Adolph Kolping

Who was Adolph Kolping?

A shepherd's son, a shoemaker for ten years, he began theology at Munich at twenty-eight with a workman's hands, entered the Cologne seminary at thirty and was ordained in 1845. As a curate in Elberfeld he joined a journeymen's association founded shortly before and became its president, then founded the Cologne one in 1849: places where the journeymen crossing the towns with no lodging and no family ate, slept, learned a trade and prayed together. At his death there were more than four hundred such associations worldwide.