Background
Jean Loras was born on August 30, 1792, in Lyon, Rhone-Alpes, France. He was the 10th of Jean-Mathias and Etiennette Loras, an established bourgeois couple who were devoutly Catholic. He was born in France just as the Revolution in France was rushing toward its climax, he was but an infant held in his mother's arms when she pleaded with the tyrant Couthon for the life of her husband, a wealthy merchant, and councilor of Lyons. Loras, however, was in the very first group to be guillotined in the Square des Terreaux.
Education
Young Jean Loras received his early education at the hands of priests who sought the hospitality of his mother's home. In an old Carthusian house nearby he commenced his priestly studies. In 1807 he entered the seminary of L'Argentière (Hautes-Alpes) and was ordained a priest in the Cathedral of Lyons by the Cardinal-Archbishop in 1817.
Career
In 1817 Jean Loras was appointed president of the Petit Seminaire of Meximieux; and in 1824 he was promoted to the important office of superior of the seminary of L'Argentière. Having resigned in 1827 to act as a pastoral missioner in the Lyons archdiocese, he met Bishop Michael Portier of Mobile, Alabama, and decided in 1829 to accompany him to America. For seven years he labored in Alabama as pastor of the Cathedral of Mobile, superior of the newly founded Spring Hill College, and vicar-general of the young diocese.
Chosen in 1837 for the newly created bishopric of Dubuque (then in Wisconsin Territory) Jean Loras was consecrated on December 10 of the same year by Bishop Portier in the cathedral at Mobile. He did not arrive in Dubuque until April 19, 1839, having spent the intervening months in France seeking priests and funds for his American missions. His new diocese reached from the northern boundary of Missouri to the Canadian line and westward from the Mississippi River to the Missouri River. One priest, he found in all that expanse - Father Samuel Charles Mazzuchelli, the versatile and illustrious Dominican missioner - 30, 000 Indians, and a few widely scattered white settlements. Believing that the rich soil of the upper Mississippi Valley could be transformed into an agricultural empire, he strove sturdily and steadily to draw the Catholic immigrants from the crowded cities of the Atlantic seaboard. He himself went about among the immigrants of his wide diocese, by canoe and steamboat, in stage-coach and on foot, ministering and organizing. On July 19, 1850, Pope Pius IX established the Diocese of Saint Paul. The Diocese of Dubuque had been reduced to the boundaries of the state of Iowa, which had been established in 1846.
By the late 1850s, Bishop Loras found that his health was failing. He asked the Holy See to name a coadjutor bishop to assist him. On January 9, 1857, Rev. Clement Smyth, OCSO, prior to New Melleray was appointed as coadjutor bishop. As the Dubuque Diocese grew in size Loras wrote to Pope Pius IX in May 1857, and in the letter stated that he was considering asking for the Dubuque Diocese to be divided, with Keokuk as the See city for the new diocese. However this was not done in his lifetime.
Although he had been sick for some time, Bishop Loras' death still came suddenly on Friday, February 19, 1858, in Dubuque, at the age of 65. Prior to his death, Loras had been seriously ill but had seemed to be recovering well, even up to the evening of February 18. At about 8:30 on the 18th, he informed his staff that he was retiring for the evening and ordered them not to disturb him unless absolutely necessary as the divine office he wanted to pray was long and he wanted to make sure he finished. Around 11:00 pm his housekeeper heard Loras moaning and informed Father McCabe, who proceeded to the Bishop's room and found him collapsed on the floor. During the night his condition worsened steadily and sometime between five and six in the morning on February 19 he died.
A funeral Mass was held the following Sunday at 9:00 am. The body of Bishop Loras was taken from the old cathedral to the new cathedral for a packed service led by Bishop Smyth. After the Mass, Loras was buried within the mortuary chapel of the cathedral.
At the time of his death, the Diocese of Dubuque had grown to 54,000 Catholics, in 60 parishes, served by 48 priests in a territory that now only covered the state of Iowa.
