Saint John Neumann: America's First Male Saint

Beneath this Philadelphia church lie the remains of John Neumann, the first male born in America to be canonized a Catholic saint. He was born in eighteen eleven in Prachatitz, Bohemia, and arrived in the United States in eighteen thirty-six, not yet ordained, hoping to find a bishop willing to take him in. The Redemptorist order took him in, and he spent years ministering to German-speaking immigrants from New York to Maryland.

In eighteen fifty-two he became the fourth Bishop of Philadelphia, and he immediately got to work. He is credited with building the first Catholic diocesan school system in the United States, establishing about thirty parochial schools in just eight years. He died suddenly in eighteen sixty at age forty-eight. Pope Paul the Sixth canonized him in nineteen seventy-seven.