Father Augustine Francis Wirth I

Father Augustine Francis Wirth I

A fascinating figure emerged during this era and found himself, despite a peripatetic life, a capitular of St. Mary’s Abbey in New Jersey. Augustine Wirth, the elder, was born in Bavaria, became a monk of St. Vincent Abbey, and the leader of the group that founded the community in Doniphan and later Atchison, Kansas, that became St. Benedict’s Abbey. He left a trail as a missionary in Nebraska and various settlements in Kansas.

In 1887, however, he once again transferred his stability, this time to the new abbey in Newark. On two occasions he served as pastor of Sacred Heart Church in Elizabeth where he had relatives. (A nephew and namesake, Francis Wirth, later joined St. Mary’s Abbey, taking the name of his illustrious uncle, Augustine, thus making necessary the designation I and II in the abbey records.) Augustine Wirth I spent his later years in parochial work in Minnesota until his death in 1901.  He is buried in Saint John’s Abbey Cemetery, Collegeville, Minnesota.

In the midst of this very active life, Wirth found time to become a very popular and prolific author and translator of sermons from German. Following his death, conflicts arose over the considerable royalties accruing from his publications. A lawsuit was brought by St. Mary’s Abbey against the relatives of Father Augustine. The case, The Order of St. Benedict of New Jersey vs. Albert Steinhauser, administrator of Augustine Wirth, deceased (234 U.S. 640, 641) worked its way up to the Supreme Court of the United States, where on 22 June 1914 Justice Charles Evans Hughes delivered the landmark decision which upheld the rights of religious communities and the legal validity of religious vows.