Background
Walter HAckett Robert Elliott, the seventh son of Judge Robert T. Elliott and Frances O'Shea, was born in Detroit, Michigan.
Missionary author Catholic priest
Walter HAckett Robert Elliott, the seventh son of Judge Robert T. Elliott and Frances O'Shea, was born in Detroit, Michigan.
He was educated in the Catholic schools of that city, and at the age of twelve entered the College of Notre Dame, in Indiana.
In 1867 he attended a lecture for non-Catholics given by Rev. Isaac Heckcr, one of the five founders of the Missionary Society of Saint Paul the Apostle, more commonly known as the Paulist Fathers.
He did not graduate but went to Cincinnati to take up the study of law in the office of United States District Attorney Warner M. Bateman and was admitted to the bar in 1861.
When the Civil War broke out, he enlisted, though under age in the 5th Ohio Volunteers, at Cincinnati, and served until the close of the war.
This lecture was the turning point in his life.
He went to New York, called on Father Ilecker, and was accepted as a postulant for the Paulist Community.
On May 25, 1872, he was ordained to the priesthood, together with Adrian Aloysius Rosecrans, son of General Rosecrans, and Thomas Verney Robinson, a Confederate soldier, whose battery had actually fired on Elliott’s position at Chancellorsville.
His missionary career began a few months after his ordination and covered a period of twenty-seven years.
He was a man of prayer, austere in his own life, but his austerity was tempered by sympathy, and directed by understanding.
He has been called ‘‘the Grand Old Man of the American Missions, ” and a “cornerstone of contemporary Catholic history. ”
Probably no priest has wielded a more far-reaching influence in the United States.
admitted to the bar in 1861
accepted as a postulant for the Paulist Community
In 1896 he founded The Missionary, the official organ of the Catholic Missionary Union. In 1902, in collaboration with Rev. Alexander P. Doyle [q. t/. ] , he founded the Apostolic Mission House, at the Catholic University of America, Washington, D. C. , for the training of diocesan priests as missionaries. He served the Apostolic Mission House as rector, professor, and rector emeritus until his death there, at the age of eighty-six.