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In March, 1925, just five months before he died, Father Dehon wrote in his Diary: "I have traveled a great deal, perhaps some of it was excessive. However, it was always my intention to learn something, to expand my horizons esthetically, geographically and historically, and to strengthen my faith by observing the excesses of pagan superstitions, the diversity among Protestants and the icy character of their worship. I have seen that human beings are naturally religious, that all peoples have always honored God to some degree and that modern atheism is an aberration contrary to nature."1

There can be no debating the fact that, by any standard of his time, Leo Dehon was a much-traveled man. By his own account he made over thirty extended journeys between 1858 and 1918: to the Middle East, North Africa, South America, North America and around the world. Of the more than 7,000 pages in his Diary, almost 3,000 are devoted to his major travels (and that's not counting the shorter trips which are covered in less than ten pages).2 His longest trip, in terms of time, was the journey he made to the Middle East with Leo Palustre between August, 1864 and June, 1865. But the longest in distance was the trip around the world from August 8, 1910 until March 2, 1911.

The trip was occasioned by the Eucharistic Congress which was going to be held in Montreal from September 6 -- 11. Several of his French Canadian friends, who were his classmates from their seminary days in Rome, had frequently invited him to pay them a visit. He joined up with Bishop Jules Tiberghien, a Consultor at the Roman Congregation for the Eastern Church, and the two planned to sandwich an extended tour of the United States and Canada around the meetings and celebration in Montreal. Although Father Dehon said that they intended to go as far as the west coast and then decide whether to continue on, the decision to return home by way of Asia never seems to have been in doubt.

The first leg of that journey was spent in Canada and the United States. In seven weeks he visited every major city in both countries, with the exception of Boston, Massachusetts (although he does record a spirited account of a Harvard-Yale football game, which he never saw). Not counting side trips, day trips and excursions, he logged over 8,300 miles, mostly by train. To save time he took an overnight Pullman car whenever possible. He delighted in these rolling dormitories and in the relaxed informality of Americans shuffling down the corridors in their pajamas on the way to the washroom; and he secretly chuckled when the fat lady struggled unsuccessfully to climb into an upper berth. Touring around the cities, he was frequently driven by car, which must have been a fairly novel experience; he never fails to mention that he was taken "by automobile."

The trip was very well planned, meticulously precise in its details and timing. Father Dehon and his episcopal traveling companion were well-connected in church circles, and in nearly every city they visited they made a "French connection," staying in rectories and religious houses of the Vincentians, Marists, Sulpicians and others. In the entire seven weeks Father Dehon never once had to stay in a hotel, although crowed conditions in Toronto forced him to sleep in the hotel manager's office. Their travel connections also went smoothly. Only once, while traveling alone on a side trip to Niagara Falls, he became disoriented in the holiday crowd that jammed the train station at the end of the Labor Day weekend, and he got on the wrong train. He quickly realized his mistake and righted himself at the next stop.

Father Dehon was an enthusiastic tourist, gladly visiting all the "must see" attractions wherever he went. He dutifully followed the guidebooks from the Brooklyn Bridge, Independence Hall and the Capitol Rotunda to Montcalm's Monument on the Plains of Abraham, the Chicago stockyards and the orange groves of California. He was fascinated by the details of size, grandeur and cost, and he almost never fails to mention the height of a building, the seating capacity of a hall, the number bricks used in construction and the overall cost of a project. But he was also a spontaneous traveler ready to investigate curiosities that caught his attention along the way, whether spending an evening strolling under the glittering lights of Coney Island or touring an alligator farm and sailing in a glass-bottom boat in L.A.

Of course, more often he followed the promptings of his intellectual curiosity and explored the wide-ranging fields of his artistic, cultural, educational and social interests. He sought out museums of art and natural history, he visited historical sites and natural wonders, he toured ethnic neighborhoods and the centers of commercial and financial power, and wherever he went he cast a critical and discerning eye on the architecture and esthetics of the place. He was particularly attracted to schools and was unfailingly impressed by the efficiency, academic excellence and the attention to cleanliness and health that he found. One of the most unusual, and revealing, excursions on the trip was his visit to Booker T. Washington's institute for the education of Negroes in Tuskegee, Alabama (even if Father Dehon seemed to think he was still in Georgia). He saw this school as proof that blacks could excel in academic and skilled professions, and that the first step toward real equality was their sense of their own accomplishments in public life.

Father Dehon was an astute but magnanimous critic of the people and social life in North America. Some of the most interesting and insightful passages in his travelogue are the observations he makes at the conclusion of his visit to each country. He loved the vitality and industriousness of America: problems were meant to be solved; if something needed to be done, it should be done in a big way (he often refers to doing things "à l'Américaine"); he enjoyed the friendliness and openness of the people, and admired their dedication to fitness and health (he marveled that the priests in Baltimore -- "even the older ones" -- doffed their cassocks to play a baseball game); and he had high hopes for the future of the Catholic church. In Canada, he felt a special affinity to the French by reason of language and religion (at the time the overwhelming majority of the Catholics were French). He admired some of the same traits of friendliness, hospitality and hard work; he marveled at the natural beauty of the country and the zeal of the dedicated missionaries.

But his admiration did not prevent him from putting his finger on the neuralgic point in each society. In America, it was the racial inequality between the whites and the peoples of color. In Canada, it was the linguistic and cultural divide between French and English. His prescient observations at the beginning of the 20th century have, unfortunately, lost none of their relevance at the end of the century.

However interesting and insightful his comments may be, in the end they remain incidental to the underlying reason that motivated his visit. Father Dehon did not make this trip primarily as a tourist or a social critic or even as a pilgrim; he made it as a missionary. It was a journey made "in the service of mission." It would not be anachronistic to say that this trip was undertaken to explore the possibilities for the "globalization" of the Congregation. Two years earlier the Congregation divided into two provinces; the following year the Dutch Province would be created. Father Dehon sensed that the Congregation he had founded thirty-three years earlier was now on solid footing and was in a position to expand into the future. The journey around the world was not excessive indulgence of his passion for travel, rather it was a decisive first step in the internationalization of the Congregation.

On the opening page of the travel account he wrote: "We want to visit the United States and Canada and push on as far as our mission in Alberta, towards the Pacific" [emphasis added].3 A month earlier he wrote to a friend that he would not be able to visit him this year. "I have to go on a long voyage to Canada and America. You know that we are going to begin some new works over there. The German Province is negotiating to establish a ministry in Dubuque in the United States. The other Province [French] will start in Canada. . . Three of our priests are going to leave for there tomorrow."

There is ample evidence of the missionary purpose of this trip in the correspondence he sent back to Europe. On August 31 he wrote to Father Falleur from Chicago: "This evening I am going to Dubuque to negotiate for the German's foundation." The results of that visit are detailed in the Diary account below [NQ XXVI, 17--18]. In New Orleans he expressed his admiration for the work that Mother Cabrini's sisters were doing among the immigrants: "I hope our Italian fathers will follow them a little later on" [NQ XXVI, 5]. In a letter to Father Charcosset on September 4 he said: "What beautiful ministries I have seen. All religious orders prosper over here and they take on the American spirit of vitality. We should have an American Province later on."

He arrived in Wainwright, Alberta, on September 19, and stayed with Fathers Gaborit and Carpentier in their modest community house. Although he stayed with them for only a day and a half, he describes their living conditions and their ministry at some length [NQ XXVII, 22--28]. He wrote to Father Falleur that the mission in Wainwright "needs to have two brothers." On the 21st he goes to Edmonton to visit his other two priests, Fathers Steinmetz and Soyez, but remarkably, he says nothing about them in his Diary.

The mission motif continued throughout his journey. On the Feast of Saint Francis Xavier, on board a ship taking him to Manila in the Philippines, he wrote to Father Guillaume: "I am going about from mission to mission and everywhere I am greatly edified. The missionaries are very generous and devoted. . . In all these countries the missionary results are a consolation to the Church for sadness it is experiencing in Europe. We too could bring a great deal of joy to our Lord and the Church if we had more missionaries in the Congo, Canada, etc. Look for more vocations and have your students pray earnestly for that." He also noted: "The Philippines need priests. A hundred thousand Catholics have become Protestants. . . There are villages of ten and twenty thousand souls without priests."

He spent Christmas on Java. A few days later he wrote to the Dutch Superior, Father Kusters: "Being in Singapore, I wanted to visit these beautiful colonies to see if there would be some work here for you to do. . . The young Javanese are very likable." On the same day in a letter to Father Guillaume: "I wanted to see Java where our Dutch confreres will find a place later on."

He also wanted to visit Vietnam, which was under French colonial rule at the time, but it would have added another two weeks to his journey. So like Moses who was only able to view the Promised Land from the mountain top, he had to be content to view it from afar. "The ship hugged the coastline of Indochina. We caught a glimpse of its hills and were able to make out the beautiful Western-style city called Saigon, but we had to press on" [NQ, XXXI, 16]. He spent a month in India. He admired the work being done by the Jesuits and Capuchins, but he saw the need for more. "There are 50,000 catechumens waiting for catechists and baptism."

Father Dehon's trip around the world was a work done in the service of mission, and the works being done today in Canada, America, Indonesia, the Philippines and India are a direct result of his desire and inspiration for the globalization of the Congregation. Globalization is not a fad or an innovation, it is an embodiment of his "grace and temperament" [NHV IV, 125]. Like everything else that is authentic in the charism of our vocation, Father Dehon went there before us.

In Canada and America: Selections from Fateher Dehon's Diary