St. John Nepomucene Neumann - The Immigrant Shepherd

Neumann was notorious for his frugality. He kept and wore only one pair of boots throughout his residence in the United States. When given the gift of a new set of vestments, he would often use them to fit the newest ordained priest in the diocese.

Neumann's efforts to expand the Catholic Church throughout his diocese was not without opposition. The Know Nothings, an anti-Catholic political party representing descendants of earlier immigrants to North America, was at the height of its activities. They set fire to convents and schools.  Discouraged, Neumann wrote to Rome asking to be replaced as bishop, but Pope Pius IX  insisted that he continue.While doing errands on 5 January 1860, Neumann collapsed on a city street, due to a stroke.  He lay crumpled in the snow a few blocks from his new cathedral on Logan Square.  By the time a priest reached him with the holy oils, Bishop Neumann was dead.  He was 48 years old.  At his own request he was buried in a basement crypt in Saint Peter's Church where he would be with his Redemptorist confreres.

Almost immediately devout souls were drawn to his grave. They came from far and near. More than a few were claiming extraordinary miracles of grace. It was as though John Neumann, now dead, continued his works of mercy among his people.  

The various Irish Societies of Philadelphia have made formal pilgrimages to the tomb of this humble man of God who, as bishop, did so much for their immigrant forebears in the 1850's -- this "foreigner" who went to the trouble of studying enough Irish to be able to hear the confessions of those who "had no English," up in the coal regions of nineteenth century Pennsylvania.
 
Those of Italian extraction remember Bishop Neumann as the founder of the first national parish for Italians in the United States. At a time when there was no priest to speak their language, no one to care for them, Bishop Neumann, who had studied Italian as a seminarian in Bohemia, gathered them together in his private chapel and preached to them in their mother tongue. In 1855 he Purchased a Methodist Church in South Philadelphia, dedicated it to St. Mary Magdalene de Pazzi, and gave them one of his seminary professors, Father John Tornatore, C.M., to be their pastor.

Click on the link below to see
360 degree panoramic view of Neumann shrine