Born in 1811, in what is now Czechoslovakia, his father, Philip, and mother, Agnes, had six children, and John was their third. 

He had a rigorous education and did very well but had a special gift for languages. He was fluent in both German and Czech. 

John felt called to serve The Lord and entered the seminary in Budweis but there were too many priests there, which pushed back his ordination. 

So, he decided to learn English, with the idea of going to the United States to serve the newly arriving immigrants. 

In 1836, with very little money and without telling his parents, John left for the U.S., arriving at Staten Island with one dollar. 

He was 25 years old. 

There, he did missionary work for a few years before joining the Redemptorists and becoming their first member to profess vows in the United States. 

His first parish covered an area from Lake Huron all the way to the Pennsylvania border. He would travel by foot, horseback, and wagon to serve his parishioners, sometimes saying mass in their homes when there was no church. 

In 1852, he was named Bishop of Philadelphia, where he encountered a severe anti-Catholic movement that resented the arrival of immigrants from Germany, Ireland, and across Europe, who had come to work in the new industrial center. 

John Neumann worked tirelessly to unify the community and educate the children of these new arrivals, growing the number of schools from the one he found upon his arrival, to more than 200 and, in the process, creating the first diocesan school system in the country. 

He died on this day in 1860 at the age of just 48. 

St. John Neumann, please pray for us.