Bishop Simon Bruté de Rémur

The Most Learned Man in America

Simon Bruté de Rémur was born on March 20, 1779, in Rennes, France, during the upheaval of the French Revolution. As a boy, he witnessed his mother smuggling the Eucharist to imprisoned priests during the Reign of Terror. He earned a medical degree in Paris before discerning a call to the priesthood.

Ordained in 1808 as a member of the Society of Saint-Sulpice, Bruté arrived in America in 1810. He taught at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland, where he served alongside Elizabeth Ann Seton (now Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton), the foundress of the Sisters of Charity. His learning was legendary: President John Quincy Adams called him “the most learned man of his day in America.”

In 1834, Bruté was named the first Bishop of Vincennes, a diocese covering all of Indiana and part of Illinois. He arrived to find only two priests in the entire territory. The frontier diocese had almost nothing: no cathedral, no seminary, no schools, and a scattered Catholic population of mostly French settlers and Native Americans.

Bruté threw himself into building the Church from virtually nothing. He traveled back to France to recruit priests and religious, established parishes across the Indiana frontier, and began plans for a cathedral and seminary. His health broke under the strain. Simon Bruté died on June 26, 1839, in Vincennes, having served barely five years as bishop. In that short time, he laid the foundation for what would become the Archdiocese of Indianapolis. His cause for canonization was opened on September 12, 2005, by Archbishop Daniel Buechlein.

Timeline