Southern missions begin in Mississippi
In 1897, Brother Wendelin Meyer SVD met with St. Katharine Drexel, the founder of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament who had dedicated her life to working with Black and American Indian populations, at her home in Philadelphia. She expressed interest in financially assisting the SVD’s initial forays into the Black apostolate.
Fr. Janssen felt that the SVD were in a good position to succeed where others had failed: a European religious community new to the US would be able to navigate a uniquely American problem as outsiders. Finally, in 1904 the Society was approached with an offer to begin a mission in Merigold, MS, a failed German colony turned cotton plantation. Fr. Janssen accepted the offer and Rev. Johann Peil SVD, the superior of the Techny community, suggested Rev. Alois Heick SVD, a German priest sent to America immediately after his ordination in 1900, to be the man to establish the Merigold mission.
Heick arrived in Merigold at the height of the summer of 1905, and it became apparent early on just how difficult his task would be. Months later, while enduring both an outbreak of yellow fever and the aggression of the local white population, Heick wrote to Peil: “In your letter you call the place here ‘happy Merigold.’ I might call it the place of fever and trouble.”[1] Shortly after, with the specific reasons being lost to time, Heick found his life in danger and had to be smuggled out of town.
On February 2nd, 1906, the SVD Southern missions resumed in Vicksburg, MS, a safer locale, where funding for a new parish church was obtained from Mother Drexel. Over the seven years, the SVDs received numerous offers to assume responsibility of Black parishes throughout Mississippi. Among those they took on were St. Mary in Vicksburg (1906), Holy Ghost in Jackson (1911), St. Joseph in Meridian (1912), and Sacred Heart in Greenville (1913). Parishes in Arkansas and Louisiana were also accepted. Divine Word Revs. Johann Hoenderop and Jakob Wendel were soon sent to help oversee the new parishes and found schools.
Education proved to be the key to SVD success in the South. With the assistance of the Holy Spirit Missionary Sisters (a sister community to the SVD also founded by Fr. Janssen), the Society provided quality education to communities that had few options, if any. If children attended a parochial school, their families would often attend Mass. Through the SVD’s expanding educational apostolate, their parish populations grew in turn.
The difficult conditions in the early years were plainly stated in a letter Fr. Heick, then mission superior, wrote to Mother Drexel: “In Vicksburg, some of the Sisters are sleeping on the frontporch [sic]. In Greenville on the porch that leads to the kitchen and in Jackson three of them are taking their night’s rest in the school building.”[2] Priests often reported being ill with malaria, dysentery, and yellow fever. Although conditions improved through assistance from Drexel and other donors, staffing the quickly growing Southern missions was emerging as a larger problem.
As World War I raged abroad, German SVDs serving as missionaries in Togo were evacuated and sent to the Southern United States in hopes of alleviating the lack of personnel there. Despite their arrival, staffing continued to prove difficult. However, the success of their parochial schools had planted a seed in Heick’s mind—and the minds of his superiors—that the religious education of Black men for the priesthood and Brotherhood could provide the SVD with a self-sustaining mission force in the South.
These efforts led to the foundation of Sacred Heart College in Greenville, MS in 1920. As Black priests were ordained, beginning in 1934, they were assigned to some of the same Southern parishes where they had been educated years before; others were sent to serve in SVD missions abroad. (To learn more about the education of Black priests and Brothers, click here to read about St. Augustine’s Seminary.)
By 1940, the Society's missions in the South had matured to the point it became an independent province to allow for easier management. Rev. Joseph Eckert SVD, who had earlier served as pastor at Black parishes in the northern United States, became the first provincial superior of this new province.
Over the decades the Society expanded its work in parishes in Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, into Texas, and most recently Florida. Today, SVD priests and Brothers in the South are in charge of over 40 parish-based ministries, some of them in the same marginalized communities that welcomed them over a century ago.
[1] Alois Heick to Johann Peil, September 13, 1905. US Southern Province records.
[2] Alois Heick to Katherine Drexel, July 24, 1916. US Southern Province records.
If you are interested in reading more about the history of the Southern Province, explore the links below:
"The African-American Apostolate and The Society of the Divine Word," by Rev. Joseph Simon SVD
"Answering the Call: The Story of the Divine Word Missionaries and St. Augustine's Seminary" by Rev. James Pawlicki SVD