1. Pierre-Jean-Mathias Loras was a French Catholic priest in the United States who served as the first Bishop of Dubuque, in what would become the state of Iowa.
29 Facts About Mathias Loras
1. 2.
Mathias Loras was the first president of Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama, from 1830 to 1832, and is the founder of what is known as Loras College in Dubuque.
3.
Mathias Loras was a descendant of a French noble of the robe family.
4.
Mathias Loras was ordained a priest around 1817 by Cardinal Joseph Fesch for the Archdiocese of Lyon.
5.
Mathias Loras soon became the Superior of the ecclesiastical Seminary of Largentiere.
6.
Mathias Loras subsequently resigned from this position to join a group of priests conducting parish missions in the Archdiocese of Lyon.
7.
Mathias Loras was appointed vicar general for the Diocese of Mobile and assigned the task of completing the training of the seminarians who had accompanied Portier to America.
8.
Mathias Loras was named rector of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Mobile, and held these positions for seven years, helping Portier recruit priests to serve the diocese.
9.
Pope Gregory XVI established the Diocese of Dubuque on July 28,1837, and Mathias Loras was named its first bishop.
10.
Mathias Loras was consecrated on December 10,1837, by Portier in Mobile.
11.
Mathias Loras knew little of his new diocese and wrote to Joseph Rosati of St Louis to inquire what he might find there.
12.
Mathias Loras named Mazzuchelli vicar general and administrator of the diocese because Mathias Loras was not traveling to his new diocese just yet.
13.
Mathias Loras traveled to France to recruit missionaries and gather funds for his diocese.
14.
Mathias Loras brought with him Joseph Cretin, who was consecrated first Bishop of St Paul in 1851, Jean-Antoine-Marie Pelamourgues, who would spend his career in the diocese based at St Anthony's Church in Davenport, and seminarians Augustin Ravoux who would become a noted missionary among the Native Americans, Lucien Galtier, Remigius Petiot, and James Causse who were pioneer priests in Minnesota.
15.
In 1846 when Mathias Loras discovered German Catholic immigrants thirty miles west of Dubuque, he convinced them to name their community New Vienna in honor of the Austrian capital and home of one of his benefactors.
16.
Mathias Loras established several missions among the Native American tribes.
17.
Mathias Loras established several schools, as well as parishes in every populated area of the diocese.
18.
Mathias Loras visited Mount Melleray Abbey in Ireland in 1849 and expressed his desire to have the Trappists establish a monastery in his diocese.
19.
Not satisfied with St Raphael's Seminary in Dubuque, Mathias Loras moved the school south of Dubuque to an area known today as Key West.
20.
Mathias Loras encouraged immigrants to come to Iowa from the more crowded conditions in the eastern US Soon, Dubuque had growing Irish and German populations.
21.
The Germans felt that Mathias Loras had not done enough to give them clergy of German descent.
22.
The Irish felt slighted when Mathias Loras provided the Germans with their parish, Holy Trinity.
23.
Mathias Loras fled the city on two occasions and threatened to withdraw all the clergy from the city.
24.
Mathias Loras did not live long enough to see this cathedral completed, but he could offer the first mass in this new structure at Christmas, 1857.
25.
Mathias Loras asked the Holy See to name a coadjutor bishop to assist him.
26.
Mathias Loras ordered them not to disturb him unless necessary, as the divine office he wanted to pray was long, and he wanted to make sure he finished.
27.
Around 11:00 PM, his housekeeper heard Mathias Loras moaning and informed Father McCabe, who proceeded to the Bishop's room and found him collapsed on the floor.
28.
The body of Mathias Loras was taken from the old cathedral to the new cathedral for a full service led by Smyth.
29.
Bishop Mathias Loras is still remembered as one of the pioneers of the Catholic Church in Iowa.