Background
Theophile Meerschaert was the eighth of ten children, born on 24 August 1847 of sturdy parents in Russignies, Belgium. On the mother's death, the family was reared by an elder sister who set aside her religious vocation.
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clergyman Missionary churchman prelate
Theophile Meerschaert was the eighth of ten children, born on 24 August 1847 of sturdy parents in Russignies, Belgium. On the mother's death, the family was reared by an elder sister who set aside her religious vocation.
Educated in the village school, at the College of Renaix (1859 - 64), and at the College of Audenarde, from which he was graduated in 1868, Meerschaert, under the inspiration of a clerical professor, Charles Van Quekelberghe, who had labored in the Mississippi Valley, determined to prepare himself for the American missions. With this objective, he continued his theological studies at the American College, Louvain, until his ordination on December 23, 1871, and then spent several months perfecting his knowledge of English.
Meerschaert then sailed for New York and reported to Bishop Elder of Natchez, on October 1872, who assigned him to missionary work in Hancock and Harrison counties, Mississippi, where the scattered Catholics faced some hostility and post-war poverty. As pastor at Ocean Springs, he broke down prejudices by a self-sacrificing service in the yellow-fever epidemic of 1875, until his own life was despaired of. For such ministrations, he was well qualified by his collegiate experiences as a St. Vincent de Paul agent among the lowly. In 1878 when he learned that his people were confronted with another epidemic, he immediately returned from Europe whither he had gone to enlist missionaries. Since six priests out of twenty-six in the diocese had succumbed to the fever, Father Meerschaert assumed additional parochial duties in Biloxi and Pascagoula. A year later, he was transferred to Bay St. Louis and in 1880 to the rectorship of St. Mary's Cathedral, Natchez. Here as vicar general (1887), he was Bishop Janssens' main reliance, and on the latter's translation to New Orleans, he was named administrator by the Holy See (1888), serving as such until the appointment of Bishop Thomas Heslin, who reappointed Meerschaert to the vicar generalship. On June 2, 1891, he was elevated to the titular see of Sidyma as vicar apostolic of Indian Territory. Consecrated at Natchez by Archbishop Janssens on September 8, he set out for Guthrie, where he learned that his territory had only 6, 000 white Catholics and sixteen priests of whom about one half were stationed at the Indian school of Sacred Heart. Meerschaert died on 21 February 1924 at St. Anthony's Hospital in Oklahoma City, aged 76.
