Aurelius Stehle

Aurelius Aloysius Stehle (April 30, 1877 - February 12, 1930) was an American Catholic Benedictine priest and fourth archabbot of St. Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, Pennsylvania.

Biography

Early life Aloysius Stehle was born on 30 April 1877, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and orphaned at a young age. In 1885, Boniface Wimmer took in both Aloysius and his older brother Joseph and they entered school at St. Vincent, where Stehle did quite well. Upon graduating, Aloysius decided to enter St. Vincent Archabbey, and made his first vows on 11 July 1893, taking the religious name Aurelius. In 1896 he took solemn vows and on December 8, 1899, was ordained a priest. The latter required a papal dispensation, as Catholic canon law then mandated that to be ordained a man must be 25, and Stehle was 24 at the time.

Priesthood In 1920, he received his Doctor of Divinity in Rome, his Doctor of Law from the University of Notre Dame in 1925, and a doctorate in literature from Duquesne University in 1927. Liturgy, especially, was of particular expertise for Stehle, having written The Manual for Episcopal Ceremonies, a book widely referenced by liturgists in the United States. and ensured that Pope Pius X's motu proprio Tra le sollecitudini was implemented in the music of the abbey church. During Stehle's leadership of St. Vincent Seminary as vice-rector in 1911, the institution came to be known as a center of doctrinal orthodoxy and conservatism, especially in the years following the condemnation of modernism by Pius X in Pascendi Dominici gregis.