Joseph Crétin

Joseph Crétin (19 December 1799 – 22 February 1857) was the first Roman Catholic Bishop of Saint Paul, Minnesota. Cretin Avenue in St. Paul, Cretin-Derham Hall High School, and Cretin Hall at the University of St. Thomas are named for him.

He was born in Montluel, in the département of Ain, France, 19 December 1799; he died at St. Paul, Minnesota, 22 February 1857. He made his preparatory studies in the Petits séminaires of Meximieux (Ain) and Saint-Genis-l'Argentière (Rhône), his studies of philosophy at Alix (Rhône), and of theology in the seminary of Saint-Sulpice, Paris. He was ordained priest 20 December 1823, and soon afterward was appointed vicar in the parish at Ferney, once the home of Voltaire, and eventually became its parish priest. He built there a new, beautiful church and founded a boys' college with funds gathered on a tour through France. At this period, he also revived the Catholic faith among many indifferent parishioners, who were made indifferent by the surviving influence of Descartes, and the proximity of the Protestant cantons of Switzerland. But Crétin longed for a larger field of activity; at one time he thought earnestly of going as a missionary to China. His perplexities in that regard were solved by the advent of Bishop Mathias Loras, first bishop of Dubuque, Iowa, who arrived in France in 1838 in search of priests for to evangelize his vast diocese. Crétin was one of the few who volunteered and on 16 August 1838, he secretly left his parish, embarked at Le Havre with Bishop Loras, and landed in New York in October of the same year. The winter of 1838-39 was spent in St. Louis, Missouri, and on his arrival in Dubuque, 18 April 1839, he was immediately appointed vicar-general of the new diocese. For over eleven years, he exercised his priestly ministry in these new, unopened regions, dividing his time chiefly between Dubuque, Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, and the Winnebago Indians in the neighborhood of Fort Atkinson, in Winneshiek County, Iowa. Only once, in 1847, did he absent himself, when he made a trip to Europe in the interest of his missions. In 1850, St. Paul, Minnesota, became the seat of a new diocese. Crétin was appointed its first bishop, and went to France, to be consecrated, 26 January 1851, at Belley by Bishop Devie, who had ordained him to the priesthood.

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