Facts About the Chicago Province

Worldwide service*

In North America*

The Chicago Province includes:

Canada
Province of Québec
Province of Ontario

Caribbean
British Virgin Islands
Jamaica
Netherland Antilles
West Indies

United States
District of Columbia
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kentucky
Massachusetts
Missouri
Nebraska
New Jersey
New York
Ohio
Pennsylvania
Tennessee
West Virginia
Wisconsin

The Southern Province encompasses:

Arkansas
Louisiana
Mississippi
Texas

The Western Province contains:

California

*Due to changing international borders, transfers of missionaries, and the increase in the number of missionaries, these lists periodically change.

Distinguished missionaries

Many of the men who studied at Divine Word schools or have other connections to the Chicago Province have served the Catholic Church and the world in distinguished ways.

Making African-American history
In the early 1920s, the Society of the Divine Word established the first seminary for African American men who wished to become priests and brothers. Church hierarchy chose one of the school’s alumni, Father Harold Perry, as the first 20th century African-American bishop in the United States. He served as auxiliary bishop of New Orleans for 25 years.

An old culture revealed
In 1929, Rev. William Ross led an expedition into the Northeastern New Guinea central highlands, where they found half a million inhabitants who were living in a Stone Age culture.

Asian milestones
Two events in particular marked Asian Catholic history in the 1940s. In 1946, Archbishop Thomas Tien—who later lived at Techny—became the Catholic Church’s first cardinal of Asian descent. In 1949, Divine Word Missionaries founded the University of Nanzan in Nagoya, Japan.

Scientific firsts
Stationed in Ghana in 1957, Rev. John Koster became the first scientist outside of Russia to track Sputnik I. He recorded three orbits of the satellite before the Russians even announced the launch. Father Koster’s work in physics also proved that the Earth’s upper atmosphere is most ionized over the Equator and not the poles as originally thought.

Pioneering linguist
The world beyond the Pacific islands understood little about the region’s language until pioneers such as Rev. Francis Mark Mihalic undertook studies. In 1957, Father Mihalic published Grammar and dictionary of neo-Melanesian. He followed with Introduction to New Guinea Pidgin in 1969 and edited New Guinea’s only national newspaper printed in Pidgin.

Peace Corps connection
In 1971, the Peace Corps turned to the Divine Word Missionaries for help in preparing volunteers who were heading to the Solomon Islands. The missionaries gave them permission to reprint Anthopos, a journal of linguistics and ethnology, founded by Rev. Wilhelm Schmidt in 1906.

After the fall
The Society of the Divine Word was the first religious order in the United States to accept Vietnamese candidates after the fall of Saigon in 1975.

For additional notable events, go to our historical timeline.