Archabbot Boniface Wimmer, (1809–1887) was a German monk who in 1846 founded the first Benedictine monastery in the United States, Saint Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, forty miles southeast of Pittsburgh. In 1855, Wimmer founded the American-Cassinese Congregation of Benedictine Confederation. Early life Wimmer was born January 14, 1809, in the hamlet of Thalmassing, Bavaria, and christened Sebastian Wimmer. His parents, Peter Wimmer and Elizabeth (née Lang) Wimmer were tavern keepers. Sebastian believed he had a vocation to the priesthood from a young age. He studied law at the University of Regensburg (Ratisbon) and the University of Munich. He finished his theological studies at the Gregorianum after he won a competitive exam for a scholarship. Wimmer was ordained a priest on August 1, 1831. Vocation Following his ordination to the priesthood, Sebastian Wimmer served a year as curate at the Shrine of Our Lady of Altötting in Bavaria. It was also during this time that the King of Bavaria, Ludwig of the Royal House of Wittelsbach, began re-establishing the Bavarian Benedictine Monasteries that had been suppressed by Napoleon. One was the Benedictine foundation of Saint Michael Abbey in the town of Metten, Bavaria. Saint Michael Abbey, founded in 766 by Charlemagne with monks from the Archcenobium of Monte Cassino of the Italian province of Umbria, had been suppressed in 1803 by Napoleon. With its re-establishment, Wimmer sought to enter the newly formed monastery and discern a vocation to the Benedictine monastic life. Upon entering the community at Metten, Wimmer was given the religious name, Boniface, after the great Apostle to Germany, Saint Boniface. He took solemn vows of obedience, stability and Conversatio Morum (conversion of life) on December 29, 1833. He was sent to teach at the Benedictine College of St. Stephen's in Augsburg, also newly established by Ludwig I of Bavaria. In 1842 as a professor in Munich, he saw first-hand the early emigration to the United States. Wimmer felt that he had an interior calling to be a missionary to those German people who had left their native land to pursue a better life in the United States. After reading about the condition of German immigrants in the United States, Wimmer took steps to transplant Benedictine missions there. He began by asking his superior for permission to go to the New World as a missionary. In 1846, he was granted permission to serve in a missionary capacity in