16

HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

dangerous.  Father Schneider was the great peacemaker and was summoned
wherever trouble was brewing between the factions.  Both factions respected and obeyed him implicitly.
    When Father Simon Sanderl came to Waterloo County in March, 1844, Father
Schneider left the county in charge of the new arrival and confined his ministrations to the west from Stratford to Goderich, where he made his home And remained till 1869.
  He came back to Waterloo after Father Sanderl took Guelph, from March 29, 1847 to June 15, 1847, and also served New Germany and Guelph and other places at the same time.  Both he and Father Sanderl went to Toronto this year during the prevalence of the ship fever there.  Father Sanderl seems to have stayed there longer and Father Schneider attended Guelph during the absence of Father Sanderl.
   St. Paul's Register, Toronto, contains quite a number of baptisms and burials by Father Schneider at this time of typhoid fever.  On Father Schneider's return to Goderich he explains his long absence from there by saying that he had to go to Waterloo County and to Toronto, where the Bishop and his few priests were unable to meet the emergency alone.  Bishop Power was himself as zealous as any of his priests in visiting the sick, and fell a victim to the prevailing epidemic Oct. 1, 1847.  Having resigned his charge of Goderich and the neighboring Missions in 1869, Father Schneider returned to Europe, travelled extensively, studying Hebrew, and then retired to some institution at Vernaison, near Lyons, France, where he died July 30, 1880.
     Bishop De Charbonnel in his private notes about his priests, says of  Father Schneider: "This man has kept the torch of faith burning alone for many vears throughout the Huron Tract and far beyond." He certainly deserved this praise, and more.  If anyone, he should have a more extended sketch of his iife by someone interested in this kind of work.  The Rev.  Dr. Kilroy, former pastor of Stratford, is said to have published a sketch of Father Schneider.  Thus far the writer has not been able to discover it, although he made a diligent search for it in many places.


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