Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Fink, Michael

FINK, Michael (in religion, Louis Maria), R. C. bishop, b. in Trifsterberg, Bavaria, in 1834. He studied in the Latin school and gymnasium of Ratisbon, and came to the United States in 1852. He joined the order of St. Benedict shortly afterward, and made his profession in the abbey of St. Vincent, Westmoreland county, Pa., in 1854. He finished his theological studies in 1857, and was ordained priest. He was then stationed at Bellefonte, Pa,, and at Newark, N. J. He was next sent to Covington, Ky., where he established a convent of Benedictine nuns, and built a church. He then went to Chicago as pastor of St. Joseph's church, and his missionary labors were so successful that the church couid not contain the numbers who came to hear him, whereupon he built a new and costly one, with schools attached to it. He was next appointed prior of the Benedictine monastery of Atchison, Kan., and also vicar-general of the vicar-apostolate of Kansas. He became coadjutor bishop in 1871, and was transferred to the newly erected see of Leavenworth in 1877. Under his care the number of his co-religionists in that diocese increased from 35,000 to 80,000.