Published: October 21, 2012 - News - The Times-Tribune

Raymond A. Lane was the first to arrive at the residence at 640 Clay Ave., Scranton, in September of 1913. The 19-year-old lad from Lawrence, Mass., and a handful of other boys made up the first class at the new school devoted to educating and training young men for the foreign mission priesthood.

The Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America, commonly known as the Maryknoll Fathers, was in its infancy. In 1911, deeply convinced of the need to train Catholic priests for foreign missions, Father Thomas Price, a native of North Carolina, and Father James Walsh of Boston received permission to travel to Rome, where Pope Pius X granted their request to found their new society.

The following year, 1912, the Maryknoll Fathers opened their first major seminary at Maryknoll, a hill on the outskirts of Ossining, N.Y., dedicated to Mary, Mother of God. In 1913, the Most Rev. Michael J. Hoban, bishop of Scranton, invited the society to establish a school in the city.

The small group of students lived at the Clay Avenue residence and attended classes at St. Thomas College, now the University of Scranton. Raymond Lane, later Bishop Lane and Superior General of the Maryknoll Fathers, recalled those pioneer days in his book, "The Early Days of Maryknoll," acknowledging the generosity of neighbors, their gifts of food and offers of help. "The Scranton boys and the Scranton people in general were most friendly," he wrote. "I shall never forget all the kindness shown us that year."

Father Walsh, later Bishop Walsh, agreed. "From the Bishop down," he wrote in 1953, "they have extended a hospitality without stint, and all are evidently glad that their diocese has been chosen for the site of the first apostolic school connected with the Catholic Foreign Missionary Seminary of America."

The group would not stay on Clay Avenue long. In 1915, the lease on their rented house expired, and the students were transferred to Maryknoll, N.Y.

But they returned the following September to a picturesque tract of 179 acres just outside Clarks Summit, where they set up their school in an old farm house just a mile and a half from the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western train station.

On Sept. 16, 1919, Bishop Hoban laid the cornerstone for a new building. Students moved in the following year. Of Spanish Renaissance design, trimmed in Bedford stone with a Spanish tile roof, the new school accommodated 175 junior seminarians, boys of high school age, with dormitories, study hall, library, reception rooms and an infirmary. It was incorporated as Venard Apostolic Seminary in honor of Blessed Theophane Venard, a young French missionary priest who was martyred in Tongking, Indo-China, in 1861. Later it would become Maryknoll Seminary.

Father Price, co-founder of the Maryknoll Fathers, had charge of the students for part of their first year in Clarks Summit. In September of 1918, he led the first group assigned overseas to the missions of China. One year later, on Sept. 23, the Venard school reported receiving a cablegram from Rt. Rev. Bishop de Guebriand, of Canton, China. Father Price was dead of appendicitis. He was 58 years old. On his death bed, Father Price recalled the growth of his young society and gave his blessing to "Father Walsh and all beloved Maryknollers of Maryknoll, Scranton, San Francisco and Yeungkong, South China."

When told about the cablegram, Bishop Hoban expressed his deep sorrow and paid a sincere tribute to the noble character of Father Price, who, he said, lay in China, a martyr to the cause of foreign missionaries.

He would not be the last such martyr in China.