Background
Lawrence Graessl was born on 18 August 1753, at Ruemannsfelden in the Bavarian Forest. He was the son of Lorenz Graessl (or Graessel).
Lawrence Graessl was born on 18 August 1753, at Ruemannsfelden in the Bavarian Forest. He was the son of Lorenz Graessl (or Graessel).
On completion of his classical studies, Graessl entered the Jesuit novitiate where he was a student when the Society of Jesus was dissolved in 1773.
Ordained as a secular priest, Graessl was engaged in parochial duties and as a tutor in Munich when the aged Father Ferdinand Farmer, pastor of St. Mary’s Church in Philadelphia, urged him to come to Pennsylvania where the German Catholics required a younger pastor able to preach in their native tongue.
Fired by the appeal, Graessl wrote from Munich to his parents that he had enlisted for missionary work. Writing again to them from London, he described his journey and begged their prayers that he might not fail.
His letters are both courageous and sad, for the presentiment of death was always with him. He arrived in Philadelphia in October 1787, and Father John Carroll appointed him an assistant at St. Mary’s to care for the German communicants as the late Father Farmer had arranged.
Some of the Germans who were insistent on having as their pastor Father John Charles Heilbron, a Capuchin, who had come to the country uninvited, seceded and established Holy Trinity Church.
To avoid difficulties, Graessl was sent on missions throughout Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey for a twelvemonth during which he suffered much fatigue but gloried in his ability to hear confessions in French, English, German, Dutch, and Spanish.
In March 1788, he was stationed at St. Mary’s as curate to Francis Beeston, a recently arrived English priest, and his name is found as one of the incorporators of the church, though much of his time was spent on the missions.
In the winter of 1789, Carroll visited Philadelphia and met the young German priest whom he described as “a most amiable ex-Jesuit. ”
Two years later, Graessl represented Philadelphia at the first provincial synod in Baltimore and apparently won favor with the bishop and his fellow priests for his learning and sanctity.
Bishop Carroll, realizing that the Church would be placed at a decided disadvantage if he should die suddenly, applied to the Holy See for a division of his diocese or the appointment of a coadjutor with the right of succession.
To the latter alternative Rome agreed, and Cardinal Antonelli ordered the bishop to take the advice of the older and wiser priests in selecting a successor.
The choice fell on Graessl, and his name was sent to Rome for ratification, though the formal appointment did not arrive until two months after his death. In a final letter to his parents, Graessl informed them of his selection and his readiness to carry on, though he warned them that he was dying of consumption and urged them to bid his Bavarian friends farewell.
Ill as he was, he devoted himself to his parishioners during the fatal weeks of the plague of yellow fever in which Philadelphia lost over 4, 000 citizens including ten physicians and eight ministers, and the Catholic congregations lost 335 members and three priests.
Father Graessl succumbed and was buried in St. Joseph’s.
Quotations: “God wants me to be in the New World, where thousands and thousands of our brethren wander about without any spiritual shepherd. ”