Alphonse Joseph Glorieux
Alphonse Joseph Glorieux was a Belgian missionary, who served as the first bishop of Boise, Idaho.Biography
Years in Belgium
Glorieux was born on February 1, 1844, to a Belgian family in the municipality of Dottignies, in what is now the municipality of Mouscron, Hainaut, Belgium. As a young man, he entered the seminary, specifically The American College of the Immaculate Conception in Louvain, with intent to go to the American missions. He was ordained a priest on August 17, 1867, and was sent to the United States.Glorieux made his way west, and took a position as first president of St. Michael's College, a school for boys that opened in Portland, Oregon, in 1871. On October 7, 1884, he was appointed vicar apostolic of the Idaho Territory, after an eight-year interregnum following the resignation of fellow Belgian Louis Aloysius Lootens as vicar apostolic. He was consecrated bishop on April 19, 1885, by Archbishop James Gibbons in the Cathedral of the Assumption in Baltimore, while attending the Third Council of Baltimore.
The diocese of Boise was erected on August 25, 1893, and Glorieux was appointed bishop of the newborn diocese. The diocese was set at its present boundaries at that time, and Glorieux made the Church of St. John the Evangelist in Boise his cathedral.
Glorieux died on August 25, 1917, and was succeeded by Daniel Mary Gorman.
