Father Nicholas Balleis

Fr. Nicholas Balleis, OSB

St. Mary’s Abbey owes its existence to a pioneering Benedictine, but not, however, the one who may first come to mind, Boniface Wimmer.  Rather, this pioneer was Father Nicholas Balleis, monk of the Austrian Abbey of St. Peter in Salzburg.  

Nicholas Balleis was born in Salzburg on 22 November 1808. After his ordination in 1831, Fr. Nicholas responded to the appeal for missionaries to work with the growing German speaking population in the United States, but it was only after some difficulty that his monastic community permitted him to depart. He arrived in America in 1836 along with twenty other priests and seminarians, but his goal seems not to have been to establish a monastery or a permanent Benedictine foundation in America. In fact, he initially discouraged Boniface Wimmer from just such an enterprise.

Fr. Nicholas, however, was not the first Benedictine to work in North America. He was preceded by Dom Pierre Jean Didier, a monk of the Abbey of St. Denis in Paris who came in 1790 in the wake of the chaos of the French Revolution to minister to French colonists on the Ohio River. The Ohio colony did not perdure, and, after doing parochial work in Missouri, Dom Didier died in 1799 shortly before the Louisiana Purchase.

Fr. Nicholas worked first in Philadelphia and later in Pittsburgh until 1838, when he came east in response to an appeal from Monsignor Joseph Raffeiner, Vicar General for Germans of the then-Diocese of New York. Late in 1838, prompted by New York's Bishop John DuBois, Msgr. Raffeiner and Fr. Nicholas began a mission to German Catholics in northern New Jersey, then part of the Diocese of New York.

In the 1840 U. S. Census, Newark registered a population of over seventeen thousand, which included some hundreds of Germans in the city itself with many more living in scattered agricultural communities nearby. Beginning in 1838, this small, widely scattered colony of German-speaking Catholics met for Mass twice a month in Old St. John’s Church on Mulberry Street, Newark’s first Catholic Church.

The congregation slowly grew, and in due time Fr. Nicholas decided to reside permanently in Newark. By 1841 he had determined that the time had come to form an independent German parish. Pastor and people decided to purchase a plot of land on Court and Howard Streets in what was then an outlying section of the city, with open fields, orchards, and browsing cattle.

With the parishioners acting as carpenters, masons, bricklayers and solicitors of funds, and with Fr. Nicholas as architect and foreman, they constructed a two story frame building fifty by thirty feet, the lower level serving as a school and priest’s quarters. The church was dedicated to Mary under the title of the Immaculate Conception, and the first Mass was celebrated on 31 January 1842.   With an enrollment of forty-five children, Fr.Nicholas began one of the first Catholic schools in New Jersey. He himself shared the teaching duties with salaried laymen. A cemetery was also established adjacent to the church.

Continuing German immigration to Newark through mid nineteenth century made apparent the need for a larger site on which the parish might expand. In 1846, Fr. Nicholas purchased property at High and William Streets not far from the initial site. Rather than build immediately, a contractor was hired to move the original wooden church to the new location. Either because his business failed or because the fee was too low, the contractor abandoned the job with the church in the middle of High Street. There it remained for three weeks until a new contractor could be engaged to complete the job. Meanwhile, Fr. Nicholas continued to hold services and the Angelus bell was rung at the appointed times. The little church eventually found its home at the new location.