“From the Archives” — Finding Father Smet

One of Father Louis Smet’s accomplishments as pastor of Saint Mary (1915-1927) was establishing Sacred Heart Mission, in Groveton, in 1925. The mission, renamed Saint Louis Church to honor him after his death in 1940, will celebrate its centennial anniversary next year.

Father Smet was born in Belgium and educated at the American College (Seminary) in Louvain, where he was ordained in 1905. The Most Reverend Augustine Van de Vyver, Bishop of Richmond (1899-1911), also was Belgian and Father Smet’s uncle. He convinced his nephew to come to Virginia. In 1927, after his time at Saint Mary, Father Smet was offered a prestigious position at his Belgian alma mater, moved there and held several positions, including vice rector. When war seemed inevitable, he was urged to return to America. He was planning to do that when he learned he had cancer and could not travel. Father Smet died at his sister’s home in Beveren-Waas, East Flanders, on August 3, 1940 — just days after the Germans invaded Belgium.

Recently, Father Keith O’Hare, current Saint Louis pastor, asked if we knew where Father Smet was buried, part of his research for his parish’s anniversary. We knew only that Father Smet’s final resting place was in the communal cemetery of Beveren-Waas, adjacent to Sint Martinuskerk, where his funeral Mass took place. But no plot number could be found. During a trip to Europe, Father O’Hare visited the town and church. Unfortunately, part of the cemetery was moved years ago to make way for commercial development. The remains were reinterred in another part of the cemetery, but without individual markers or records of where each individual was buried.

So, in a way, we found Father Smet. While we were disappointed to find no tombstone or marker to indicate precisely where our former pastor is buried, he is honored in a stained-glass window in Saint Mary’s Sacred Heart transept. His final home is certainly in heaven. May he rest in peace.

— Kitty Guy, Parish Historian