Leonard Neale

Leonard Neale (October 15, 1746 – June 18, 1817) was an American Catholic prelate and Jesuit who became the second Archbishop of Baltimore and the first Catholic bishop to be ordained in the United States. While president of Georgetown College, Neale became the coadjutor bishop to John Carroll and founded the Georgetown Visitation Monastery and Academy.

Neale was born in the British Province of Maryland to a prominent family that produced many Catholic leaders, including his brothers, Francis and Charles. He was educated in Europe, where he entered the Society of Jesus in 1767. Neale then volunteered to become a missionary to British Guiana in 1779. He spent four years there, before becoming discouraged by the resistance from both the British colonists and indigenous people to his proselytism. He returned to Maryland, where he rejoined the former Jesuits at St. Thomas Manor.

In 1793, Neale become the pastor of Old St. Joseph's and Old St. Mary's Churches in Philadelphia. Bishop Carroll also made him vicar general for Philadelphia and the northern states. During the yellow fever epidemic, Neale established the first Catholic orphanage in Philadelphia to care for the many orphaned children, and he contracted the disease.

Neale was the president of Georgetown College from 1799 to 1806, where his imposition of strict discipline caused declining student enrollment. Though he had been appointed in 1795, he was consecrated as the coadjutor bishop of Baltimore in 1800. Neale supported the restoration of the Jesuits in the United States, which occurred in 1805. He also established the Georgetown Visitation Monastery and Academy in 1799. Neale became the Archbishop of Baltimore in 1815, and was faced with several lay trustee conflicts, the most severe of which resulted in a temporary schism in Charleston, South Carolina.

Early life

Leonard Neale was born on October 15, 1746, at Chandler's Hope, the Neale family estate near Port Tobacco, located in Charles County in the British Province of Maryland. He was born into a prominent Maryland family; among his ancestors was Captain James Neale, one of the settlers of the Maryland Colony, who arrived in 1637 upon receiving a royal grant of in what would become Port Tobacco. Neale's parents, William Neale and Anne Neal ''née'' Brooke, had thirteen children.

Two of Neale's brothers died during their studies, while four of the surviving five became Catholic priests. One of them, Charles Neale, would become a prominent Jesuit in the United States, while another, Francis Neale, would also become president of Georgetown College. One sister, Anne, entered the Order of Poor Clares as a nun, in Aire-sur-la-Lys, France. Through his sister, Mary, Neale's nephew was William Matthews, another future president of Georgetown.

Neale first attended the Bohemia Manor School, near his home. The widowed Anne Neale sought to enroll her sons in a Catholic college, but Catholic educational institutions were banned in the British colony. Therefore, all seven of Neale's brothers were sent to the Colleges of St Omer, Bruges, or Liège, and he left for Saint-Omer, France at the age of twelve, where he proved to be a good student. Deciding that he would become a Jesuit, he followed the college to Bruges, where he entered the Society of Jesus on September 7, 1767. He then continued when the school relocated to Liège, where he completed his study of philosophy and theology, and was ordained a priest on June 5, 1773.

Ministry

Neale then returned to Bruges in 1773 as a member of the faculty. Later that year, when Pope Clement XIV promulgated a brief, titled ''Dominus ac Redemptor'', ordering the worldwide suppression of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuit college was seized by the government of the Austrian Netherlands and all the Jesuits were expelled. Therefore, Neale moved with the English Jesuits to England as a secular priest. He spent his first four years in England in charge of a small congregation, in Hardwick, County Durham. He spent the subsequent two years first in Liège, then in Brussels, then as a temporary chaplain at the convent of the English Canonesses in Bruges.

Missionary in British Guiana

Before long, Neale petitioned to be assigned as a foreign missionary, and in 1779, he left England for Demerara, in British Guiana. His first task was to convert the British colonists living there. However, they rejected his attempts and barred him from building a chapel. As a result, he turned his attention to the conversion of the indigenous people.

Neale found his work of proselytizing the indigenous people difficult. However, on one occasion, the tribal chief, who previously resisted the efforts to convert to Christianity, implored Neale to spiritually intervene to save his dying son. Neale baptized the son, who was then restored to health, and the chief and his family converted to Christianity; others also followed. Nonetheless, Neale was unsuccessful in obtaining many conversions, and the people were largely opposed to him. They too barred him from building a church. Discouraged by the resistance of the people to his efforts, and experiencing deteriorating health, Neale left the mission in January 1783, setting sail for Maryland. His voyage was delayed when his ship was seized by the British Royal Navy, during the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War. Neale eventually arrived in Maryland in April.

Return to the United States

With his studies and ministry in Europe and South America, Neale had been absent from the United States for 25 years. He rejoined his former Jesuit colleagues from Europe, including John Carroll, and was stationed at St. Thomas Manor. Neale attended the first meeting of the Corporation of Roman Catholic Clergymen of Maryland, held at White Marsh Manor in 1783, and remained active in its subsequent deliberations throughout the years. He was an outspoken leader of a group of former Jesuits who opposed Carroll's sale of land held by the corporation to finance the establishment of Georgetown College.

Philadelphia

Neale was stationed at St. Thomas Manor until volunteering to go to Philadelphia in 1793, following the outbreak of a yellow fever epidemic in the city. The disease claimed 10% of Philadelphia's population, including the pastor, Dominic Lawrence Graessel, and two assistant priests at Old St. Joseph's Church, in addition to hundreds of its parishioners. Despite the precarious state of his own health, Neale became pastor of both Old St. Joseph's and Old St. Mary's Church. Neale himself eventually contracted yellow fever and recovered, although never completely to his former health. In addition to his two pastorates, he was made vicar general to Bishop John Carroll for Philadelphia and the northern states.

When the epidemic returned in 1797 and 1798, Neale established the first Catholic orphanage in Philadelphia to care for the children whose parents had died of the disease. Though he found it difficult to raise sufficient funds to support the new institution, the orphanage would eventually be incorporated in 1807 as St. Joseph's Orphan Asylum. Neale's tenure as pastor of St. Joseph's and St. Mary's came to an end in March 1799, and he was succeeded by Matthew Carr.

President of Georgetown

In 1799, Bishop John Carroll recalled Neale from Philadelphia, to replace Louis William Valentine DuBourg as president of Georgetown College in Washington, D.C. He officially assumed the office on March 30, 1799. In addition to his duties as president, Neale acted as a tutor at the college for several years. He was the first president to comply with the requirement set by the college's board of director's that the president live at the college. Authority over the college's finances rested with the vice president, Neale's brother, Francis. The financial conditions of the still-nascent college were unsteady; as a result, Old North remained unfinished, money for food was not guaranteed, and Neale slept on a folding bed in the library.

Neale's overall leadership of the college was considered lacking. As his brother later would, Neale instituted strict discipline among the students, adopting a quasi-monastic regimen. He also segregated the seminary candidates from the lay students; the Catholic students were also segregated from the many non-Catholic students, who were housed off-campus. Neale's imposition of strict discipline drew the criticism of John Carroll, who believed that it was dissuading parents from sending their sons to the college, as the prevailing American spirit of liberty was unaccustomed to such strictures. Nonetheless, while the overall number of enrolled students decreased, Georgetown produced a considerable number of Jesuit novices during his tenure.

Neale phased out the lay faculty so that all the professors were either Jesuits, Sulpicians, secular priests, or seminarians. He also expanded the course of studies by adding philosophy, the final course in the full Jesuit curriculum. This was done both to fulfill the college's earlier prospectus that claimed it would offer philosophy, and because DuBourg sought to expand St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore to include the comprehensive education of lay students; both Neale and Carroll feared that this would draw students away from Georgetown. The college began teaching philosophy in 1801, making it a full college in the view of the Jesuit curriculum. Neale's tenure as president of the college came to an end in 1806, and he was succeeded by Robert Molyneux.

According to one historical legend among the Jesuits and slaves of Maryland, President George Washington underwent a deathbed conversion while he was attended by Neale. The story holds that Neale was summoned by Washington and taken by rowboat from St. Thomas Manor to Mount Vernon. There, Neale heard Washington's confession and conditionally baptized him, receiving him into the Catholic Church. One Catholic historian, Martin I. J. Griffin, concluded that this legend was likely untrue, and written accounts by those present at Washington's final hours make no mention of a minister of any religion being present.

Georgetown Visitation Monastery and Academy

While serving in Philadelphia, Neale had become acquainted with Alice Lalor, an Irish immigrant to whom Neale became her confessor

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