According to a perceptive African proverb, “When an old person dies, a library burns to the ground.” In the case of Redemptorist Father Carl W. Hoegerl – who died on November 4, 2021, at the age of ninety-eight – an entire archive was virtually lost.

Seelos Cause that he left behind! In 1989, Father Hoegerl was appointed Archivist for the Baltimore Province of Redemptorists, an assignment he held until 2011, when he became Archivist Emeritus. Consequently, his historical understanding of the Redemptorists in America was immense. But an arduous project begun in 1984 is what made him unarguably the world’s leading authority on Francis Xavier Seelos.

That’s when Father Hoegerl commenced work on the Seelos canonization cause at the request of the Redemptorist Superior General in Rome. Incidentally, Father Hoegerl’s systematic presentation in the Positio is still viewed as an exemplary model among postulators to this day.

In 2003, the Seelos Center inducted Father Hoegerl as its first  recipient into the Seelos Order of Witness. That same year, an updated second-edition of the Seelos biography, Cheerful Ascetic, included an Epilogue by Father Hoegerl to record the exciting developments in the Seelos Cause since the time of the book’s first publication in 1969.

In 2008, Father Hoegerl undertook the task of editing the 201 extant letters of Seelos in the book, Sincerely Seelos. In the decade that followed, he toiled on his intended final major writing project, a definitive historical Seelos biography titled With All Gentleness.

While contemporaries of Francis Seelos successfully initiated his canonization cause in the decades after his passing, it was Father Hoegerl who significantly helped advance the Seelos Cause in our lifetime. Despite his death in 2021, the memory and legacy of this extraordinary scholar, archivist, and Redemptorist priest remain intensely alive!

Rest in peace, Father Hoegerl. We are confident that “he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 1:6) Father Hoegerl labored for 14 years to compile the Positio, a three-volume, 2200-plus page magnum opus that demonstrated Seelos’ heroic virtues through documented sources. This massive work led to Seelos’ beatification on April 9, 2000.