The Heart of Maryknoll

One of the neat things about being here in Ossining is that we are in the heart of the Maryknoll community: The official Maryknoll Society house and the campus of the Maryknoll Sisters are within walking distance of the Lay Missioners campus.

Now, if you are like me, you may not have heard much about Maryknoll. In fact, I reckon for most of the readers of this blog, you had not heard of Maryknoll until I mentioned it. So here’s a little super fast history for you, pulled from the Maryknoll website :

“When two American priests from distinctly different backgrounds met in Montreal in 1910, they discovered they had one thing in common. Father James Anthony Walsh, a priest from the heart of Boston, and Father Thomas Frederick Price, the first native North Carolinian to be ordained into the priesthood, [had a]… mutual desire to build a seminary for the training of young American men for the foreign Missions...

…With the approval of the American hierarchy, the two priests traveled to Rome in June 1911, to receive final approval from Pope Pius X for their project. On June 29, 1911, Pope Pius X gave his blessings for the formation of The Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America, now better known as the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers...

...By 1918, three young priests...were ready for the foreign missions in China, just after the first world war...Today there are over 475 Maryknoll Priests and Brothers serving in countries around the world, principally in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Over 10 decades, more than 2,000 men have been ordained to the missionary priesthood, and several hundred have taken oaths as Brothers.

Equally important in the development of Maryknoll was Mother Mary Joseph Rogers, who worked alongside Father Price and Father Walsh establishing the sister congregation--the Foreign Mission Sisters of St. Dominic, commonly known as the Maryknoll Sisters.

I’ll give you the history of Maryknoll Lay Missioners in another post, but for now here’s some shots of the inside of the Maryknoll Society House (I don’t have any shots of the inside of the Congregation’s building, but I hope to get some in a few days.