Société des Missions Africaines – Province des Etats-Unis
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né le 6 avril 1867 à Wolxheim dans le diocèse de Strasbourg, France membre de la SMA le 21 décembre 1888 prêtre le 25 juillet 1891 décédé le 7 août 1948 |
1891-1896 missionnaire au Dahomey décédé à Teaneck, Etats-Unis, le 7 août 1948 |
Le père Ignace LISSNER (1867 - 1948)
A Teaneck (USA), le 7 août 1948, retour à Dieu du père Ignace Lissner, à l'âge de 81 ans.
Ignace Lissner naquit à Volxheim, dans le diocèse de Strasbourg, en 1867. Il fit ses études à Richelieu et à Lyon. Il fit le serment en 1888 et fut ordonné prêtre en juillet 1891. Peu après, le père Lissner partait pour la préfecture du Dahomey. En 1892, au cours d'un voyage, il fut retenu prisonnier par les troupes dahoméennes. On le crut décapité et on célébra la messe pour le repos de son âme. Mais le père revint, bien vivant, et c'est alors qu'il accompagna un corps expéditionnaire anglais à travers le Soudan et ainsi atteignit l'Egypte. En 1896, le père Lissner est de retour en France.
En février 1897, il part pour le Canada, afin de trouver quelques ressources pour la pauvre mission du Dahomey. Du Canada, il passe aux Etats-Unis, qui étaient pourtant le territoire de prospection du père O'Sullivan. Il y eut quelques difficultés, mais les catholiques américains furent si généreux que les deux quêteurs eurent d'abondantes aumônes.
De quêteur pour les Noirs d'Afrique, et spécialement du Dahomey, le père Lissner allait devenir le grand apôtre des Noirs aux Etats-Unis. Depuis bien des années, le besoin de prêtres pour les Noirs, surtout dans les Etats du sud, se faisait sentir. L'évêque de Savannah en Géorgie, s'ouvrit de ce grave problème à Rome. Il voulait une Société qui avait l'expérience des missions chez les Noirs. L'évêque s'adressa aux Missions Africaines et s'entendit avec le père Lissner. Mgr Pellet accepta le nouveau champ d'apostolat, dont le père Lissner fut nommé supérieur (1907) Aidé de ses confrères, le père Lissner fonda des paroisses pour les Noirs en Géorgie: à Savannah, Augusta, Atlanta, Mâcon; en 1925, c'est Los Angeles qui a sa paroisse et en 1940 c'est Tucson dans l'Arizona.
Depuis 1922, le père Lissner a établi son centre d'action à Tenafly (New-Jersey). En 1916, il fonde à Savannah la congrégation des Servantes du Cœur très pur de Marie et, en 1938, il ouvre dans le Maryland un séminaire pour la formation du clergé noir.
Indépendamment du travail du père Lissner et des pères alsaciens, les pères de la province d'Irlande avaient fondé aussi quelques paroisses pour les Noirs, v.g. East Saint-Louis et Caire dans l'Illinois. Il convenait de fusionner les deux œuvres de la même Société. Ainsi fut créé, en 1938, le district d'Amérique qui devint province en 1941.
Le père fut vice provincial, puis provincial de 1941 à 1946. Alors, le père Lissner se retira. Il avait bien mérité des nombreux Noirs aux Etats-Unis.
Malgré tous les obstacles que l'on disait insurmontables, le père Lissner réussit à créer des paroisses et des paroisses florissantes. Pour réussir, le père a toujours travaillé méthodiquement, avec une patience inaltérable. Il a surtout eu foi en Dieu, dont il accomplissait l'œuvre car, en entrant aux Missions Africaines, il ne pensait pas devoir passer 40 ans de sa vie aux Etats-Unis. Le père Lissner a toujours commencé par l'école. Par l'école, il atteignait les enfants, et par les enfants les parents.
Father Ignace LISSNER (1867 - 1948)
Ignace Lissner was born in Wolxheim, in Alsace, in the diocese of Strasbourg, on April 6, 1867.
He died in Holy Name Hospital, Teaneck, New Jersey, USA, on August 7, 1948.
Ignace was the youngest of nine children – four of whom became priests or religious and three of whom served their country as soldiers – born to Nicholas and Anna Marie (Nee Spehner). Nicholas was a convert from Judaism and of Polish extraction. Ignace attended the minor diocesan seminary of Zillisheim, in Alsace. He then went to the SMA’s apostolic school at Clermont-Ferrand, in France, where he completed his secondary education (1881-1887). Next he was promoted to the SMA major seminary, at Cours Gambetta, Lyons, France, where he studied philosophy and theology (1888-1891). Ignace was received as a member of the Society on December 21, 1888 and was ordained a priest in the seminary chapel at Lyons on July 25, 1891. The ordaining prelate was Mgr. Jean Baptiste Chausse SMA, Vicar Apostolic of the Vicariate of the Bight of Benin (Lagos).
After ordination Ignace went to West Africa, to the town of Whydah, in the colony of Dahomey. Some months after his arrival a war erupted between France and Dahomey. While the Sisters and two of the Priests escaped to Agoue, a French Protectorate, Ignace remained in Whydah where he was held hostage by King Behanzin for five months. Eventually he escaped, only to re-enter the town as a chaplain with the victorious French army on December 8, 1892. The only fragment of information about his remaining time in Dahomey is that he built a church at Grand-Popo, which he dedicated to St. Joseph.
In March 1897 Ignace was assigned to raise funds among American and Canadian Catholics for the Society’s works in West Africa. He traveled widely in the USA lecturing in the principal cities and also visited Quebec. On his return to Europe in 1899 he was posted to the Society’s missions in Egypt where British influence was in the ascendant and French missionaries were distrusted because of their nationality. Here, during a period of six months, he traveled into the British Sudan, visiting Kartoum, Omdurman, Fashoda and Sobat River. He was also instrumental, during this time, in obtaining a modus vivendi for the Catholic Missionaries (mostly French) from the Sudan Government administered then by Sirdar Wingate, successor to Lord Kitchener.
Returning from Egypt early in 1901 Ignace was again dispatched to North America to collect funds. In the course of his earlier visit and during the next five years he met many bishops and priests and gained first-hand knowledge of the American Church. The USA was still ‘mission territory’, under the remit of Propaganda Fide, its Church largely composed of poor, illiterate, foreign-born peasants, poorly-instructed in their religion and still ill-at-ease in a new culture. In particular he became aware of the plight of African-American Catholics, so few in number, blighted by poverty, racism, religious prejudice and pastoral neglect. Lissner’s arrival in America coincided with a growing concern on the part of Church leaders both in America and Rome about the absence of pastoral care for African-Americans and the fading opportunity for large-scale conversions in the wake of the Civil War. Efforts to recruit European specialist missionary agencies for the “Colored Apostolate’ had been made since the 1870’s. But progress was painfully slow. It was against this background that Bishop Benjamin Kiely of Savannah-Atlanta was informed by Rome that pastoral provision for Blacks in his diocese was wholly inadequate that that he should recruit the Society of African Missions to take on the task. Thus it was that on December 17, 1906, Ignace received a letter from Bishop Keiley offering the exclusive pastoral charge of the diocese’s African-American population to the Society.
In January of the following year two priests of the Society – Gustave Obrecht and Joseph Dahlent - under Fr. Lissner’s direction, took possession of the Church of St. Benedict the Moor in Savannah, while Lissner himself went to Rome where he laid before Propaganda plans for the establishment of ‘Colored Missions’ in the principal cities of Georgia. Receiving the blessing of Pius X for himself and his collaborators and for their work in Georgia, he returned to America and during the next six years established six Churches and seven Schools in Georgia: St Benedict the Moor’s Church, Savannah (1907); Church and School of Immaculate Conception, Augusta (1908); Hatches Station School (1909); Church and School of St. Anthony, Savannah (1909); St. Mary’s School Savannah (1910); Church and School of Our Lady of Lourdes, Atlanta (1912); Church, School and Convent of St. Peter Claver, Macon (1913). Later, in 1926, he founded St. Odilia’s Mission in Los Angeles, while his last foundation, Blessed Martin Porres Mission in Tuscon, Arizona, was established in 1940. None of this was easily accomplished. Apart from the coolness of local clergy and threats from the Klu Klux Klan, there was a chronic shortage of financial resources and personnel to staff the new foundations. Ignace showed remarkable courage and resilience in the face of all difficulties.
In addition to this extraordinary contribution to the African-American apostolate, in 1916 Ignace was instrumental, with Mother Theodore Williams, in founding a religious congregation for African-American women, the Handmaids of the Most Pure Heart of Mary. Established in Savannah, this institute found it difficult to survive in the South and transferred to New York in the early 1920’s. Equally significant was Ignace’s attempts at developing an African-American clergy. He was directly responsible for the education of six African-Americans who became priests, two of whom trained in an inter-racial seminary which he founded at Tenafly in 1921. Of the six all found it extremely difficult to achieve acceptance in America, even in the SMA parishes, and almost all of them were eventually compelled to work in other countries. Founding the seminary was intended, among other things, as a means of staffing the Society’s works in Georgia. When this failed – the seminary closed in 1927 - Ignace saw that reliance on the Society would need to continue far into the future, until attitudes had changed and an African-American clergy was permitted to develop. And with the growing responsibilities of the Society in Africa he was aware that the ‘American Works’ could not depend indefinitely on a steady supply of priests from Europe. Peter Harrington of the Irish Province who had established similar missions in the diocese of Bellville from 1921 – situated at East St. Louis and in Cairo, Illinois - came to similar conclusions. Equally, Society leaders in Europe favored an upgrading of the SMA’s status in the USA, not least because America had long been regarded as an important source of finance. Thus both in Europe and America the idea began to gain currency that the ‘American Works’ should be erected as a Province of the Society, with its own capacity for recruiting and training students and its own missions, in Africa as well as the USA. During much of the 1930’s Ignace’s efforts were focussed on this project. Eventually, in 1939, a Pro-Province (a Province in everything but name) was established with its own Novitiate and Major Seminary at Silver Spring, Maryland (1938), its own Pro-Provincial (Ignace) and its administrative Council. In 1941 the progress of this foundation was such that the Society’s Generalate sought full Provincial Status from Propaganda Fide and this was granted by Cardinal Fumasoni-Biondi in a decree dated March 7th.
Ignace was in his 74th year and fifty years a priest when he was appointed first Provincial. He was to remain in charge of the Province until April 1946 when ill-health and weariness led him to resign. His term of office roughly coincided with American involvement in the Second World War and wartime constraints were to provide a constant headache for him during these years. Recruitment of candidates for the Province was inhibited by the military draft, while the logistics of introducing priests from Europe – to maintain staffing levels in the seminary and mission-parishes proved problematic. Moreover travel restrictions with the USA made it difficult for the Provincial Council to convene on a regular basis. Nonetheless as Provincial Lissner succeeded in maintaining the existing works in Georgia, Illinois and Los Angeles and managed to weld the Irish and Alsatian members - so different in culture and background – into a working unit. He also did much to attract support for the Province from clergy and laity who had seen and admired his work over decades. Perhaps the most important accomplishment of Lissner’s administration was the putting in place of an infrastructure from which a post-War expansion of the Province might proceed. He overcame numerous difficulties including the destruction of the original Silver Springs seminary by fire in March 1943. His administration not only re-established the seminary but developed a preparatory College and House of Philosophy in Boston.
Four months before his death – he died August 7, 1948 – Ignace had celebrated his eighty-first birthday. His last days before entering hospital were spent at Tenafly where his niece, Eugenie, was near at hand to help him with correspondence and to tend to his infirmities. His death came peacefully after a short illness. One of his Alsatian confreres, A.J. Gall, summed up his life in the following rather terse but eloquent tribute, written almost two decades after Ignace’s death.
Fr. Lissner's vocation was to work among the Coloured. A gifted builder he erected many schools, knowing (as he often repeated) that through those schools he would be able to reach out to the children and through them to their parents. But such work called for many sacrifices. The segregation of White and Black was the law of the land in the South. His strong determination to continue this work found opposition from the Klu Klux Klan, some White leaders and local priests and sometimes even from bishops. But Fr. Lissner was a man of steel. He braced himself against all opposition and criticism. Silently he suffered all kinds of injustices and continued tenaciously to preach the Gospel to his people. As superior of the society his suggestions and orders were straight forward and often misunderstood or rejected. But time would prove the soundness and fairness of his judgement.
Ignace may not always have suffered silently but he was certainly a man of steel. And it was this quality which made him one of the outstanding figures in the Church’s modern ministry to African-Americans. The title ‘Apostle of the Negro’ conferred on him in obituary notices and panegyrics was fully merited. His leadership of the Society’s American branch was to earn him another title, this time from his colleagues, that of ‘Founder of the Province’. From the earliest years he had always maintained that the creation of a Province was the key to tacking effectively the apostolic mission entrusted to his Society by the Holy See. In conclusion, Ignace Lissner’s contribution to the African-American community can rightly be set alongside that of one of his greatest supporters, Saint Catherine Drexel.
He is buried in the SMA Community Plot, Mount Carmel Cemetery, Tenafly, NJ, USA
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