Along the tree-lined road at the Jefferson County religious community of Liguori, there is a cemetery filled with the graves of almost 300 priests and brothers who spent at least a part of the past 70 years working to publish the gospel and distribute it across the country.
Among those buried in the cemetery include “the pioneers” – the men led by Father Donald Miller, who left the Redemptorist seminary in Oconomowoc, Wis., and arrived in Jefferson County in October 1947 to publish a magazine called the Liguorian and establish Liguori Publications in a new location in Barnhart, said Father Byron Miller, president of the organization, which is one of the largest Catholic publishing houses in the country.
In December, Liguori Publications will celebrate its 70th anniversary with current and former staff. The celebration will be held at Liguori’s St. Clement Health Care Center, a nursing facility where some of the clerics and nuns who used to work at Liguori now live.
“Some of those residents have made a significant contribution to Liguori publishing,” Miller said.
The Liguori founders were members of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, also known as the Redemptorists, the religious order founded by St. Alphonsus Liguori, a prolific religious writer of the 18th century, Miller said.
“For the past 70 years, Liguori has worked to further the Redemptorist mission to preach the ‘good news’ of plentiful redemption in whatever form that preaching takes,” Miller said. “In his lifetime, St. Alphonsus Liguori is credited with authoring 111 works, a legacy that Liguori Publications honors with their work today.”
The Redemptorists already had a presence in Jefferson County when the founders arrived at St. Clement College, a seminary founded in 1900 in De Soto.
For their new home, the mission purchased a historic resort in Barnhart, known as the Cedars, from Herman and Florence Becker. The property encompassed more than 100 acres and once was part of a former Indian Retreat, a 3,000-acre tract that belonged to the Benjamin O’Fallon family, a former Indian agent and the nephew of William Clark, the explorer and governor of the Missouri Territory. The priests “set up their publishing operations in an old plantation home” formerly owned by the O’Fallon family, Miller said.
That home no longer exists, and the publishing operation is now housed in a big brick building that was later built on the grounds.
“The history of Liguori is a colorful one, even before the arrival of the Redemptorists. At the turn of the 20th century, the property was called The Cedars, a fashionable resort for well-to-do St. Louis families who spent their summers here,” Miller said. “Children entertained themselves by riding the farm wagons, wading in the brook, and picking fruit in the orchards. Their mothers played card games in the high-ceilinged parlors of the plantation house and sat on galleries overlooking long rows of stately cedar trees.”
Once the priests and brothers arrived, they, too, enjoyed the beautiful grounds, he said.
“Editorial duties and speaking engagements consumed most of their time,” Miller said. They did, however, dam a brook on the property to create a small lake with a dock where they swam, canoed and fished, he said.
“If we have any luck, we provide our own fish for Friday,” the founder, Father Don Miller, once wrote.
The Redemptorists petitioned the U.S. Postal Service for the firm’s very own post office in order to help them distribute their publications and correspondence. The post office opened in the former plantation house in 1948 and Liguori became a place on the map.
In 1960, the Redemptoristine Sisters joined the Redemptorist members, supporting the ministry in prayer.
The publishing house continued to grow and the Liguorian magazine, first published in 1913, grew in circulation to about 590,000 magazines by 1982, at its peak. For a time, the Liguorian “was the most widely circulated magazine in North America,” according to Liguori Publication’s website. Now, the circulation is about 60,000.
Parish bulletins and pamphlets were and still are a big part of Liguori’s business. In 1981, 85 million Sunday parish bulletins, more than 1 million books and more than 1.5 million pamphlets were sold, he said.
Books published at Liguori included the “Good Old Plastic Jesus,” written by Father Earnest Larson in 1968, which was already in its 19th printing by 1974, “earning the distinction of being Liguori Publications’ most popular book title for decades until it was surpassed by ‘Handbook for Today’s Catholic’ published in 1979,” Miller said.
Liguori publishes diverse materials, including vacation Bible school products, materials designed to help prepare Catholics to receive the sacraments and Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults program materials.
“We (also) have a wide selection of material about Our Mother of Perpetual Help, an icon that holds special meaning for Redemptorists,” Miller said.
Through it all, the publishing house has stayed true to its original mission, he said.
“The founder of the Redemptorist Congregation, St. Alphonsus Liguori – and our patron at Liguori Publications – had an uncanny, remarkable ability to offer practical and pastoral advice to people in their formation of faith and conscience. I believe a primary reason that Liguori Publications has endured for so long is due to its unmatched reputation for offering quality products in a down-to-earth pastoral style,” Miller said.
He said the true mission for Liguori is to communicate God’s call to those of the Catholic faith and he hopes it will continue long into the future.
“My hope for Liguori Publications is that it will continue to evolve with today's Catholics and their desire to make faith and Church integral to everyday life,” he said. “Liguori products for individuals, families, and faith communities are a means to an end, and that relevant end is our universal call to holiness."
Today, 38 Redemptorist priests or brothers and 12 Redemptoristine nuns live at Liguori. On the grounds are their monastery and convent, a health care facility, the publishing house, the post office (ZIP code 63057) and the cemetery.
