Background
Dominic Reuter was born on December 5, 1856 at Coblenz in the Rhineland, the son of John and Mary Margaret (Shaefer) Reuter. His parents emigrated to New York in 1859 and later settled in Albany.
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Dominic Reuter
Edit ProfileEducation
With the completion of his elementary and preparatory schooling, he entered the novitiate of the Friars Minor Conventual (Black Franciscans) at Syracuse, where he made his religious profession a year later, May 7, 1876. He pursued his philosophical studies at St. Francis College, Trenton, New Jersey, and his course in theology at the University of Innsbruck in the Tyrol.
During his Italian residence he won doctorates in philosophy and in theology at the College of St. Bonaventure (1886, 1889) and was given the degree of master of sacred theology by Bonaventure Soldatich, minister general of the Order.
Career
In Trenton, New Jersey he was ordained a priest, July 26, 1881, by Bishop Fidelis Dehm. For four years he remained at Innsbruck as lector of philosophy and master of clerics and was then assigned as confessor for English-speaking pilgrims at the Holy House in Loretto, Italy.
In 1890 Father Dominic returned to America to become master of clerics and regent of studies at St. Francis College, Trenton, of which, in 1899, he became rector, serving as such until 1903.
At the provincial chapter (1902), he was named secretary of the Province of the Immaculate Conception, but had held the position only a year when he was called to Rome as procurator general of the Order. On October 12, 1904, he was chosen minister general, the one hundred and seventh successor of St. Francis and the only American up to the present time (1934) to attain that rank in any Franciscan branch. During his generalate he initiated far-reaching movements, such as the return of the Friars Conventual to England and to Spain, the revision of the constitutions of the Order (1907), the reopening of the College of St. Bonaventure in Rome, the publication of an international periodical for the whole Order, and negotiations with the Italian government for the restoration of the Basilica and Convent of St. Francis at Assisi.
He visited every province and convent of the Order, as no general had been able to do for decades. At the conclusion of his term (1910), Pope Pius X urged that he remain in Rome with greater honors in store. He declined to do so, however, and later refused the offer of an American bishopric. A simple religious, he taught in Mount St. Francis Pro-Seminary at Floyd Knobs, Indiana, and at St. Anthony-on-the-Hudson, Rensselaer, until he was appointed consultor of the Sacred Congregation of the Index and of Religious (1913 - 19) by Pope Benedict XV, who also named him chairman of the papal commission for locating war prisoners and missing soldiers of the warring nations.
In 1919 he was again at Syracuse, teaching at St. Francis Convent and Novitiate, from which place he was transferred in 1923 to the newly established Postgraduate House of St. Bonaventure, Washington, D. C. , of which he became the head. In ill health, he acted as chaplain for two years at St. Elizabeth's Hospital, Utica; when almost blind, he retired to the motherhouse at Syracuse (1926), where he celebrated the golden jubilee of his profession as a friar and of his ordination to the priesthood.
