The story of the one hundred years (19182018) of the Missionary Society of St. Columban is filled with adventure, stress, and danger, with the humdrum of daily life, with martyrs (twenty-seven of them thus far, including Columban Sister Joan Sawyer), with innumerable personal and society global connections and issues, with men who went from the familiarity of daily life and people they knew to lands and people unknown to bring the good news. The story is charged with humor and courage, along with faith, hope, and love. The people in this story lived within particular national histories and an evolving global Christianity. The history of the US region of the Missionary Society of St. Columban interacts with movements of Catholic and American history. These contexts influenced the ability of the Columbans to grow in the United States, to provide desperately needed resources for the missions, and to further Catholic engagement in the mission.

Excerpt from The Society of St. Columban: A Historical Sketch Page four sight saddened him, as it has saddened many another heart before and since. He saw how the missionaries of France were recalled from their missions to become soldiers. He knew that many of them would never return. And as he saw the utter spiritual helplessness of China with all its cruel fearsome superstitions, his thoughts turned to other lands where the Faith was strong and fervent and where men, many of them at least, loved God; to Ireland, where he was born, and to America, where he had lived and worked. In these countries there was a strong, virile Faith. Ireland had a missionary history unparalleled; in America the idea of foreign mis sions had scarcely begun to stir abroad, but Father Galvin had vision enough to grasp its possibilities. He began his campaign. He wrote for the Irish Catholic and he wrote for the students of Maynooth. His letters were read and published there by a friend whose interest was awakening. If he failed to receive a ready response, he got at least a sympathetic hearing. He wrote constantly for such American papers as The Lamp (graymoor) and the Brooklyn Tah let. Two Irish priests joined him in 1915 and their sphere of influence spread to Australia. More than one Australian priest now attributes his missionary vocation to articles that appeared in the Austral Light at that period. Something was taking shape. Neither Father Galvin nor his. Com rades could guess then what the future would bring, and as a matter of fact it far surpassed their wildest dreams. But the ground was being pre pared, and in 1916 Father Galvin himself appeared on. The scene. In the summer of that year he was in America, in the autumn he was in Ireland. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Since 1918, the Missionary Society of St. Columban has been sharing the Gospel in solidarity with the poor throughout the world. Today, Columbans including priests, Sisters and lay missionaries work in fifteen countries around the globe in conjunction with lay men and women within the local communities. Columban Fr. Peter Woodruff spent several years traveling around the Columban world and interviewing the men and women engaged in mission work. The stories collected here provide a rare look at a moment in time in the continuing mission work and the ongoing Columban story. Each story is unique and different, but all of them share in furthering the work of mission today. Explore their first-hand accounts of what it means to be a missionary in today’s ever changing world.