Josephite Fathers

The Josephite Fathers and Brothers or, more properly, Saint Joseph's Society of the Sacred Heart, Inc. (abbreviated post-nominally as S.S.J.) are a society of Catholic priests and brothers, based in the United States. It was formed in 1871 by a group of priests from the English Foreign Mission Society of Saint Joseph, also known as the Mill Hill Missionaries. They decided to establish a mission society in the United States dedicated to newly freed people after the American Civil War.

1865 ushered in the period of Southern Reconstruction, during which time, the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, outlawing slavery, was passed. Ten former confederate states were divided into five military districts. As a condition of readmission to the Union, the former confederate states were required to accept the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which granted citizenship to all people born in the U.S. regardless of race.

It was against this backdrop that the U.S. bishops met for their tenth provincial council in Baltimore in 1869. The fifth decree of this Council exhorted the Council Fathers to provide missions and schools for all black Americans in their dioceses, as education was seen as a critical need by the community.

Subsequently, the Council Fathers wrote a letter requesting clergy for that purpose to Father Herbert Vaughan superior general of the Saint Joseph's Society for Foreign Missions in Mill Hill, London. He had founded the society in 1866, and in 1869 opened St Joseph's Foreign Missionary College in that area of London. Later Vaughan was installed as Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster.

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