About the Province

The Jesuits in the United States had their beginnings in Maryland, as did the Missouri Province. In the early 1820s the Bishop of the Louisiana Territory, Louis Du Bourg, invited the Society to the newly admitted state of Missouri. In 1823, twelve young Belgian Jesuits and six African-American slaves left a struggling Jesuit plantation near White Marsh, Maryland and made their way west, first by flatboat down the Ohio River, and then on foot across Illinois. The group stopped in Missouri’s Florissant Valley, about twenty miles northwest of St. Louis, where Bishop Du Bourg had given the Jesuits a fine tract of land. With a subsidy from the government of President James Monroe, the Jesuits began a school for Native Americans.

Four years later the school had outlived its usefulness, and the Jesuits moved into other works. Some began parish work in Florissant and St. Charles, some went to Kansas to work among the Native Americans there, and some began to staff Saint Louis College (now Saint Louis University), already nine years old.

In the following decades the Missouri Jesuits went even further a field. At the invitation of the Iroquois and Salish Indians, Peter De Smet went to Montana. Other Missouri Jesuits went on to the Northwest, to work among Native Americans there. The superior general of the Society transferred St. Charles College at Grand Coteau, Louisiana, to the Missouri Jesuits.

In 1840 the Missouri Mission became a Vice-Province. In that same year, the Jesuits built the "Rock Building" at St. Stanislaus Seminary in Florissant. For over a century the graceful structure was headquarters for the longest-running Jesuit novitiate in the United States (1823-1971). The building still stands today as the former Museum of the Western Jesuit Missions.In 1863, the Missouri Vice-Province became a full-fledged Jesuit Province. Over time, the Missouri Province gave birth to other Jesuit Provinces: first Chicago, (later to be divided into the Chicago and Detroit Provinces), and then Wisconsin. Today there are ten Jesuit Provinces in the United States; together they form the United States Assistancy. Missouri Jesuits have been prominent in a number of fields. In the early decades of the 20th Century, Father Edward Garesche promoted the growth of sodalities in the United States. Father Dan Lord took over this work, and became a well-known social activist, speaker, and publisher.

Father Edward Dowling was instrumental in the development of Alcoholics Anonymous programs. In 1944 Father Claude Heithaus gave a landmark sermon on racial integration at St. Francis Xavier College Church, on the campus of Saint Louis University—a sermon that led directly to the integration of Catholic schools in St. Louis.

Today the Missouri Province includes the states of Colorado, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Illinois, and Belize, Central America. Missouri Jesuits serve in universities, colleges, high schools, parishes, and hospitals. Numbers have fallen in recent decades, as a result of the decline in vocations to the priesthood and religious life and the corresponding upsurge in lay vocations. Although the Province has become smaller, Missouri Jesuits are no less hopeful for the future, no less active, and no less dedicated to the greater glory of God.