He studied at the monastic school of Einsiedeln in Switzerland, where he took the Benedictine habit in 1854, made profession on 14 October 1855, and was raised to the priesthood on 11 September 1859. Having arrived there in September, 1860, he taught in the seminary and attended a few neighbouring missions.
A year later he accompanied his confrère, Martin Marty, afterwards Bishop of Saint Cloud, to the newly founded monastery of Saint Meinrad in Indiana. While stationed at Terre Haute, Indiana (1864), he organized the German Catholic Congregation of Saint Benedict, for which he built a church in 1865. While Abbot Marty worked among the Native Americans in Dakota (1876-1880), Prior Fintan was administrator of the abbey, and, upon the resignation of the former, who had meanwhile been appointed Vicar Apostolic of Dakota, Fintan was elected Abbot of Saint Meinrad on 3 February 1880, and received abbatial benediction from Silas Chatard, Bishiop of Vincennes, Indiana on 16 May 1880.
He enlarged the college, founded the Priory of Subiaco in Arkansas and the Priory of Saint Joseph in Louisiana, and obtained from Rome the permission to erect the Helvetico-American Congregation of Benedictines, of which he became the first president
When Saint Meinrad"s Abbey was destroyed by fire on 2 September 1887, he rebuilt the monastery on an even greater scale, founded a commercial college at Jasper, Indiana, and assisted in the foundation of the Priory of Saint Gall in North Dakota. He was a fervent promoter of the Priests" Eucharistic League.
In 1893 he took part in the Eucharistic Congress held at Jerusalem.
