Henry Pratte

Henry Platte (19 January 1788 – 1 September 1822) was an American minister who served as the first native Catholic priest in what is now the State of Missouri in the United States. He was curé of the Church of Ste. Genevieve in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri in 1815, and pastor from 1816 until his death from yellow fever in 1822.

Life Born in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, which was founded as a settlement of French Louisiana, Henry Pratte was the son of John-Baptiste Sebastien Pratte by his second wife Marie Teresa Billeron. In 1803, he was sent to the Collège Saint-Raphaël in Montreal to complete his education, where he later entered the Grand Séminaire de Montréal to prepare for Holy Orders.

Ste Genevieve had been without a pastor since the death of Rev. Joseph Maxwell in May 1814, from a fall from a horse. Wishing to serve in his home district, Pratte approached Benedict Joseph Flaget, Bishop of Bardstown, Kentucky, who, in October 1815, made Father Pratte curé of Ste. Genevieve and its dependent mission stations.

He was appointed pastor of the town in 1817 by the Rev. Louis Dubourg, S.S., Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese of Louisiana and the Two Floridas, which covered all the former Spanish and French territory by then within the United States. That same year, Pratt welcomed Bishop Flaget, and two Italian Vincentian priests, Felix de Andreis and Joseph Rosati, whom Dubourg had recruited to work in his vast diocese. He then accompanied them to St. Louis, where they were traveling to welcome Dubourg, who was returning from Europe after having been consecrated a bishop. St. Michael's Church was a small frame hut, plastered and with a bell, and was the pride of the small congregation. It replaced the original log church after the settlement was nearly destroyed by a flood in June 1814.