San Francisco County
Biographies
FATHER
AUGUSTINE HOBRECHT, O. F. M.
Father Augustine Hobrecht, who is the pastor of the St. Boniface Roman Catholic Church of San Francisco, situated at 133 Golden Gate avenue, and which is in charge of the Franciscan Fathers, is a native of Omaha, Nebraska, where his birth occurred January 12, 1890.
Father Hobrecht attended St. Joseph’s School in the city of his birth, and continued his educational training at St. Joseph’s College in Teutopolis, Illinois, for three and a half years. In 1908, he graduated from St. Anthony’s Seminary in Santa Barbara, California, and from July 25th of that year until 1910 he studied at the Novitiate in Oakland, California. He then devoted his attention to philosophy and theology at the Santa Barbara Mission, and also studied theology in St. Louis, Missouri, for a three-year period. On July 2, 1915, in St. Louis, he was ordained to the priesthood, the ordination ceremony having been performed by the Most Rev. Archbishop J. J. Glennon in St. Anthony’s Seminary in that city. Father Hobrecht said his first mass in St. Boniface Church in San Francisco on July 11, 1915. For four years following, he was a teacher at St. Anthony’s Seminary in Santa Barbara, and for a like period taught theology at the Santa Barbara Mission, where he was made superior in 1923. In 1925, occurred the disastrous earthquake in Santa Barbara, which seriously damaged the mission building, along with the main portion of the city. Under the able direction of Father Hobrecht, however, the work of reconstruction of the damaged portion of the mission was begun and completely finished in two years. He became pastor of St. Anthony’s Church in San Francisco in January, 1931, and on July 3, 1931, assumed the pastorate of St. Boniface Church, which is his present position.
At the convention of the Third Order of St. Francis, held in the city of San Francisco in August, 1931, Father Hobrecht was chairman of the directing Board. Delegates from all over the United States were in attendance, and the whole event was both colorful and successful. The parade on the Sunday of the meeting was one of the most pretentious ever held here, and took one hour to pass a given point. Replicas of all the old California missions were reproduced. Dignitaries from all over the world were in attendance.
Transcribed by: Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
Source: Byington, Lewis Francis, “History of
San Francisco 3 Vols”, S. J. Clarke Publishing Co.,
Chicago, 1931. Vol. 3 Pages 284-289.
© 2008 Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
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