Congregation of Holy Cross


The Congregation of Holy Cross, abbreviated CSC, is a Catholic clerical religious congregation of pontifical right for men founded in 1837 by Basil Moreau, in Le Mans, France.
Moreau also founded the Marianites of Holy Cross for women, now divided into three independent congregations of sisters: the Marianites of Holy Cross, the Sisters of the Holy Cross, and the Sisters of Holy Cross.

History

Two Societies

Basile Antoine-Marie Moreau was born at Laigné-en-Belin, near Le Mans, France, on February 11, 1799, in the final months of the French Revolution. When Moreau decided to enter the priesthood, he was forced to undergo his seminary training in secret for fear that the French government would arrest him. He completed his studies and was ordained for the Diocese of Le Mans in 1821. The French government continued to work for the removal of the Church from the educational system, which left many Catholics without a place to be educated or catechized. In 1835, Moreau had formed a group, which he called "Auxiliary Priests", to serve the educational and evangelization needs of the Diocese of Le Mans.
On July 15, 1820, a priest of the Diocese of Le Mans, Jacques-Francois Dujarié, brought together a group of zealous men to serve the educational needs of the people in the French countryside. Fr. Dujarié named this group the Brothers of St. Joseph. By 1835 this group was well established in the diocese, but Dujarié was getting older and they were in need of a new leader. Dujarié and Moreau had met previously and discussed their views on the future of the Church in France and so Dujarié knew that Moreau was just the man he was looking for. With the consent of the bishop, Moreau was given control of the Brothers of St. Joseph on August 31, 1835. He was now the head of two organizations, the Auxiliary Priests and the Brothers of St. Joseph.

The Association of Holy Cross

In 1837, Moreau made the decision to combine his two communities into one society so that the priests and brothers could share resources and ministries in common. On March 1, 1837, the priests and brothers gathered in the church of Notre-Dame de Sainte-Croix, Le Mans, in the Sainte-Croix district of Le Mans to sign the Fundamental Act of Union which legally joined them into one association. This new group took on the name of where they met and became the Association of Holy Cross. Initially Holy Cross was a diocesan group and so they primarily served in whatever capacity the bishop asked of them. In 1840 this changed when Moreau received a request to send a delegation from his society to Algeria with the purpose of establishing schools and a seminary. It was at this point that Moreau shifted the focus of Holy Cross and after the first missionaries left in April 1840 the association took on the identity of a religious institute. On August 15, 1840, Moreau and four others became the first professed religious in the Association of Holy Cross. As part of his plan to form this religious institute, Moreau also brought together the first group of women who would become the Marianites of Holy Cross.
In 1841, he sent a group to the United States, establishing the first Holy Cross institution in North America at Notre Dame in Indiana. The institute expanded further by establishing missions in Canada in 1847 and in East Bengal in 1852.
This association of priests, brothers, and sisters, would continue in roughly the same form until May 13, 1857, when Pope Pius IX approved the first constitutions of the priests and brothers. From that point on the Association officially became the Congregation of Holy Cross. Doubting the propriety of a mixed congregation of men and women, Rome separated the women into an independent community at that time. Moreau, in his role as their founder, continued to work for Rome's approval of the sisters' constitution. In 1865, Rome approved the constitutions of the Marianites of Holy Cross, granting them the status of an Apostolic congregation.

Holy Cross and The Holy Family

Moreau saw a visible image of the Holy Family in this Congregation of Holy Cross which he had conceived as an association of religious men and women working together on equal footing for the building of the reign of God. He intended that this Congregation, composed at its origins of three distinct Societies, namely, Sisters, Priests, and Brothers, be an apostolic institute. Calling on the spiritual aid of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Moreau gave to each of the three groups a patron: he consecrated the priests to the Sacred Heart of Jesus; he consecrated the brothers to the pure heart of St. Joseph; and he consecrated the sisters to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. He also established Mary, under her title of Our Lady of Sorrows, as special patroness for all of Holy Cross, whose members in their several congregations continue to cherish these devotions. As Moreau stated in one of his letters, he envisioned that: "Holy Cross will grow like a mighty tree and constantly shoot forth new limbs and new branches which will be nourished by the same sap and endowed with the same life."

Superiors General

  1. Fr. Basil Moreau, CSC
  2. Most Rev. Pierre Dufal, CSC
  3. Fr. Edward Sorin, CSC
  4. Fr. Gilbert Francais, CSC
  5. Fr. James Wesley Donahue, CSC
  6. Fr. Albert Cousineau, CSC
  7. Fr. Christopher O'Toole, CSC
  8. Fr. Germain-Marie Lalande, CSC
  9. Fr. Tom Barrosse, CSC
  10. Fr. Claude Grou, CSC
  11. Fr. Hugh Cleary, CSC
  12. Fr. Richard Warner, CSC
  13. Fr. Robert Epping, CSC
  14. Br. Paul Bednarczyk, CSC

    Provinces, Districts, and Vicariates

  • United States Province of Priests and Brothers
  • *District of Chile-Peru
  • Midwest Province of Brothers
  • Canadian Province of Priests and Brothers
  • Moreau Province
  • *District of Brazil
  • Province of East Africa
  • Province of West Africa
  • Sacred Heart of Jesus Province
  • St. Joseph Province
  • Our Lady of Perpetual Help Province
  • Province of North East India
  • South India Province
  • Province of Tamil Nadu
  • St. Andre Province
  • Mother Province

    Notable members

Saints and Blesseds

Holy Cross Priests and Brothers can be found across the globe, including these countries :

The Mission of Holy Cross in Bangladesh

The first group of Holy Cross missionaries to reach India left England January 17, 1853. It was composed of three brothers, three sisters, one priest and one seminarian. The group arrived in Calcutta in May 1853. Fr. Verite took the sisters to Dhaka, while the brothers and seminarian went to Noakhali. Fr. Verite soon joined them as pastor of Noakhali, which included Agartala and Sylhet in its territory. Chittagong became the headquarters of Holy Cross in December 1853.
The East Bengal mission was called at the time, "unquestionably the most destitute in East Asia and perhaps in any other part of the world." Because it was such a difficult and dangerous place to live and work, no other religious congregation showed any interest in it. For many years, priests had to face difficult situations. For example, in 1897, the Bishop of Dhaka, Bishop Peter Joseph Hurth, saw his diocese destroyed by an earthquake and a typhoon.Though the mission was named East Bengal, the Church jurisdiction and the political territory or civil jurisdiction called East Bengal were quite different from each other. The Province of East Bengal was first created in 1905. The Church territory was officially called the Vicariate of East Bengal, set up in 1845 by the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith at the Vatican. Its first superior was Bishop Thomas Olliffe, an Irish Jesuit. The Vicariate of East Bengal embraced the present-day Archdiocese of Dhaka, Diocese of Mymensingh, and Diocese of Chittagong, as well as a large part of Assam, the Arakan district (former name of the Rakhine State of western Burma, and the Diocese of Agartala in eastern India. It was a huge area, but when Holy Cross arrived in 1853, there were only three priests working there - a Portuguese Augustinian and two young Irish diocesan priests, both of whom were dead of disease by 1854. There were about 13,000 Catholics in the area. In Dhaka, there was no church or chapel at all under the jurisdiction of Rome.