The Congregation of St. Francis Xavier or Xaverian Brothers is a Roman Catholic religious institute founded by Theodore James Ryken in Bruges, Belgium, in 1839 and named after Saint Francis Xavier. The institute is dedicated to education.
History
Theodore James Ryken was born in 1797 in the small village of Elshout, North Brabant, the Netherlands, to ardently Catholic middle class parents. Orphaned at a young age, Ryken was raised by his uncle. Ryken was trained as a shoemaker. He felt a calling by God which drew him to work first as a catechist, followed by helping manage an orphanage, and later by caring for cholera patients in the Netherlands.
At age 34, Ryken went to North America, where he served as a catechist among the missionaries to the Native Americans. During his three-year tour, he conceived the idea of starting a congregation of brothers to work alongside the missionary priests. On returning to Europe, he set about planning to found such a society in Belgium, a country known for its missionary zeal. He modeled the religious garb of members of his institute on that of the Redemptorists. The spirit of the Xaverian Brothers, on the other hand, can be traced to the influence of Isidore Van de Kerckhove, the Jesuit confessor and counselor of Ryken; De Kerckhhove drew up the original rules of the order. Although many religious institutes were being founded at the time as part of a Catholic revival that succeeded the fall of Napoleon I, Ryken had a different vision. He wanted to found a missionary institute rather than a congregation that would address the needs of a specific region.
On June 15, 1839, Ryken, then 42 years old, settled in a rented house on Ezelstraat in the centuries-old city of Bruges, Belgium. For five days he waited for the arrival of the two companions who had promised to join him in his undertaking: a weaver and a tailor. His companions proved to be less dedicated and resilient than he and he needed a year to recruit better suited candidates. He and his colleagues soon opened two primary schools in Bruges, and some of the Xavieran Brothers were sent to a normal school at Sint-Truiden for professional teacher training.