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Loras College, a Catholic institution in Dubuque, Iowa, removed a statue of Bishop Mathias Loras from campus on Sept. 8 after discovering that Loras, the college’s founder, enslaved a woman from 1836 to 1852.
In a message on Tuesday to students, faculty members and staff, James Collins, the college’s president, said new information about Loras’s slave ownership is “disturbing” and “deeply upsetting.” Collins said a recent analysis by a researcher and confirmed by a history faculty member examined Loras’s personal documents and that the information “challenges past depictions of him.”
“Slavery is an evil in any age, and its legacy of dehumanizing injustice persists,” Collins said in his message. “Bishop Loras’ abhorrent conduct is antithetical to the mission, vision, values, and Catholic identity of this institution … As much as the ideals of our founders and the early Catholic Church in the United States were inspiring, we must realize that they were often lived in direct contradiction to the values we hold today, and which we have long held to be absolute.”
In addition to the statue removal, the college will create a scholarship fund named for the woman Loras enslaved, Marie Louise, and a scholarship in honor of the college’s first Black graduate, Father Norman Dukette, starting during the 2021-22 academic year, Collins wrote. The college will keep Loras’s name; “the educational experience beloved by our alumni, students, and faculty is not defined by the man,” Collins wrote.
