| Written by Robert White, Catholic Register Special,
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 WATERLOO, Ont. - The 1950s to mid-1960s have been called the “Golden Era” of the Congregation of the Resurrection but Fr. Jim Wahl, C.R., says, for most of its history, the order has done much with few.
During those golden years, Resurrectionists owned and operated high schools in Kitchener and North Bay, a school in Kitchener for pre-seminary students, a philosophy school in Waterloo, a combined high school/seminary in Kentucky and ran then St. Jerome’s College.
“If you go back to the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s, they weren’t very large but they did a lot,” said Wahl, whose new book, In the Hope of the Resurrection, is a history of the Resurrectionists’ 150 years in Canada.
“The things they took on were amazing. They didn’t have great numbers but they had lots of enthusiasm.”
The order began in the late 1830s when five Polish priests moved to Paris, France, to minister to Polish refugees. Two of the members later moved to Rome to establish ties with the Vatican.
On Easter Sunday 1842, following a service in the Catacombs of St. Sebastian, the Resurrectionists — including seven members who’d just taken their first vows — emerged to hear the peal of Easter bells, prompting the budding order to adopted the Congregation of the Resurrection as its name and call.
Resurrectionists came to Canada in 1857 after Jesuit priests left St. Agatha to minister in Guelph. The only German-speaking priest in Rome, Fr. Eugene Funcken, C.R., was asked to take charge of the area’s large German-speaking Roman Catholic congregation.
After travelling to Canada, Funcken got off the train in Berlin (which was later to be renamed Kitchener) not realizing he was still 13 km away from St. Agatha. He arrived in St. Agatha on Aug. 14 after a further train trip and a wagon ride.
To this unpromising beginning came a promising ministry in both parish work and education. Funcken opened a school for boys and then an orphanage. As the Resurrectionist community grew it opened Wilmot College, which became St. Jerome’s High School and pre-seminary after it moved to Kitchener and, ultimately St. Jerome’s University.
The Ontario-Kentucky province — headquartered in Waterloo and including ministries in Florida and Bermuda — had its beginnings in 1871 when Fr. Edward Glowacki, C.R., was sent on a fund-raising tour for St. Jerome’s. While in Louisville, Kentucky, he was asked if the Resurrectionists would take over the abandoned St. Mary’s College.
“It became one of our pre-eminent educational institutions and an important part of our history,” said Wahl of the college which was closed in 1977.
Today, Resurrectionists face challenges, including a decrease in the numbers of men entering the priesthood, an increase in lay involvement and the Congregation’s role in the church — with more involvement in parish ministry and less in education.
“The same challenges the whole priesthood and church is facing,” observed Fr. Bernie Hayes, C.R. “How to engage people meaningfully, in the Christian life, in the world in which they’re living.
“Our thrust has always been to work for the resurrection of society, now defined as trying to bring hope to society in a sense of Christian hope and development.”
(White is a freelance writer in Guelph, Ont.)
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