Chapter One : The Founder and the First Brothers
Left , Monsignor [ ean-Bapiiste Boucho , Vicar Apostolic of Occidental Siam , of MalmJsia and the Malaccan Peninsula ( 1796-1871 ). Right , Reverend Father Jean- Marie Beurel , Missions Etmngeres de Paris ( 1813- 1872 ), parish priest of the Church of the Good Shepherd 1841-1868 .
Father [ ean-Marie Beurel , the founder of St [ osephs Institution , was born in western France in 1813 . He received his training as a priest at the Society of Foreign Missions in Paris and came out to Singapore in 1839 when he was just twenty-six years old .
Singapore in those days was still a small place surrounded by swamps . The Chinese market gardeners grew their vegetables beside a peaceful country lane called Orchard Road . Then , as now , Singapore had people of many races , and they tended to congregate in different parts of the town where they had become sufficiently well established to build substantial religious buildings . When Father Beurel arrived the Chinese were building the Thian Kok Keong temple in TelokAyer Street . In those days the sea came up to its steps , and indeed it was built to honour the sea goddess who had watched over the safe arrival of so many immigrants from mainland China .
The Malay community was the oldest community in the island . Mainly centred on the Singapore River and on the eastern side of the town , its mosques were to be seen from the earliest days . South Indian Moslems had their own mosque in Telok Ayer Street in 1830 . Indian Hindus already had a temple in South
Bridge Road . In 1833a small community of Armenian Christians
commissioned a new church from the Irish architect G . D . Coleman , who was also the designer of the first St Andrews Cathedral , completed in 1836 . This was a distinguished Greek Revival building of considerable size .
The Catholics had to be content with a tiny chapel measuring twenty metres by ten metres which they had built in 1833in Bras Basah Road .
Father Beurel was not content to live very long with such a state of affairs . Four years after his arrival on the island he laid the foundation stone of a new church , and immediately began to solicitmoney from everyone whom he could interest in his scheme . He addressed himself to the European community of
Singapore , most of whom were Protestants , and collected a substantial number of subscriptions . He made an appeal to the Queen of France which was rewarded with a handsome donation .! He even travelled as far as Manila and China and succeeded in collecting another $ 1800and two fine bells .
Father Beurel looks placid and homely in his photograph : he might be the parish priest of some quiet country parish anywhere in France . In fact , he was a man who , once possessed of an idea , sought to make it a reality with relentless determination . In so doing he displayed great patience and diplomacy , combined with an irrepressible faith in Divine Providence . In the course of his thirty years of service in Singapore he built the Church of the Good Shepherd , St [ oseph ' s Institution and the Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus , paying a proportion of the costs out of his own private income . So energetic was he in the raising of his buildings that he alarmed his superior , Bishop Boucho of Penang , who appears somewhat in the character of a frantic passenger trying to apply the handbrake to a vehicle that Father Beurel was driving towards the abyss of bankruptcy . There is little doubt that relations between the two men were often strained . Throughout his early years in Singapore Father Beurel was in correspondence with his friend and coadjutor Father Albrand , who was the Director of the Seminary ofForeign Missions in Paris where he had himself been trained . ToFather Albrand , in a long series of letters , he imparted his hopes and his moments of triumph and despondency .
On December 1846he wrote to Father Albrand : 1have the confidence and hope of seeing before
1 . Marie-Amelie , daughter of Ferdinand N , King of Naples , married Lauis-Plnlippein 1809and borehimeightchildren . She devoted herself to bringing up her family and to works of charity . Louis-Philippe became King of France in 1830 . When he abdicated in February 1848 , the Queen accompanied him into exile .
The Founder and the First Brothers 1