by Fabian Parmisano, OP

CHAPTER 4 : SETTLING IN: BENICIA [1]

Why Benicia? It was just a small lazy town founded by General Mariano Vallejo and several others in 1847 and named after Vallejo's wife. But during the early 1850s, it blossomed from town to thriving city. Two major factors in its mushroom growth were, first, the placement there in 1851 of the "Benicia Barracks," later known more formally as the U.S. Government Benicia Arsenal; and, second, the fact that it lay on the direct water route between San Francisco and the gold fields beyond Sacramento. With the presence of the military and their families and the continual influx of the "forty-niners," the city expanded in population and activity. It even, though only for a few months, became the state capital. And when the center of government shifted to Sacramento, the city continued its governmental leadership as the county seat. By 1860, however, the Sonora gold fields were depleted. Attention was now centered upon Nevada with its apparently inexhaustible cache of silver, and the roads leading to it by-passed Benicia. The city became a sleepy town once again with a dwindling population. It dozed until 1879, when completion of the railroads sparked community development. The later success of the Benicia-Martinez Ferry System and the Benicia Arsenal military activities during World War II further sustained and expanded the city. [2]

It was at the height of the gold rush, and therefore in its early heyday, that Benicia caught the eye and imagination of Vilarrasa; he, together with Alemany, envisioned it as a promising center for the Order. Here were people, relatively few at the moment but increasing daily, and here were life and growth. Here, then, was the need for Dominican ministry of prayer, word and sacrament and the hoped-for material means of supporting and sustaining it. Vilarrasa gave his own account of the new beginnings in his Chronicle for the year 1854:

In order that I might the easier provide for the spread of the Order... I transferred the convent of Monterey to Benicia by a letter dated March 31, 1854.   Benicia is a small city located on the straits of the Sacramento River which are called Carquinez, and is a distance of twenty-seven English miles from the city of San Francisco.  This city was founded in the year 1847 by the Mexican general, Senor Mariano Vallejo, who gave it the name of his wife, Benicia...There already then existed at Benicia a church recently built and intended for a parish but not at all finished and furthermore burdened with a debt of two thousand dollars. This the Archbishop gave to the Order. We built a very humble house without cells, such as we had at Monterey, and for this purpose the Archbishop assisted us with a sum of five hundred dollars. Before the beginning of the year 1859, thanks to the donations of the faithful of the city of Benicia, who, though few in number and destitute of the goods of fortune, nevertheless excel in generosity, the church was completed, a sacristy had been added together with a choir behind the altar, and all the debts were paid.

There was then [in 1854] committed to our Brethren the care of the parishes of Benicia and Martinez, which latter is a town situated across the Sacramento River almost opposite Benicia. There was already a small church there under the title of St. Catherine of Siena. Both parishes then embraced a vast territory.

The Church of Benicia was solemnly blessed by the Archbishop under the title of our holy Father Dominic on June 18, 1854.

So the move was made, but once again not without the sisters. Just two months after Archbishop Alemany blessed the new Dominican church and priory, Mother Mary Goemaere together with six other professed sisters, three novices, and more than fifty of the Monterey students also moved to Benicia.[3]  They arrived by schooner on August 24, 1854, and soon had their convent school for young women set up and functioning. There were four other schools in Benicia at the time, all of good reputation, but St. Catherine's soon became their match. As noted in one of the local Benicia histories, "The St. Catherine's curriculum was rather extensive for such a young and isolated school. It included orthography, reading, writing, arithmetic, grammar, geography, history, composition, natural philosophy (i.e. natural history), astronomy, mythology, botany, bookkeeping, chemistry, sewing, embroidery (on lace or muslin), beads, chenille and tapestry." The sisters also insisted on "'refinement of manners and the constant maintenance of a polite and amiable deportment.'"[4]   We must add, what our Benicia historian fails to mention, that religious instruction and worship were very much at the center of the school, though to keep peace and harmony in a house of diverse cultures and beliefs "discussion of politics and religion were forbidden."[5]  And, thanks to both Vilarrasa and Brother/Father Vinyes, philosophy courses begun in Monterey continued in Benicia. To Fr. Vinyes, especially, "in great part was due the educational standard of Saint Catherine's. The genuine academic principles of teaching which he had instilled into the groups of sisters under his care here held firmly against all inducements in favour of lower standards, so that during the decade of the seventies, Saint Catherine's kept its place among the leading academies of California."[6]   Evidently, the sisters were not about to short-change their students. The female sex would have as broad and deep an education as males of their age were getting elsewhere.

The friars were about their business too. In 1855, as Vilarrasa briefly notes in his Chronicle for this and the following year, "a part of the convent of Benicia was built," and in the next year "we enlarged the same convent" -- all at the cost of seventeen thousand dollars, a high price for those days; a debt, it is added, that took fourteen years to pay. Hammer and nails together with full conventual religious life, daily ministry required by the parish and its mission in Martinez, and teaching and ministerial obligations at the sisters' convent and their school, must have weighed heavy upon the shoulders of the only two priests -- Frs. Vilarrasa and Langlois -- present in these early years.

And so Vilarrasa must have been especially happy as he chronicled for the following year: "On December 19, 1857, Brothers Vincent Vinyes and Dominic Costa received the Order of Priesthood at the hands of the Most Reverend Archbishop Alemany in the church at Benicia. They were the first priests of the Order to be ordained in California." Out of the original six novices, two had left before profession, and of the four who made solemn profession on March 7, 1853, one had died in Benicia (Br. Louis Berenguer) and one had returned to his native Spain (Br. Lawrence Cervera). Frs. Vinyes and Costa, while helping in the priestly ministry, continued their studies in Benicia under Fr. Vilarrasa, and on May 21, 1860, Vinyes received at the hands of his teacher -- so authorized by special decree of the Master General -- the degree of Lector of Theology and Philosophy. On this same day Vinyes was appointed vicar of the convent of Benicia and began to share with Vilarrasa in the intellectual formation of the novices and students. Of Fr. Costa we hear little. He first appears as vicar of Martinez in 1861, and in 1863 he left California to join the Province of St. Lawrence in Chile.

In the meantime new blood was seeping into the congregation. Between the reception of the first novices to the end of the 50s, thirteen candidates received the habit. As listed in the catologi, their names were: Augustine Anthony Langlois ('53), Bernard James Burns ('55), Thomas Edward O'Neill ('55), Martin Patrick Cassin ('56), John James Burns ('56), Jordan Eugene Caldwell ('58), Mannes Bernard Doogan ('58), John James Lunney ('58), Bernard Patrick Gaynor ('58), Louis John Daniel ('58), Simon John Russell ('58), Pius John Murphy ('59), Patrick John Callaghan ('59). Six of these were laybrothers (cooperator brothers in later parlance). Of the seven others, six reached the priesthood, in addition to Fr. Langlois, who was a priest before entering the Order.

The congregation was fed, sparingly, from outside also. One of its most interesting early foreign additions during the '50s was Fr. James Henry Aerden, O.P., of the Province of St. Rose in Belgium. He was born in that country on May 15, 1823, made his religious profession in September, 1841, and was ordained a priest at Ghent on December 20, 1845. Soon after ordination he accepted the offer of Bishop Modeste DeMers of Vancouver Island to join his diocese. After several years of ministry mainly among the Indians, Aerden had unspecified difficulties with the bishop which were serious enough to get him suspended. He came to California on February 28, 1851, and for several years worked, as a layman, in the mines at Marysville and Grass Valley. One Sunday, after the Mass he was attending, he introduced himself to the celebrant, Fr. Thomas J. Dalton, and corrected a point of doctrine in his sermon. Evidently Dalton was impressed with Aerden (if not with the correction!) for he wrote to Archbishop Alemany and told him of the suspended priest. Alemany invited Aerden to return to the exercise of his priesthood and, the invitation accepted, the suspension was lifted. Fr. Vilarrasa welcomed him back into the Order in Benicia on November 4, 1856. From then on his name appears frequently in the documentation and records of the congregation, indicating an active and fruitful ministry, both internal to the Order and external in the archdiocese at large. He died in 1896 as the much loved first resident pastor of St. Catherine's in Martinez after long service there.

Not all outsiders served the congregation so well. A less successful addition to it at this time was Fr. Antoine S.M. de St. Mard of the Province of France. Alemany had been anxious to have a French-speaking priest for San Francisco's French community and, in particular, for ministry at their church, Notre Dame des Victoires. At last, in 1858, he secured St. Mard. The French Dominican, however, proved to be a disappointment, first to Vilarrasa who almost immediately sensed a strangeness in him, and then to Alemany, slower to note his limitations because, we may speculate, the bishop had greater need of him in the diocese than Vilarrasa had of him for the congregation. Both Alemany and Vilarrasa, however, were kind in their initial letters about him to Jandel. Vilarrasa wrote that the difficulty lay not in any moral failure or lack of zeal, but in what seemed to be ill health. Just to offer the "sung Mass" was often too much for him. Alemany wrote to Jandel concurring with Vilarrasa and suggesting that St. Mard might be given the relatively light task of returning to France for the purpose of soliciting funds for the financially hard-pressed Notre Dame des Victoires. St. Mard accepted the assignment and went to Paris. But while there he was accused of some scandal (voir publique). St. Mard wrote to Fr. Jandel complaining that the prior of his convent of residence asked him to leave Paris, indeed to leave France altogether. Eventually he did leave and ended up in New York, apparently with the funds he had gathered for Notre Dame. Alemany and Vilarrasa heard no more from him, though Alemany did send him a final letter asking for his "accounts." The archbishop also wrote to Jandel, Jan. 15, 1862, referring to the letter he had written to St. Mard and bemoaning the sorry situation, but leaving us, as well as the Master General apparently, in the dark as to St. Mard's "sin" and the final resolution, if any, of the case:

The affair of Father de St. Mard was so mysterious, inconceivable, and painful, and his accounts so hidden, that I purposely delayed responding to your Reverence, so that, like sinners, I have procrastinated for too long a time. I shall try to do better in the future. I believe my health has suffered because of the affair, and I have tried, as far as possible, to forget it. I inquired as to where he might be and finally discovered that beyond doubt he was in New York, where perhaps he still resides. When he learned that I was making inquiries, he let it be known that I was trying to force him to terminate his miseries by suicide -- believe it or not! But knowing where he was and acting upon it could accomplish nothing seeing that all was wasted. Further efforts would only aggravate the scandal. Here, in the church of Notre Dame des Victoires, he is recommended, without name, to the prayers of the faithful, and a friend who knows his address and to whom I have entrusted my letter is to try to lead him from the evil in his soul to true penance.  Let us pray for him,

In Fr. Jandel's hand is the brief notation on Alemany's letter: "I regret the conduct of P.S.M. and the pain he has caused."

Life for the friars in Benicia was much the same as it had been in Monterey. The daily horarium, as defined and approved in 1851, was in force, which meant, among other things, some three hours in choir in common prayer each day (and one of those hours at two or three o'clock in the morning!). There was the daily parish Mass, and, when possible, Mass for the sisters at St. Catherine's about a quarter of a mile down the road. There were baptisms and marriages, instructions for converts, some teaching at St. Catherine's and catechism for the parish children; there were sick calls and funerals, and all the nameless chores that are part and parcel of daily parish ministry. And there was, as noted above, building projects to plan and oversee and struggle to finance. There was also the mission church of St. Catherine's in Martinez to tend to. Fr. Vilarrasa's first years in Benicia must have been hectic. Certainly there were all the problems involved in moving and reestablishment. But also he, with a modicum of help from Fr. Langlois when at last professed, was the only viable priest for the multiple ministries. Two letters at this time to the Master General, one from Sr. Mary Goemaere, dated February 19, 1855, the other from Vilarrasa, October 4, 1857, underscore the sad and persistent situation. Sister Mary's letter casts a different light on her having "volunteered" for California, as Alemany had claimed, and it must surely have touched the heart of one so compassionate and generous as Fr. Jandel.

.... Reverend Father, in order to tell you without tiring, Ionly want to tell you that I have been poor, alone, and abandoned, during the five years we have been in California.

I came from Paris in 1850 with Bishop Alemany and our good Father Vilarrasa. The Bishop's intention, when I left Paris with him was that I should go to Somerset to our Dominican Convent in order to teach French there, and upon arriving in New York he changed his mind and told me to follow him to California, which I did very willingly thinking that by doing all that he told me I could not fail to do the Holy Will of God. Good Father, I came there and began a community out of obedience, knowing neither English or Spanish and not being able to speak to anyone, because I met no French people.

During the five years which we have been here, God has blessed our work and He alone knows what I have had to suffer and whatI suffer still, but we must suffer before going to Heaven, isthat not so, Father?

There are here twelve professed sisters, two novices and two postulants. Perhaps we shall have three good postulants who will enter within a few days. Our resident students are seventy in number, and we have, moreover, one dozen non-resident students.

There is here, Father, much good to be done, but there are no laborers; what can we do without a priest? The Bishop is occupied with his diocese and good Father Vilarrasa with his community, and the good sisters with their resident students are abandoned. We could do much good if you would be so kind as to send us a few more priests, if only for a few years.

Oh, if only you could come to California and see for yourself our situation, I am sure that you would consider helping us more than you do.

Please pardon this expression, but consider for a moment what our good Father Vilarrasa has had to suffer since the foundation of his community in California. You left him entirely alone, as if you did not deign to be concerned at all with him or with his small flock from California. I beg you, good and Venerable Father, have pity on us, consider our worries and our long patience, and send us at least two good priests capable of helping us to do good and propagate the Order of our Father Saint Dominic in California where there is so much good to be done.

Pardon your humble servant who has presumed to take the liberty to open her heart to you with confidence, and who hopes that you will not disdain to answer her a few words of hope and consolation for the future... >>>

Partial Endnotes
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[1] Cf. WDA XI:102 (A) and (B) for Benicia and Martinez; WDA XI:114 for Vallejo; WDA XI:101 for Antioch; XI:115-118 for Pittsburg; and the files on Vilarrasa and Alemany as noted above. Also the Acta of the early biennial congregations as shelved in the WDA.

[2] Cf. Great Expectations: The Story of Benicia..., passim

[3] The story of St. Catherine's, as repeated here, is told by Sr. Mary Hyacinth Kilgannon, O.P., op. cit., supplemented by materials found in the WDA files for Benicia.

[4] Great Expectations: The Story of Benicia..., p. 103.

[5] Kilgannon, p. 29

[6] The Dominican Sisters of San Rafael..., p. 48.

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