Leander Schnerr was born on September 27, 1836 at Gommersdorf, Baden, Germany, the son of Ernst Schnerr, a Lutheran in faith and a brewmaster by trade, and Barbara Melly, a native of Bamberg, Bavaria, and a Catholic. The day after his birth the child was baptized in the local Catholic church, receiving the names Karl Otto August. A few years later the family emigrated to America and settled in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where the father continued to follow his trade.
Just before his fourteenth birthday, Karl entered the college at Latrobe, Pennsylvania, conducted by the Benedictines of St. Vincent Abbey, and after six years decided to become a member of that Order.
Schnerr made his solemn vows to the Benedict Order on January 6, 1857, taking the name Leander in religion.
On September 20, 1859 he was ordained priest by the Reverend George A. Carrell at Covington. Appointed for the missionary field of St. Vincent Abbey, he began as pastor of Stony Hill, New Jersey, but was soon transferred to the congregations of Augusta and Mullin's Station.
In 1861 Abbot Boniface Wimmer promoted him to priorship and the pastorate of St. Joseph Church, Chicago. Here he worked faithfully for ten years, only to see the whole parish plant destroyed in the great fire of 1871. He began to rebuild at once, but before he could finish this task he was sent to St. Mary's, Erie, Pennsylvania. Five years later he became pastor of St. Joseph's Church, Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and in 1877, after a short administration of St. Bernard Church, Indiana, Pennsylvania, assumed charge of St. Mary's Church and priory at Pittsburgh.
In 1892, after the resignation of the Reverend Andrew Hintenach, the second archabbot of St. Vincent, Father Leander was elected as his successor. At his installation on October 5, 1892, the cornerstone of a new abbey church was blessed and during the next twenty-eight years building operations rarely ceased at the archabbey. In his ruling classical and scientific departments were remodeled to conform to the requirements of the Association of Colleges of the Middle States and Maryland and the philosophical and theological courses were improved to obtain from the Roman authorities the power of granting doctors' degrees in both these branches of learning.
Twice he went to Rome in the interest of the whole Order. He celebrated the golden jubilees of his profession and ordination in 1907 and 1909.
In 1918 he asked the Roman authorities for a coadjutor and the capitulars of the archabbey chose his long-time secretary, Aurelius Stehle, as his successor in office. He died in 1920.
Being the third archabbot of St. Vincent, Leander Schnerr contributed to the expansion of the Catholic Church and of the Order of St. Benedict in the United States by having St. Bede College, Peru, Illinois, raised to an Abbey by Rome, and by fostering in a special manner the institute of lay-oblates of the Order. He also practically built a new St. Mary's and founded St. Boniface parish. In 1903 Pius X conferred on him the privilege of the Cappa Magna in church functions and in 1910 he was chosen as a member of the Roman Arcadia.
Externally, with his stately figure and long flowing beard, Archabbot Leander seemed more a prophet of old than a churchman of the twentieth century. He was not a learned man, but eminently practical and very methodical in his ways.
