Blessed Adolph Kolping, the Journeymen's Priest of Cologne

Who was Blessed Adolph Kolping?

Blessed Adolph Kolping was a shoemaker who became a priest and spent himself on young working men. Born near Cologne in 1813, he knew from his own years at the cobbler's bench how lonely and rough life could be for a journeyman on the road. As a priest he gave such young men a home, teaching, friendship and the faith, and the associations he led grew into the worldwide Kolping Society. John Paul II beatified him on October 27, 1991.

The life of Blessed Adolph Kolping

A shepherd's son at the cobbler's bench

Adolph Kolping was born in Kerpen, west of Cologne, on December 8, 1813, the son of Peter Kolping, a shepherd and small farmer. The family was poor, and the bright boy learned the shoemaker's trade. In 1831 he went to Cologne as a shoemaker's journeyman and stayed at the bench for years. What he saw among the young craftsmen there stayed with him: long hours, cheap lodgings, the tavern as the only place to go, and little to feed the mind or the soul.

He wanted more, and he wanted to be a priest. In his twenties he went back to school with boys much younger than he was, then studied theology at Munich, Bonn and Cologne. He was ordained a priest on April 13, 1845, in Cologne's Minoritenkirche, the church that now holds his tomb.

The journeymen's father

His first post was as chaplain in Elberfeld, today part of Wuppertal. There Johann Gregor Breuer had begun a Catholic association for journeymen, and Father Kolping threw himself into it and soon led it. In 1849 he returned to Cologne as a cathedral vicar, and on May 6 of that year he founded the Cologne journeymen's society, which became the center of the whole movement.

His idea was simple. A young craftsman traveling from town to town needed what a family gives: a warm room, a meal, people who knew his name, a chance to learn, and a place to pray. Kolping's houses offered all of it, with evening classes in reading, arithmetic and the skills of the trade alongside talks on the faith. He wrote tirelessly, edited a popular Catholic paper, and traveled to found new branches. By his death the societies numbered in the hundreds, and the first American branch had opened in St. Louis in 1856.

Death in Cologne

Worn out by work and illness, Father Kolping died in Cologne on December 4, 1865, at fifty-two. In 1866 his body was moved to the Minoritenkirche, his favorite church, where he still rests.

Beatification and miracles

His cause opened in Cologne in 1934. John Paul II declared his heroic virtues in 1989 and beatified him in St. Peter's Square on October 27, 1991, after the Church accepted a healing attributed to his intercession as an approved miracle. In his homily the Pope said that Kolping "was shaped by the Gospel of Jesus and by his experience of life as a former craftsman" and that "his social commitment was rooted in his faith" (our translation from the German). Favors that members of the Kolping family ask through his prayers today are reported graces.

Why Blessed Adolph Kolping is honored by workers and families

Kolping is the friend of workers and apprentices because he was one of them, and because he gave his priesthood to young men learning a trade. Shoemakers claim him as their own. He belongs to families too: John Paul II noted that Kolping "knew very well that the family is the first and most natural community of life among people," and his houses were meant to prepare young men to found good Christian homes of their own. See more causes on our patron saints page.

Symbols of Blessed Adolph Kolping in art

He is almost always shown from the photographs taken in his last years, so his portrait is unusually true to life.

• Black cassock: the plain dress of a 19th-century diocesan priest.
• Shoemaker's tools: an awl or last recalls the trade he worked for a decade.
• Young journeymen around him: statues in German towns often show him with an arm on a young worker's shoulder, the "journeymen's father" with his sons.
• Book or newspaper: for his writing and the classes in his houses.

In churches you will recognize him by the round, clean-shaven face, the high forehead and the cassock. Kolping statues stand in many German towns, including one beside the Minoritenkirche in Cologne.

Feast day and prayer

We keep his feast on December 4, the day of his death, as the Roman Martyrology gives it. Kolping groups around the world mark the days near it with Mass and gatherings. Find other saints of December on our feast days page.

We have not found an approved English prayer to Blessed Adolph Kolping to reprint here; the Kolping Society keeps its own prayers for his canonization. Let us ask him to pray for young people learning a trade, for working families, and for everyone far from home and looking for a place to belong.