CURRIER, CHARLES WARREN

Bishop, writer; b. Saint Thomas, West Indies, March 22, 1857; d. Baltimore, Md., Sept. 23, 1918. He was the son of Warren Green and Deborah (Heyliger) Currier. Charles, taken to Europe in 1871, studied at the Redemptorist Preparatory College of the Assumption at Roermond, Holland. Professed a Redemptorist in 1875, he attended the seminary at Wittem, Holland, and was ordained in Amsterdam on Nov. 24, 1880, by Bp. Henri Schaap, Vicar Apostolic of Surinam, Dutch Guiana. He returned with that prelate to Surinam in January 1881, but recurrence of a nervous indisposition forced him to go to the U.S. in February 1882 to recover his health. For nine years, while stationed in Annapolis and Baltimore, Md., Boston, Mass., and New York City, he labored as a home missionary and retreat master in the eastern U.S. A new onset of his illness forced him to request a dispensation from his vows as a Redemptorist; this was granted in November 1891. For the next 21 years, Currier was attached to the Archdiocese of Baltimore, serving as pastor of St. Mary's parish, Washington, D.C., after 1900. In 1905 he became assistant director and field lecturer of the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions.

In 1913 Currier was elected to the new See of Matanzas, Cuba, and was consecrated in Rome by Cardinal Diomede Falconio, OFM, on July 6. He held the first synod in his diocese in January 1915, but because of ill health he resigned his see shortly afterward and was appointed to the Titular See of Etalonia. His remaining days were spent in the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

Currier traveled widely in Europe and in North and South America. A director of the Spanish-American Athenaeum of Washington, D.C., he was recognized as one of the most learned of the country's Hispanists. From 1892 to 1915 he attended International Congresses of Americanists, reading papers on Spanish-American history and serving as official U.S. government representative at the congresses in Stuttgart, Germany (1904), Buenos Aires, Argentina (1910), and Mexico City, Mexico (1910). Currier was steadily engaged in writing after 1890. His best known work was History of Religious Orders (1894). His other books include Carmel in America (1890), The Rose of Alhambra (1897), Church and Saints (1897), Mission Memories (1898), and Lands of the Southern Cross (1911).

Bibliography: Archives, Redemptorist Fathers, Brooklyn, N.Y. Archives, Archdiocese of Baltimore.

[m. j. curley]