Joseph Alemany was born in
Vic, Catalonia in Spain on July 3, 1814, to Antoni Alemany i Font and Miquela dels Sants Conill i Saborit. In 1834, an outburst of deadly
anti-clerical rioting in Spain prompted Reverend Tomasso Cipolletti, the Dominican
grandmaster, to offer Alemany and other Dominican seminarians refuge in the Dominican convent in
Viterbo, Italy. Alemany began studying at the College of St. Thomas, the future
Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, where in 1840 he was made Lector in Theology.
Priesthood Alemany was
ordained a
priest for the Dominican Order in
Viterbo Cathedral in
Viterbo, Italy, on March 11, 1837, by Archbishop
Gaspare Bernardo Pianetti. During his studies in Rome, Alemany had an audience with
Pope Gregory XVI. The Dominican superiors sent Alemany to conduct missionary working in the
State of Ohio in the United States in 1841. He was transferred to
Nashville, Tennessee, in 1842 and then
Memphis, Tennessee in 1845. He became a
naturalized American citizen that same year. The Dominicans in 1847 appointed him as master of novices in Kentucky in 1847 and then in 1849 as prior provincial for the Dominicans in the American Midwest. As a result of the expropriations, the new diocese of Monterey lacked both money and personnel. During the summer of 1850, Alemany visited England, France and Ireland, trying to raise money and recruit
religious sisters. He did not have any success recruiting sisters until he arrived the Monastery of the Cross in Paris. He found three volunteers at the convent, including Sister
Mary Goemaere, a Belgian
novice. Alemany, the sisters, and Reverend Francis Sadoc Vilarassa, another Dominican priest, left
Liverpool, England in September 1850 on the
SS Columbus for New York City. Alemany made stops in
Baltimore, Maryland, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and
Washington D.C. to preach and raise money. He originally planned to send all the sisters to a Dominican convent in Ohio, then decided that Goemaere should accompany him to California. The group finally sailed the
Caribbean oast of
Panama, traveled overland by mule and
dugout canoe to the Pacific coast, and took a steam ship to California. In April 1851, Goemaere opened the Santa Catalina School for girls in Monterey. She established a convent that would become the
Dominican Sisters of San Rafael. In 1853, Alemany filed a petition with the
Public Land Commission of the State of California for the return of all expropriated mission lands. He eventually received all the missions, their grounds and cemeteries, along with two large
ranchos, or estates: •
Rando Cañada de los Pinos (College Rancho) in
Santa Barbara County, comprising • St. Francis of Assisi, erected for Catholic soldiers in 1849 • St. Patrick Church, established for Irish immigrants in 1851 As archbishop of San Francisco, Alemany presided over what became a multinational diocese, owing to the influx of people during the
California Gold Rush. He established
national parishes for San Francisco's Italian, Irish, French, German and
Mexican communities. In 1855, the Jesuits opened St. Ignatius Academy for boys in San Francisco, It later became the
University of San Francisco. After the start of the
American Civil War in April 1861, a division of loyalties emerged in San Francisco between supporters of the secessionist
Confederate States of America and those of the federal government. In the summer of 1861, federal supporters started pressuring Alemany to fly the American flag from all the San Francisco churches on
Independence Day, July 4. While expressing dismay at the start of the war, Alemany refused to fly the flags. Alemany in 1862 founded
Saint Mary's College in Moraga, California, for the education of the children of working people. He turned the operation of the college over to
De La Salle Brothers in 1868. In October 1866, Alemany attended the
Second Plenary Council of Baltimore, a meeting of the bishops and archbishops of the United States in
Baltimore, Maryland. The Dominican Sisters of Mission San Jose were established in the archdiocese in 1876.In 1883, at Alemany's request,
Pope Leo XIII appointed Reverend
Patrick Riordan as
coadjutor archbishop to assist Alemany ==Later life==