Francis Brunner

Background

Brunner was born in Mümliswil-Ramiswil in the canton of Solothurn, Switzerland.

Career

He founded several missions in the United States. He entered the Benedictine Mariastein Abbey in 1812 and was ordained priest in 1819. In 1829, he left Mariastein for the Trappist Oelenberg Abbey in Alsace and took the Trappist vows, but had to leave it together with the other Trappist monks due to the French July Revolution of 1830.

In the following years, he did missionary work with a focus on the canton of Graubünden where he bought Löwenberg Castle at Schluein to found a school for poor boys.

In 1843 he moved to the United States where he founded several monasteries and mission stations, amongst them Maria Stein, Ohio, named after Mariastein Abbey in Switzerland. He died in 1859 on a trip back to Europe, suffering from a lung disease, at Schellenberg in Liechtenstein, where he had founded a woman"s convent.

Achievements

• According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, he was also "the founder of the Swiss American congregation of the Benedictines".