Venerable Francis Libermann had a most remarkable journey of faith. He was born into
an orthodox Jewish family in the Alsace region of France in 1802, and given the name
Jacob. Jacob Libermann's father was a rabbi, and Jacob was preparing to become a rabbi
himself when his studies led him to the New Testament and to Christianity. He was
baptized, Francis Mary Paul, in 1826, at Christmas. Soon he was studying for the Catholic
priesthood, but violent attacks of epilepsy put his vocation on hold. It was fifteen
years before he was finally ordained, in 1841.
In 1848 Libermann brought personnel and a renewed Spiritual energy to the Spiritans
that transformed the Congregation.
Those intervening years were a time of grace and of maturing, as Libermann became
an advisor and confidant to many seminarians and others wanting to grow in the spiritual
life. His own trials and painful experiences, as well as joys and perceived blessings,
developed in him a great confidence in Providence and a sense of the Holy Spirit directing
human affairs.
His approach of “practical union with God” helped him, and others, find the divine
in the everyday and to face life with confidence and faith.
His spirituality of responsiveness to the Spirit served Libermann well during the
difficult period of organizing his Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and
of gaining official permission from Rome to begin this apostolate to people of African
descent. Libermann's followers viewed his being cured of epilepsy at this time and
subsequent ordination as approbation from heaven on the mission of his "little band",
whose charismatic leader and visionary apostle he had become.
Soon his growing group was asked by Rome to join another much older religious community,
legally and canonically established in France, but on hard times by the mid-1800s.
The Congregation of the Holy Spirit — the "Spiritans" — had been started in 1703,
on Pentecost Sunday, by another seminarian. Claude Poullart des Places was only 24
years old when he began a seminary residence for poor students preparing for priesthood.
After des Places' death in 1709 the Spiritans went on to work in France, in North
and South America, and in the Far East.
Libermann recruited and educated missionaries, both lay and clerical. He negotiated
with Rome and with the French government over the placement and support of his personnel.
Francis Libermann was a pioneer of strategies now recognized as a blueprint for modern
missionary activity. He urged the Spiritans to "become one with the people" so that
each group received and understood the Gospel in the context of their own traditions.
Fr. Libermann's zeal was so inspiring that when seminarians in France heard of the
deaths of some of the first missionaries to West Africa, they lined up at his door
to volunteer as replacements.
He exhausted himself in the process of leading his great enterprise, and died on February
2nd, 1852, before his 50th birthday. Surprisingly, Fr. Libermann himself never went
overseas. Yet he inspired and empowered literally thousands of missionaries around
the globe.
Today his spiritual descendents serve in 62 countries on five continents, and more
than 3,000 members. In Europe a dozen Provinces of the Congregation emerged to provide
and finance the manpower for Libermann's vision. The Spiritans returned to North America,
to Canada and to the United States in 1872 to minister especially to minorities, immigrants
and ethnic groups. For decades the Holy Ghost Fathers worked closely with St. Katherine
Drexel in the apostolate to African-Americans in the urban North and in small towns
and cities of the South and Southwest.
On June 16, 2009, the East and West Provinces of the Congregation in the United States
merged to form the Province of the United States.
Rapidly-growing Provinces in Brazil, in French-speaking Africa, in Angola, Nigeria,
Ghana, Eastern Africa and now in southern Africa and in the Indian Ocean are sending
out missionaries to Asia and to non-evangelized areas of their own continents.
Libermann was a visionary, a missionary, a profoundly spiritual man who has affected
the course of history in the last 150 years. His influence and that of his Spiritans,
in the Church and in the emerging world (including our own country since the late
19th century) has been inestimable.
Fr. Libermann faced incredible obstacles, yet patiently accepted his trials and tribulations
with great inner peace and tranquility. May God bless the Spiritan Congregation, and
all of us, through the intercession of Venerable Francis Libermann. And may his spiritual
teaching of practical union with God through the Holy Spirit bring us closer to the
path of holiness our daily lives.
