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Painting leads Albany family in discovery of tie to papal history
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A replica of a portrait of Peter Welters sits upon a shelf at the residence of his great-granddaughter, Rose Fuchs of Albany. The original painting, which was displayed in Fuchs’ parents house, prompted Fuchs to begin researching her family history, along with Vatican history. (SCV photo by Sue Schulzetenberg) |
The painting had passed down from Fuchs’ parents to her older brother,
so she had made a laser copy for herself to display in her living room.
When the copy was made, she saw a family resemblance in the man’s
face.
“
I said, ‘It looks just like my dad,’ ” Fuchs said.
From the little information she had learned in her initial research,
Fuchs gathered that Welters was supposedly a guard for the pope. But
others doubted it because he was not wearing the distinctive striped
bloomered dress uniform sported by the five-century-old Swiss Guards
who watch over the Apostolic Palace and keep order when the pope appears
in public.
“
When I showed people the picture, they’d say, ‘He’s
not dressed as a Swiss guard,’ ” she said.
That’s because Welters was wearing the uniform of a soldier in
the pope’s army.
Fuchs found that Welters had stepped in to serve the pope at a crucial
time of unrest in Italy. Europe had been rocked by revolution in the
mid- and late-nineteenth century. An insurrection in 1848 had caused
Pope Pius IX to flee Rome, which was destroyed by the French a year later.
The pope then returned and asked French troops to remain in Rome, which
they did until 1870 when Napoleon III pulled them out to fight the Franco-Prussian
War, leaving Rome and the remaining Papal States unprotected from Italian
troops.
Man of few words
What Fuchs’ family knew about her great-grandfather was very limited.
She recalled some family lore about what her great-grandfather once said
to his grandson (her father) regarding his service as a soldier in the
pope’s army — that he “wasn’t scared until someone
shot the ornament on his cap.”
But that’s the only nug-get Fuchs knows concerning her great-grandfather’s
papal service.
Fuchs wasn’t finding much more written history than oral history
about Welters. Eventually, however, she read in a Vatican history book
about Giuseppe Garibaldi who wanted to unite Italy, including overtaking
the land occupied by the Papal States — the territories of central
Italy over which the pope had sovereignty from 756 to 1870.
Not knowing where to find additional information, Fuchs’ quest
came to a near stand-still. Then, she heard that her son and his family
were visiting Italy in 2006, so she formulated a new plan.
“
Maybe we can find something out in Italy and at the Vatican,” she
said.
Visit to Vatican City
Rose wrote to Father Tony Oelrich, a priest of the St. Cloud Diocese.
After seeing a picture of the painting, he arranged that the Fuchs family
receive tickets for a papal audience during their visit. They got close
enough to shake Pope Benedict’s hand.
Fuchs’ thoughts drifted back years ago, more than a century.
“
I thought grandpa must have seen some of this,” she said. Amidst
these feelings of nostalgia, Fuchs also felt a connectedness, a feeling
of fitting in, which was enhanced by the family-friendly atmosphere of
hospitality surrounding the Vatican offices.
“
They greeted us like we were long-lost relatives,” Fuchs said.
Because the people serving in the Vatican office were very busy, she
was unable to discuss much with them about the pope’s army in the
1800s.
One official suggested checking at St. John’s University in Collegeville — which,
the Fuchs family subsequently learned, didn’t have any contributing
information.
Thus, they left Vatican City with a blessing from the Catholic Church’s
leader, but not much of a lead.
Help from kin
After returning to Minnesota, however, Fuchs’ luck was about to
change, with help from her nephew, Stephen Welters. He had hip replacement
surgery, in January and again in March. During recovery, Welters spent
his extra time researching Peter Welters and the late-1800s world in
which he lived.
Stephen started by interviewing aunts, uncles and cousins. He researched
the wars of the era and the Swiss Guards.
“
I think they dug it all out,” Fuchs said.
Lorraine (Welters) Miller, was especially helpful in supplying facts
on family history and pointing the younger Welters to the graves of Peter
Welters and his wife, Helena.
Vatican history
Stephen Welters discovered that the uniform worn by Peter Welters resembled
the gray outfits and red-peaked gray hats worn by the Papal Zouaves,
French infantrymen who defended the Papal States.
At age 22, Peter Welters became a Papal Zouave, joining men from at least
22 other countries to assist Pope Pius IX in his struggle against Italian
Risorgimento (Italian for “unification”). In the midst of
the struggle, the Papal States’ land was overtaken by Italian soldiers
and in 1870, the papal troops disarmed and the Papal States were secularized.
In 1929, the Lateran Treaty created Vatican City, which is ruled by the
Bishop of Rome, the pope.
Following his service to the papal army, Peter Welters returned to his
homeland of Holland. He married Helena Delsing, and they had two children,
Anton and Mary. In February of 1888, they immigrated to America and are
thought to have settled in St. Anthony, bought land and started farming.
For reasons of Peter Welters’ health when he was older, Peter,
Helena and Mary moved to Portland, Ore., where they bought land and farmed,
but Anton — Rose’s grandfather — stayed in Minnesota.
Military relatives
Fuchs feels honored that her relative fought in the papal army.
“
I think it’s something rare,” she said.
Fuchs, who has two sons who fought in Vietnam and a nephew who was in
the Navy, said she believes that fighting for the sake of pope is one
of the greatest honors.
“
This is more meaningful than if he was guarding a king,” she said.
Fuchs, a member of Seven Dolors Parish in Albany, and her late husband,
Harold, had eight children, Rose Mary Coykendall, Harold Fuchs, John
Fuchs, Laurie Veiths, Bill Fuchs, James Fuchs, Nancy Fuchs and Greg Fuchs.
Upon tasting the fruits of Stephen Welters’ research, Fuchs was
overjoyed.
“
It was like the feeling when we saw the pope,” she said, adding
that the family had now found all the information they needed to find.
“
It completed the picture of what we knew so little about,” Rose
said.