ago Fathers Gregory Haas and John Frey were disturbed by the shortage of priests in the United States. They were determined to do something about it and set out to bring the Capuchins once again to America. In a small Wisconsin town in 1857 they built a friary and began their novitiate as Capuchins. After many sacrifices the project flourished and became St. Joseph's Province. Through the years, the Capuchins of this mid-western sector increased in numbers and in apostolic activities so that in 1952 the Province of St. Mary was formed comprising New York and the New England States.
To escape the religious persecution initiated by Bismarck in Germany, three Capuchins from Bavaria set out for America in 1873. This new venture resulted in the flourishing Pennsylvania Province. Today, the multi-national flavor of the Capuchin Order still remains. A large number of Italian Capuchins are working in the eastern section of the country and in 1973 they established the Stigmata Province. Polish and Spanish Capuchins have also established houses of the Order in recent years in Louisiana and Oklahoma.
Our western Vice Province was founded by Capuchin priests from England and Ireland when, in 1903, the English Capuchins came to Mendocino county in California and in 1910 the Irish Capuchins came to Hermiston, Oregon.
The United States is a rich country, a big country riding the crest of greatness. Her natural resources are the envy of the world. The Church realizes the vast potential of America's spiritual resources and is busy building the City of God. Amid the Church's many loyal helpers, one will always find the Capuchin whose way of life, whose Franciscan heritage, whose poverty and simplicity show an overly-complex civilization, busy about many things, that only one thing is necessary—the love of God.
It is the timeless characteristic of the Catholic Church to assimilate what is good in any age and to preserve and share it with the world, be it the art of Michelangelo or the genius of Thomas Aquinas. Religious Orders, with their bodies of tradition and custom, share in this absorbing and preserving spirit of the Church. With centuries of growth and experience, with old world wisdom and with new world techniques, the Franciscan way of life—exuberant, freedom-loving, and the spirit of America, provide the ideal climate for hardy and healthy growth.
The Capuchin Franciscan Order, from New England to the West Coast, has made a very valuable contribution to the Catholic Church in the United States over the past three hundred years. And will continue into the next three hundred.