Missionary Bishop: Jean-Marie Odin in Galveston and New Orleans by Patrick Foley (review)

Missionary Bishop by Patrick Foley is a sixteen-chapter, 168-page, footnoted biography of Jean-Marie Odin, first bishop of Galveston and second archbishop of New Orleans. Each chapter chronicles a different period in Odin’s life (1800–70), including his early formation in France, his time at the Barrens, and his life as a Vincentian ministering in Missouri and Arkansas. A major portion of the book is devoted to Odin’s years on the Texas frontier as missionary, vicar apostolic, and bishop. The reader is taken on a journey through Texas and parts of Mexico as Odin’s ministers to Catholics, catechizing and bringing sacraments to Victoria, San Antonio de Bexar, and other mission sites. Throughout this section of the narrative, Foley guides the reader through Texas history as he sets the stage for Odin’s two-decade-long missionary work in Texas. Amid the backdrop of the struggles in Mexican Texas, the War for Texas independence and the border conflict between the United States and Mexico, Odin works tirelessly. The author states, “Jean-Marie Odin would lay the foundation for Catholicism’s nineteenth-century renaissance in Texas and establish the base for the Catholic Church’s future development in the land for decades to come” (p. 84). The book concludes with Odin’s last years as archbishop of New Orleans and highlights his administrative efforts during the Civil War and Reconstruction periods. Foley describes Odin’s conflict and thoughts regarding slavery and, in its aftermath, his attempts for African American education. It is somewhat comforting to know that after all his laboring in Texas and Louisiana, Odin died in his childhood home in France.

Foley’s research into the life of Odin includes primary material from archives and collections; sources encompass manuscripts from many dioceses, universities, and the Society for the Propagation of the Faith. Noteworthy among these manuscripts are Odin’s diary and extensive correspondence. Using these key sources, the author weaves a rich historical account, allowing the reader to follow the relationships between Odin and his family (in Hauteville, Ambierle, France), the Vincentians, his coworkers in Missouri and Arkansas, his lifelong associate Antoine Blanc (first archbishop of New Orleans), his friend John Timon (first bishop of Buffalo), and many other religious men and women whom Odin recruited from Europe for the mission fields of Texas.

This work is the first in-depth study of Odin, and it is a welcome and important addition to understanding the history of Catholicism in Texas and Louisiana. It leaves a major and lasting impression of the life and struggles of a missionary bishop on the Texas frontier.