Joseph Sadoc Alemany

Joseph Sadoc Alemany y Conill, O.P. (July 3, 1814 – April 14, 1888) was a Catalan American Roman Catholic archbishop and missionary. He served as the first Bishop of Monterey from 1850 until 1853, and as the first Archbishop of San Francisco from 1853 until 1884.

Early Biography

Alemany was born in Vic, 60 km north of Barcelona, Spain (present-day autonomous region of Catalonia).

Formation

Alemany entered the Dominican Order in 1830 and made his solemn profession in September 1831, the same year that his protégé, Patrick Manogue was born in Ireland.

Alemany was ordained a priest on March 11, 1837.

During studies in Rome, he had an audience with Pope Gregory XVI.

Alemany was an alumnus of the College of St. Thomas in Rome, the future Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum, where in 1840 he was made Lector in Theology.

Career

The Dominicans sent him to the United States in 1840. For the next eight years, he engaged in missionary activity in the Eastern and Southern United States, eventually becoming a naturalized United States citizen.