17681832, American Roman Catholic prelate, first bishop of Cincinnati (182232), b. St. Marys co., Md. He was educated in Belgium, joined the Dominicans (1790), and was ordained (1793). After a short imprisonment by the French republicans he went to England and taught at a new Dominican college in Surrey. In 1804 he returned to the United States and set out for a Western mission. He set up the convent of St. Rose of Lima, the first Dominican house in the United States, near Springfield, Ky. He was an itinerant missionary in Kentucky and Ohio. His chief center became Cincinnati, of which he was made bishop (1822). In 1831 he founded there the Athenaeum, now Xavier Univ.
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