Saint Columban's Foreign-Missionary Society, popularly known as the Columban Fathers, was only 15 years old when it came to Bristol, Rhode Island in 1933. Nebraska was the site of the Society's first house in the United States, established in 1918. That was the year that the Columban Fathers officially came into existence by a decree of the Vatican.
The first American students of the Columban Fathers began their studies for the priesthood near Omaha in 1921. Three years later a preparatory seminary was set up in Silver
Creek, New York for students who wanted to begin their preparation for the missionary priesthood at an earlier age.
Soon, these new premises became over-crowded and a new seminary was needed for those who had completed their preparatory studies. At this critical juncture Bishop William Hickey came to the rescue by welcoming the Columban Fathers to the Diocese of Providence and approving their residence on the shore of Narragansett Bay just north of the Mount Hope Bridge.
In October 1933, Bishop Hickey presided at the dedication of this new Columban Seminary. In the course of his homily the Bishop declared: "The house here established and solemnly blessed today with the ritual of Holy Mother Church, is a house of prayer and spiritual training."
The Columban project at Bristol was part of a larger design which had been unfolding for several years. It originated in the heart of a young Irish priest who was ordained in 1909 and began his ministry as an assistant in Holy Rosary Parish, Brooklyn, New York. The young priest, Father Edward Galvin, was on loan to Brooklyn because his home diocese of Cork, Ireland, had more priests than it needed. Father Galvin trained for seven years to be a diocesan priest, but he said that during those years he often felt a deeper call to go to China as a missionary priest. One day in January 1912, that deeper call to perform mission work took on a powerful urgency. When Father Galvin entered the rectory dining room for lunch, the pastor introduced him to a visiting priest: "This is Father John Fraser from Canada. He is a missionary, and he's looking for people to go to China with him."
When lunch was over, Father Galvin told him Fraser that would go to China. Father Fraser's answer was simple and direct: "We leave on February 28th." While Father Galvin was in China he wrote to priest friends in Ireland urging them to join him. Eventually two of them did, but they soon realized something more was needed. These pioneers came to the conclusion that they needed a steady stream of priests, which required a training center for missionary priests. In 1916, his colleagues sent Father Galvin home to attend to that need.
In Ireland, Galvin joined with a professor-priest friend, Father John Blowick, and together they journeyed to Rome to get directions from the Vatican. They were advised to form a missionary society and set up a college for training priests. Father Galvin left his professor friend to do that work in Ireland, while he traveled to the United States to do the same.
Apparently, Father Galvin's earlier years in America had convinced him that Irish good-will and generosity did better when united with American "can do," and "know how," and financial support. Saint Columban's Society for Foreign Missions began to exist officially with the issuance of a canonical decree from Rome on June 29,
1918, one hundred years ago.
In that year the Columbans opened their seminary in Ireland and established the Omaha house, where their first American students began studying for the priesthood. In 1920, the Columbans sent two of their members to Australia to establish the Society there. The first Columban house in Australia opened in December, 1921. During the following years, as the number of members and houses kept growing, the Columbans responded to the increasing requests for priests by sending missionaries to more countries and to many new missions.
China, of course, was the order's first mission. In December 1919, Rome assigned the territory of Han yang, China, to the Columbans who sent their first group of missionaries there in 1920. In 1927, Father Galvin was ordained Bishop and nan1ed Vicar Apostolic of Hanyang. The following year Rome assigned the territory of Nancheng, China to the pastoral care of the Columbans.
In 1929, the first Columban missionaries arrived in Manila, Philippines at the request of Archbishop Michael O'Doherty. The Philippines would eventually become the Columbans' largest mission, with more than 200 Columban priests there by the 1960s.
In 1933, the year the Columbans opened their house in Bristol, ten Columban priests arrived in Korea to begin the first Columban mission there. Korea was destined to be the Columbans' second largest missionary endeavor.
Three years later the Columbans added Burma (now known as Myanmar) to its list of missions. In late 1936, eight Columban priests arrived in Rangoon on their way to open a mission at Bhamo in the country's northern region. As World War II spread throughout the Pacific, there were serious consequences for the Columban missions. Japan regarded the Western allies as enemies, so they interned Columban missionaries in Burma, Korea, and the Philippines as enemy aliens. When the war turned against Japan and the occupied countries were being reclaimed, five Columban priests were killed during the liberation of Manila.
After the war, the Columbans sent missionaries to Japan in 1948. This mission began with two priests, but kept growing until the Columbans numbered almost one hundred. Meanwhile the situation in China was getting worse as a Communist regime succeeded in taking over the country. In 1949, these Communists established the People's Republic of China. This transition was followed by a systematic persecution of the Church, and by 1954 all Columban missionaries had been expelled from China.
There was more bad news for the Columbans in June, 1950 with outbreak of the Korean War. By this time the Columbans had almost 200 priests in Korea, and many of them were in the danger zone. As the Communist North backed by Communist China advanced south, seven Columban priests lost their lives, either by execution or by inflicted hardship. Even the harshest adversity, however, did not diminish the Columban zeal to spread the Kingdom of God. In 1951 the Columbans sent 12 members of a newly-ordained class to open a mission in Fiji. In the following year, those Columban missionaries expelled from China opened new missions in Peru and in Chile. The next 20 years were years of consolidation. In 1968 the Columban mission effort peaked with about 1,100 priests, the vast majority ofwhom were active in the missions and the remainder in a supporting role at home.
New missions were opened in Taiwan and Pakistan in 1978, followed by Brazil in 1985, and Jamaica and Belize in 1986. But already a profound change was taking place in the Columban world. Missionary vocations that once had come in a steady stream during the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, quietly eased downward to an uncertain trickle. As the Columban seminaries slowly emptied of students, they gradually began to host new tenants. These tenants were their former students, now returning, drained of their youthful energy after fifty laborious years of ministry and mission. By 1983, the Columban house in Bristol, inaugurated by Bishop Hickey fifty years earlier, had begun to change markedly. Forced by advancing years and declining health to forsake active life on the missions, aging missionaries began to come back to Bristol to live in the same rooms they once occupied as youthful students. At present 20 retired Columban missionaries reside at St. Columban's Home in Bristol having accumulated among them about 1,000 years of missionary service to the Church.
In many parishes throughout the Diocese of Providence, one can see a poster with the picture of an elderly priest and the question: Where do priests go when they retire and then the answer: Back to work! That scenario describes the fate of the retired Columban missionaries. Happily, the Diocese of Providence provides them with the opportunity for pastoral ministry in accordance with their limited health and energy.
The retired Columban missionaries in Bristol rotate in a series of pastoral activities: Sunday Mass at the Rhode Island Veterans' Home and occasional Sunday Masses at other parishes. They frequently offer masses at St. Mary's in Bristol and Friday masses at St. Barnabas in Portsmouth. The Columban home also provides meeting space to Alcoholics Anonymous, the Knights of Columbus, and to occasional prayer or reflection groups. If Spanish-speaking or Korean-speaking priests are needed for ministry, the retired Columban missionaries have responded. All these activities are of assistance to the local parishes and local institutions. They help the elderly missionaries to feel useful and to continue, in a limited way, their active ministry of sanctification and service.
Also, for many years, the Bristol Columbans have staged a large and well-attended festival and yard sale on the last Sunday of July that has become a popular local event. This event not only raises money to sustain the Columban home, it also serves as an outreach to the Rhode Island community and introduces attendees to the work of the Society. The continuing participation of the retired Columban missionaries in the pastoral ministry of the Diocese of Providence keeps alive the words spoken by Bishop Hickey 85 years ago at the dedication of the Columban seminary in Bristol: "The house here established and today blessed solemnly with the ritual of Holy Mother Church, is a house of prayer and spiritual training." Those prophetic words of Bishop Hickey are as true today as they were in 1933.
