Benedictines were early arrivals

These women were first Benedictine sisters
to arrive in Florida. They got here in 1889.
(Photo credit: Holy Name Monastery)

St. Leo University, one of the largest Catholic universities in the country, is also the oldest Catholic institution of higher education in Florida. 

Its home base in Florida shares the town of St. Leo with a low-key monastery and abbey - Holy Name Monastery (a Benedictine convent) and St. Leo Abbey (a Benedictine monastery). 

Today, the community of about 1,000 or so people is considered a suburb of the massive Tampa-St. Pete metropolis. But it was rural and wild when the institutions took root in the 1800s.

Benedictines established the college, abbey, and monastery in 1889. The town of St. Leo didn't yet exist. The missionary endeavors were planted on the shore of Lake Jovita near the small town of San Antonio - Florida, not Texas.

Catholics in Florida were few and far apart in that part of central West Florida. The Benedictines settled on ranch land that Wikipedia says was the former homestead of Judge Edmund F. Dunne. We're not talking any old homestead. More like a 100,000-acre homestead. Dunne received the land as a commission for his legal assistance in the Disston Land Purchase. 

Without digressing too much, let me just say the Disston Land Purchase was connected to the now-bizarre idea to drain the Everglades. It was considered an innovative plan in the 1880s.

Dunne, meanwhile, is credited with establishing a Catholic colony in Florida's San Antonio in 1882. The judge came to Florida after being removed from the bench in Arizona. He wasn't booted off for legal reasons but for his religious zeal.

Dunne didn't stay in Florida all that long. He deeded his land to the Benedictines and left in about 1889. The Benedictines stayed.

Benedictine priests were early arrivals. The first priest arrived in 1886 and the Benedictine brothers followed a few years later and established the abbey and the college in 1889.

Five Benedictine sisters also arrived in 1889 to launch their educational efforts. They came to Florida from Pennsylvania and started teaching the very next day, says the Benedictine Sisters of Florida website.

Challenges don't daunt Catholic nuns. The Benedicines actually had their school building moved a mile uphill to a new location in 1911 because they couldn't afford to build a new one. On a side note, the Mother Superior - Mother Rose Marie - was the first woman in Pasco County to have a driver's license.

The sisters focused on elementary and secondary education. The college was overseen by Benedictine brothers and priests from St. Leo Abbey. The state legislature had authorized the Order of St. Benedict of Florida to establish the university in 1889.

These priests and men and women religious didn't just stay in the neighborhood. They ministered throughout a Florida region that was sparsely settled and difficult to travel through. It was a strange, amazing new land for the newcomers. Read the letters of Benedictine Florida pioneer Gerald Pilz, O.S.B. online to learn of his first impressions. 

Catholics on the frontier appreciated the efforts of these clergy and religious, who were heroic in their efforts to minister and teach. Distance may have separated all these Catholics in the wilderness, but their shared faith kept them close.