Br. Gratian of Jesus

Stephen Abts was born in Rommerskirchen, Dusseldorf, Germany, on October 13, 1837. His family emigrated to the United States where two of his older brothers entered religious life, one became a Jesuit and one a Franciscan. Stephen sought admission to the Novitiate at Ammendale, Maryland, at age forty-four and entered there in January of 1881, where he received the habit and religious name of Brother Gratian of Jesus in March of that same year. He was assigned to St. Peter's School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, later that year and remained there until he was assigned, for health reasons, to the school in Bernalillo in New Mexico. In 1886 he was sent to Santa Fe, to St. Michael's Boarding School, where he served as a working Brother, caring for the students and the chapel until his death at age fifty-four, having been a De La Salle Christian Brother for ten years.