The Passionist Mission in Argentina
Most American priests have devoted their lives to continuing in Argentina the pioneer missionary work that commenced in the New World nine hundred years ago and there are still several American priests in the Passionist Mission, which is just as truly the knight-errantry of religion and education in Argentina today as were the early missions with which such men as Marquette, Raymbault, Chaumont, and Lallemand blazed the trail which the pioneers later followed across the plains. Passionist Fathers have carried the cross and the alphabet out across the dry, dusty pampas to the small sons of the gauchos and up winding water courses and through the monte to the indians; and although their mission has become so important that it has become autonomous and thus passed out of its former American administration, the work is one in which American residents of Argentina will always be interested.
But though the Passionist Mission was at one time under American administration, it is to the Irish, rather than to Americans, that credit must be given for the founding of the mission. As early as the nineteenth century, when Argentina was still under Spanish jurisdiction, but struggling for independence, and when the entire southern half of the American Continent was in a raw state of development, Irish pioneers were already in evidence and taking an active part in the interests of the colonies. They had come out in straggling numbers, poor, yet rich in hope and in brawn, brain and character. At first they were unimportant, but they worked hard and earnestly and soon entered into all the affairs of the land. To their influence and cooperation is due much of the enterprise, administration, and industry, and much of the moral and social uplift of the Republic, so that the Colectividad Irlandesa is today one of the best beloved and appreciated of all the colonies.
Feed