History
The Missionaries of the Precious Blood was founded in Italy in 1815 by St. Gaspar del Bufalo. St. Gaspar was a Roman-born priest who was small in stature but blessed with boundless energy to carry out God’s work.
Shortly after his ordination in 1808, Gaspar was exiled during the anti-clerical movement promoted by Napoleon during the French Revolution. His imprisonment was a time of severe trial, but it gave him a clear vision of establishing a congregation devoted to the Precious Blood of Jesus. After his release from prison, Pope Pius VII called upon Gaspar to preach renewal and reconciliation to a Church and country in chaos after the French Revolution. Gaspar secured an abandoned 10th century abbey near Giano, Italy and established the Congregation of the Most Precious Blood (C.PP.S.) on Aug.15, 1815.
A visionary and preacher who had a gift of persuading people to follow his seemingly outlandish dreams, Gaspar and his small band of Missionaries worked among the country people of Italy. They staged parish missions where they preached day and night, in churches, on street corners, and anywhere else that people congregated. They dedicated their lives to renewing a Church that had been battered and rejected during Napoleon’s invasion of Italy.
From town to town, St. Gaspar and his Missionaries traveled, spreading the Good News that Jesus gave his Precious Blood to save the world. They reached out to those who felt lost or abandoned, to the sick and suffering, to those in hospitals and prisons. St. Gaspar established mission houses throughout the Italian countryside where his Missionaries lived together.
When the rural hillside was overrun by roaming bandits, so troublesome that the Pope himself threatened to exterminate them, St. Gaspar went into their camps and told them about the redeeming power of the love of Jesus. Inspired by his preaching, they pledged to change their ways.
Before he died in 1837, St. Gaspar had preached to thousands of people, and had established mission houses for C.PP.S. priests and brothers around the Italian countryside. Today, the priests, brothers, and lay associates of the Congregation serve in 20 countries around the world.
St. Gaspar del Bufalo was canonized in 1954. His feast day is October 21.
Led by Fr. Francis de Sales Brunner, C.PP.S., the Missionaries came to America in 1844. They had been invited to serve here by Archbishop John Baptist Purcell of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, who needed priests and brothers to minister to the German-speaking Catholic settlers in central and western Ohio.
Fr. Brunner was a Swiss-born priest of such zeal that he used the long Atlantic crossing as an opportunity to lead a nine-day retreat to the priests, brothers, and candidates who accompanied him to the United States. He led his small group of Missionaries to found parishes and mission houses throughout western Ohio and Indiana. While the priests served in parishes, the brothers performed the back-breaking labor of clearing the land and building religious houses at 10 different locations.
Fr. Brunner never had a spare nickel, and his priests were criticized because some thought them rough around the edges and under-educated. Yet Fr. Brunner and the Missionaries who followed him founded dozens of Precious Blood parishes, as well as the Sorrowful Mother Shrine in Bellevue, Ohio.
From those parishes came the next generation of Missionaries to serve in the United States, and then the next and the next. Missionaries established two colleges, Saint Joseph’s College in Rensselaer, Indiana, and Calumet College of St. Joseph in Whiting, Indiana.
God alone keeps an inventory of the Missionaries’ accomplishments, but people in Precious Blood parishes, those who were educated by them, or who met them in other ways have their own favorite stories of the times when a Precious Blood priest or brother stepped into their lives when he was most needed.
