1903 was a significant year in France for the Catholic Church. The church officially separated from secular government – catholic schools were no longer public schools, public monuments could not be religious in nature, and no taxes would go to the church. While there was not the level of anti-clericalism seen during the Revolution, that spirit still remained. Several religious orders became pressured to leave France for Canada or America. So the story of Catholicism in Jordan gained a second chapter.

Suppression of religious orders relates to their independence from states in which the operate. Religious orders remain subject to a foreign power – the Holy See – while secular clergy lie more closely associated with the State. Religious orders tending to a more outspoken and independent theme run the risk of suppression.

FONTGOMBAULT ABBEY

Fontgombault Abbey dates to 1091 as a Benedictine complex. The dissolved and suffered partial destruction during the French Revolution in 1791. Only in 1849 was the abbey restarted by Trappist monks.

Reverend Fortunat Marchand became the abbot in 1902. Due to a secularist-driven French law drawn up in 1901, he inherited both a difficult financial situation, exacerbated by the government’s harassment of religious institutions. In May of 1903, part of the community went into exile to the United States to establish a new monastery. Others dispersed to other Trappist monasteries within France.

In 1905, the Trappists were expelled from France under the Association Laws separating church and State. The monastery became secularized and sold to Louis Bonjean. Then, the abbey became a button factory. With his death in 1914, the buildings transformed into a military hospital for wounded soldiers of the Belgian army, which it remained until 1918.

The abbey served as a diocesan seminary from 1919 until 1948 when 22 monks from Solesmes Abbey came to found a new Benedictine community here. Eventually, with over a hundred monks, they generated three more abbeys in France – Randol 1971, Triors 1984, and Gaussan 1994 – plus one in the US – Clear Creek, Oklahoma 1999.

AMERICA

The Trappist Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky offered the French monks asylum in 1903. Despite their hospitality, the small group from France did not feel at home there. They did not want to become a part of Gethsemani and desiring to maintain their own identity by carrying on the Fontgombault tradition.

Archbishop Alexander Christie, leader of the Oregon City See, heard about the situation and sent an invitation for the monks to come to Oregon. A group of seven came west finding and buying 400 acres in the Jordan area – 2/3 of the land heavily forested and 1/3 agricultural. Abbot Fortunat, at the age of 41, joined his group in November 1905.

On a nearby stream, they built a steam sawmill. Next came a monastery which was completed in 1907, solemnly dedicated by the archbishop at a large gathering of both Catholic and non-Catholics. The monks ranks were augmented by the arrival of a dozen more men in 1905 to help begin the work. By 1911, their numbers stabilized at seventeen.

But then a series of misadventures followed. The monks took out loans at interest rates raised in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War. Then, their main source of income, the sawmill, burned down. They also faced a language barrier in their business dealings along with a lack of business experience. Conditions at the monastery were rugged, as well. Some 35 Americans came over the six years the monastery was open and only one remained by the end, the others finding “conditions too primitive and precarious”.

CLOSURE

Despite the setbacks, hope remained within the ranks of the monks. The financial picture, however, was clearer in the minds of the superiors. Rumors began to get back to Oregon of a possible closure of the monastery. The abbot of Gethsemani – he remained the hierarchical leader for the Trappist order in America – visited, one monk, Father George Joseph Gabriel Caillard, vociferously complained about the possible closure. Only after a letter from Trappist superiors in Rome came explaining the reasons did Father George calm down and submit.

With the closure in 1911, the community disbanded. Some of the monks went to other Benedictine or Trappist communities in America or became diocesan priests. Father George went back to Kentucky eventually becoming an assistant superior there.

One monk would later help found Our Lady of Guadalupe Abbey near Lafayette in 1952. The abbot and a few monks stayed on for a while, hoping to salvage the foundation. One monk, Maria Lignorius, lies buried in the cemetery of Our Lady of Lourdes, the Jordan parish church.

FATHER FORTUNAT AND THE SISTERS OF ST. GERTRUDE

The whole affair taxed the health of Abbot Fortunat. Ill with tuberculosis, the abbot was discovered by Father Ignatius, OSB, at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Portland. Father Ignatius was the chaplain of the monastery for the nuns of St. Gertrude’s near Cottonwood, Idaho. He alerted the Sisters to the abbot’s precarious health situation. Mother Hildegard, Superior of the monastery, generously offered to pay the Abbot’s fare back to France or as an alternative, invited him to live at St. Gertrude’s for the remainder of his life.

The father chose the latter option and arrived at the monastery of St. Gertrude’s on 20 February 1912. He brought with him sixteen trunks full of church books, goods, vestments, clothing, all of which became property of the monastery. The abbot also supervised the building of a grotto featuring a statue of Mary Immaculata in an elevated niche behind the monastery. A three-foot-high rock wall surrounded the rustic grotto with the words “Monstra Te Esse Matrem” – Show Thyself to be a Mother – above the entrance gate.

Only a few days after his 49^th birthday, on 23 June 1913, he was rushed to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Lewiston following a severe hemorrhage. Knowing his time was short, he requested Mother Hildegard and Sister Scholastica who were visiting to “Please bury me in the Grotto.” The father had hoped to say the first mass in the grotto, however the inaugural mass turned out to be a funeral mass for the former abbot who died on 4 July. He lies today in the community cemetery at St. Gertrude’s.

The story of how Abbot Fortunat Marchand found the Sisters of St. Gertrude comes from Sister Carrie Barton’s two-minute presentation to the Sisters found here.

SISTERS OF ST. GERTRUDE

Bernardine Wachter led a group of Benedictine Sisters and postulants from Switzerland to Oregon in 1882 from Maria-Rickenbach first to Conception, Missouri and then further. These moves mirrored those of their Benedictine brothers from nearby Engleberg. About the same time and for the same reasons – fear of government persecution – three other sisters joined their fellow Benedictine sisters at Gervais. They came from another convent in Sarnen – only a few miles to the west of Engelberg and Maria-Rickenbach. In Oregon, the also searched for potential landing spots for their society.

These three ladies went on the road with the other sisters in Gervais helping with a mission founded at Grande Ronde. They then moved into Washinton founding a convent first in Uniontown, Washington and later moving to nearby Colton – something to do with difficulties with the priest who ministered there. Finally, in 1909, they established a motherhouse for their new order Sisters of St. Gertrude in Cottonwood Idaho.

JORDAN AFTER THE FALL

So, now Jordan had seen a rogue-Catholic community, a failed French Trappist monastery and a series of Benedictine priests come through the scene. Time for another order to enter the picture, the Salvatorians.

Following the closure of the monastery, the Benedictines at Mount Angel ministered to the needs of the parish. But having just dedicated a new larger church and facing a shortage of priests themselves, they relinquished their work here.

The Salvatorians were a recent order dating to the late 19^th century. It was a missionary society sending priests out on as many missions as they could. There were already a few Salvatorian priests serving in the Northwest since the turn of the century. Archbishop Alexander Christie sent out a letter to Father Felix Bucher – he served at the mission at Grande Ronde – asking him to see if his abbot in Wisconsin – the American headquarters of the Order – could spare some priests to take over for the Benedictines.

Originally, Father Felix came to Oregon at the invitation of Archbishop Gross, the predecessor of Archbishop Christie. Gross heard from Pope Leo XIII of the Salvatorian society recently established in Rome.  Going straight to the founder and Father General, Francis Jordan, Gross asked for some priests to help in his big diocese in the West. Father Felix was the first Salvatorian to come to Oregon. For many years now Father Felix has labored in the Indian reservation at Grand Ronde, Yamhill County.

SALVATORIANS TO THE RESCUE

Father Felix urged his Provincial, Abbot Bernard, to take on the request. He wrote, “If there are two or three of us together here, then each has the Society as a foundation and shield, and whatever he does has a future. I have waited 31 years in order to see the Society take root in the Far West. And perhaps it is the Holy Will of the Lord that we should accept Jordan in memory of our venerable Founder, Father Francis Jordan.”

In 1924, Father Eustachius (spelled “Eustace” on his grave marker in Jordan) Goerlich became the first Salvatorian priest to serve at the parish church, Our Lady of Lourdes, in Jordan. He noticed the name of the community matched that of their founding father. Father Eustachius brought to Jordan experience he gained for earlier important administrative posts he served at the Wisconsin headquarters of the order. He remained at Jordan until 1933. Other Salvatorians continued care for the parish right up until 1991. Father Eustachius and other Salvatorians serving here lie buried in the small cemetery behind the church – 1933-1941 Father Ludger Gloegler; 1942-1946 Father Beatus Baur; 1947-1952 Father Leander Schneider; 1953-1991 Father Bernard Neumann who came to Jordan as an assistant priest back in 1948 thus serving here for over 40 years.

After World War 2, there were also assistant priests in residence here at Jordan. Brother Martialis Kern and Ralph Fontaine are two examples buried here in Jordan today. They came to gain experience but also to help serve in dependent mission churches in Scio, Shelburn, Lyons and Mill City.

CIRCLES WITHIN CIRCLES

The Salvatorian Society set up their headquarters abbey for America in St. Naziance, Wisconsin. St. Naziance was the community where the women and children of Father Albrecht’s community fleeing from St. Joseph, Ohio spent the winter of 1867-1868 before their move on to Rush Lake, Minnesota – from where they eventually would move on to Jordan, Oregon from.

Father Ambrose Oschwald – the leader of the St. Naziance community – like Father Albrecht, his friend, is one of the more colorful men of the Roman Catholic tradition. A mystical, charismatic leader, he created a communal Catholic settlement which lasted 42 years. The community survived the death of Oschwald in 1873 though its golden era passed. When the Salvatorians came to America, they became aware of the possibilities of St. Naziance. They took over the facilities with the understanding they also would care for the elderly remaining members of Oschwald’s original commune. A large monastery and seminary developed lasting for over a century before closing in the 1990s.

Accompanying Father Felix to Oregon in 1892 were two other priests. They went to Washington to help the Sisters of St. Gertrude in their work at Uniontown, Washington. Felix served at Grand Ronde until 1935 when he returned to St. Naziance to retire.

There was a centenary celebration at Our Lady of Lourdes in Jordan in 2   Brother Joseph-Marie Owen, a Benedictine, was a guest of honor for the centenary. Coming from St. Paul in the Willamette Valley, he was fascinated with the Abbey of Fontgombault, used by Benedictines since 1948. Brother Joseph-Marie, trained in agriculture and sent out to help start monasteries in Italy and France. He became one of the founding members of Our Lady of the Annunciation of Clear Creek Abbey in eastern Oklahoma, an American outreach of Fontgombault. Another circle within a circle.