John Baptist Vander Wee

Background

Vander Wee was born on February 20, 1824, in Antwerp, Belgium.

Career

Having received considerable schooling in his native city, in 1845, Vander Wee joined the Congregation of the Brothers of St. Francis Xavier (Xaverian Brothers), the impoverished and somewhat unstable foundation for which Theodore Ryken (Brother Francis Xavier) had obtained a rule only four years previously. Two years later, October 3, 1847, he was professed in the little community of seventeen members. Trained under Ryken in a martyr-like spirit of sacrifice, he became an ideal religious and one of a colony sent in 1848 to establish the first foreign foundation at Bury, England.

On the verge of actual starvation, he was forced to remove the colony to Manchester in 1850, where he re-introduced into England May processions and the scapular of Mount Carmel. From this mother-house, the congregation later developed a number of thriving schools in the British Isles. Ill health forced Brother Alexius to return to Bruges, where in 1854, he reorganized St. Francis Xavier's Institute into a popular school for English youths. In 1863, he was in Manchester in charge of the Catholic Collegiate Institute, and in that city assisted in the establishment of an orphanage at Mayfield founded by the Duchess of Leeds. Apparently, his association with her turned his mind toward America, where the Xaverian Brothers had established themselves in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1854, and in Baltimore in 1866.

In 1872, he left for America, and three years later was named provincial of the Xaverian Brothers in the United States. The Society was desperately poor, its brothers receiving salaries of only $130 a year. It had a small community in Louisville; a few parochial schools; and in Baltimore, St. Mary's Industrial School, an orphanage and home for needy and often wayward boys. With indomitable will and the practice of the severest economies, Brother Alexius labored with remarkable success during twenty-five years of command, though never did he asscribe any credit to himself. With little episcopal assistance and few donations of any consequence, he managed to build, without leaving any indebtedness, Mount St. Joseph's College and Provincial House in Baltimore, St. Xavier's College in Louisville, St. John's Preparatory School in Danvers, Massachusetts, one of the largest Catholic institutions of its kind and a college novitiate at Old Point Comfort, Virginia.

He also answered episcopal or pastoral invitations to take over parochial schools or high schools in Lowell, Lawrence, Somerville, and Worcester, Massachusetts; in Norfolk and Portsmouth, Virginia; and in Wheeling, W. Va. Under his regime, St. Mary's Industrial School in Baltimore became one of the largest protectories for boys in the United States and served as a model for Catholic and state institutions for boy training.

Achievements

• Vander Wee is known in religion as Brother Alexius, provincial of the Xaverian Brothers.

Personality

A humble man, severe in self-discipline yet affable, Brother Alexius was notably successful as an administrator and businessman, retaining full control of the community until his rather sudden death from pneumonia.

There was no public funeral or eulogy, after his death but his devoted counselor, Cardinal Gibbons, presided over his funeral before his remains were interred in the Bonnie Brae Cemetery of Baltimore.

References

• Men and deeds: The Xaverian brothers in America