St. Charles Center
In search of a location for a larger seminary and the motherhouse of C.PP.S. in the United States, the Missionaries purchased a 200-acre parcel of land in Mercer County in 1861. The property was that of the former Emlen Institute and its farm, near the African-American settlement of Carthagena, Ohio. The Emlen Institution for the Benefit of Children of African and Indian descent was a school run by Augustus Wattles, a Quaker abolitionist and educator. Wattles directed the school until 1857 when he left the school due to local racial bigotry.
The Missionaries named the seminary after St. Charles Borromeo, the patron saint of seminarians. There were 15 seminarians when St. Charles opened its doors in June 1861 with Fr. Joseph Dwenger, C.PP.S. (later bishop of Fort Wayne) as its first rector.
The Missionaries built a new brick seminary in 1878 to accommodate an increase in seminarians. The self-standing Chapel of the Assumption of Mary was completed next. In 1919, the Missionaries broke ground for a much larger seminary building that was to face the highway (U.S. Route 127). Archbishop Henry Moeller of Cincinnati officiated at its dedication on Aug. 22, 1922, with thousands of people in attendance.
St. Charles Seminary was built to house up to 120 seminarians, but by 1950 was proving to be outdated. The Missionaries took on another extensive project, renovating the main building and adding two wings. The first contained a larger kitchen, larger dining rooms (one of which is now the St. Gaspar Room), an auditorium, and a new convent to house the Sisters of the Precious Blood who ministered there. The second was the infirmary, which provided a place to care for sick and infirm members. Archbishop Karl J. Alter blessed the new facilities on April 29, 1958.
Also in that era, the chapel was renovated in time for St. Charles’ centenary celebration in 1961, and the Missionaries’ printing operation, the Messenger Press, was relocated from the St. Charles main building to a new building west of the seminary. Messenger Press is now a privately-owned printing firm.
In those days, St. Charles was a near self-contained and self-supporting institution. Besides the many priests who taught the seminarians, numerous brothers worked the land or in the barns, with the assistance of seminarians. St. Charles’ grounds included a dairy, the orchard and gardens, and lakes for fishing and swimming. The seminary had its own powerhouse, post office, and fire truck. In the auditorium, the seminarians provided entertainment in the way of plays and musicals.
In the mid-1960s, as changes were affecting the Church, there was a reduction in the number of vocations. This, along with a desire to make use of the opportunities offered by an urban setting, a difficult decision was made in 1969 to discontinue the seminary program at St. Charles. Men in formation with the Missionaries now study at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago.
Missionaries continued to use St. Charles as a retirement home for its priests and brothers. But the number of retired C.PP.S. members peaked in the 1980s and early 1990s, so fewer and fewer of the rooms at St. Charles were being used. The Missionaries took on a careful study of the facility and local needs.
In 2001, the congregation launched an ambitious plan to convert the former seminary into a senior living facility that would be open to the public, while still using it as a retirement home and gathering place for its own members.
The project made the building much more accessible and crafted one- and two-bedroom apartments from former student dorms. The renovated dining room became the Gaspar Room, now home to meetings, retreats, presentations and other events for the Missionaries and the local community. Assumption Chapel was also renovated with better lighting and sound systems.
Renovations were completed in 2010, with the help of a successful $7 million comprehensive campaign, Missionary Hearts.
