John Bapst, Jesuit missionary and first president of Boston College, was born in La Roche, Switzerland in 1816. After attending the Jesuit College of Fribourg, he entered the Jesuit order on September 30, 1835. He was ordained in 1846, and, following the exile of Jesuits from Switzerland in 1847, was sent to America as a missionary. Although he spoke neither English nor the Penobscot language, Bapst was assigned to the missions in Maine. There, he and his three assistants ministered to the Indigenous population as well as to Canadian and Irish immigrants settling in the area.

Father Bapst’s time in Maine coincided with the proliferation of Know-Nothingism. The success of his missionary activities made him the frequent recipient of scorn and, in one event, violence at the hands of anti-Catholic persecutors. The vitriol was particularly strong in the town of Ellsworth, where Bapst was seeking to establish a school free of state-sponsored (Protestant) religious education. Father Bapst was denounced in the local papers and Protestant churches and threatened with violence if he persisted in his ministry to the Catholics of Ellsworth. On October 14, 1854, in accordance with a town order, Bapst was taken from the home of one of his parishioners by a mob of Know-Nothings, ridden on a rail to the outskirts of the town, and tarred and feathered. There were also failed attempts to burn him alive. Though quite wounded, Bapst was undaunted, and the act of violence was almost universally denounced by Catholics and Protestants throughout Maine. The following year, Bapst saw the settling of the cornerstone for Saint John the Evangelist Catholic Church in Bangor.

When the Jesuit missionaries withdrew from Maine in 1859, Bapst settled in Boston, becoming the first rector of Boston College. In 1863, Bapst was elected the first president of Boston College. He worked to establish the structural and practical foundation of Boston College, to gain financial and moral support for the new school, and oversaw the opening of its doors in 1864.

Bapst served as president until his retirement in 1869. At that time, he was given charge of the New York and Canada mission and then named pastor of St. Joseph’s Church in Rhode Island, where a parish school was funded and built under his care. He died in November of 1887 and is buried in Woodstock, Maryland.

Sources:

Dunigan, David R. A History of Boston College. Milwaukee, WI: Bruce Publishing Co., 1947.

Historical Records and Studies, Vol. XIV. New York: The United States Catholic Historical Society, 1920.