James Oliver Van de Velde

James Oliver Van de Velde, SJ (April 3, 1795 – November 13, 1855 He was tutored at an early age by a French priest living in the Van de Velde household, a refugee from the French Revolution. In 1810, at age 10, Van de Velde was sent to a boarding school in Ghent. He excelled academically and by age 18 was teaching French and Flemish to the younger students.

During the early 1800s, the Austrian Netherlands had fallen under the rule of the Napoleonic regime in France. However, by 1815 Napoleon had been defeated; Catholic Belgium was joined with Protestant Holland in the independent United Kingdom of the Netherlands. This put the Catholic subjects under the rule of William I of the Netherlands, who was antagonistic toward them. As a result, Van de Velde had been planning to emigrate to England or Italy to continue his studies. He started learning English and Italian.

In 1818, as an alternative to St. Thomas Seminary, Nerinckx advised Van de Velde to enter the Jesuit novitiate at Georgetown College in Washington, D.C.

When Van de Velde entered the novitiate, he became the librarian for Georgetown College. When he started, the new library contained about 200 books. By 1831, when Van de Velde left Georgetown, it had 20,000 books. The one letter written by Van de Velde brought nine men into the priesthood.

Priesthood St. Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri, first campus (1910) Van de Velde was ordained into the priesthood in Baltimore for the Jesuit Order on September 25, 1827, by Archbishop Ambrose Maréchal. After his ordination, the Jesuits kept Van de Velde at Georgetown to complete his education. They also assigned him to serve as chaplain at the Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School, a school for Catholic girls. In 1829, he was named pastor of the mission churches in Rockville and Rock Creek in Maryland.

In 1831, the Jesuits sent Van de Velde to St. Louis, Missouri, to join the faculty at Saint Louis College, their new institution of higher learning. While a professor there, he taught rhetoric and mathematics. When Saint Louis College became a university in 1833, Van de Velde was named as its vice president.

Baltimore Conference

In May 1852, Van de Velde arrived in Baltimore for the first plenary council, a meeting of all the bishops in the United States to discuss policies and rules for the American church. At the start of the council, Van de Velde told his fellow bishops that he was going to Rome after the meeting to seek permission from the pope to resign as bishop of Chicago. He said that his health prevented him from continuing the job. He had previously requested resignation by letter in Chicago, but had been refused.

Van de Velde founded two schools in Natchez and purchased a property for a college. He began acquiring land for the construction of new churches and started repairing existing churches. He directed workers to gather exposed bones at the old Spanish cemetery and re-inter them a crypt under St. Mary Cathedral.

Death and legacy On October 23, 1855, Van de Velde slipped on the front steps of his residence and fractured his leg in two places. He soon developed an infection in his leg. During this period, Natchez was in the middle of a yellow fever epidemic and Van de Velde contracted the disease. Over the next three weeks, his condition deteriorated. Before his death, Van de Velde made a final confession and was administered the last rites.

Van de Velde died in Natchez on November 13, 1855, after five hours of paroxysms and sliding in and out of consciousness. He was 60 years old. His body was dressed in vestments with his eyes partially open and his casket displayed on a tilt, "so as to give the impression of being partially erect", according to a letter by a Jesuit priest. He was buried on November 14th, after a funeral mass celebrated at St. Mary's Cathedral by Archbishop Anthony Blanc.