Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2022

Alois Plut was born in Krupp, near Semich, diocese of Ljubljana, Province of Carniola, Austria on June 21, 1841, son of Joseph and Catherina Starz Plut.

Alois, along with 16 other ecclesiastical students, decided to move to the United States. Alois, age 23, completed his theological studies and was ordained in the Cathedral in St. Paul on February 12, 1865. He became a priest in Stillwater, New Prague, Winona, Cedar Lake, Sleepy Eye, New Ulm, and Glencoe.

As Father Plut traveled to various missions, he mostly traveled on trails. There were no roads at that time. Bitter cold and howling blizzards, pelting rain, mosquitoes, and the heat of summer made it hard, but Father Plut was young and energetic, though it taxed the body, according to The Shakopee Story by Julius A. Coller, II.

In June 1876, Fr. Plut became pastor of the Church of St. Mark’s in Shakopee, where he stayed for ten years.

Meanwhile, in Shakopee, starting in 1862, sisters from the Benedictine Convent of St. Joseph at St. Mary, Pennsylvania arrived. The sisters, with ecclesiastical approval, founded the Convent and Academy, according to Julius A. Coller II in The Shakopee Story.

In a letter to King Ludwig of Bavaria on December 2, 1862, Abbott Boniface Wimmer noted that he founded a little mission for the sisters “to the great joy of the English and German Catholics. The new convent has its own story. First, it was a cow shed, then a horse barn, and now it is an embryo of a woman’s convent, but it only serves, in any event, only the most necessary purposes.”

The sisters erected a large two-and-a-half-story limestone building at the corner of Fourth and Atwood Street, south of St. Mark’s Church. St. Gertrude’s Convent and Academy by the Sisters of St. Benedict was incorporated on May 4, 1866, said Edward D. Neill in the History of the Minnesota Valley including the Explorers and Pioneers of Minnesota.

The first commencement exercises of St. Gertrude’s Convent and Academy took place on June 20, 1871. On September 4, 1871, the academy had an enrollment of 46 young ladies. The board and tuition for the season were $40.00. Bedding and laundry were $5.00, piano lessons were $8.00, and guitar lessons were $3.00. Lessons in cloth, wax works, and the making of paper flowers were extra.

Mother Gertrude Flynn was the prioress. She was admired, and she put the convent and academy in firm financial foundation. By mid-1878, the debt of St. Gertrude Convent and Academy was practically paid off.

When Father Plut arrived in Shakopee in 1876, he and the sisters did not get along.

Father Plut, pastor of St. Mark’s and intensely German, decided in 1878 to refuse to re-employ the Benedictine Sisters as teachers at St. Mark’s School because he contended that they were unable to teach German properly. Father Plut and the sisters had a mutual antagonism that developed.

At one point, Father Plut refused, for a time, to give the nuns pews in the church.

At this time there were thirty sisters staffing the academy, convent, and three schools in Minneapolis, Carver, and Belle Plaine, and the orphanage in St. Paul. Father Plut replaced the Benedictine Sisters with the School Sisters of Notre Dame from Milwaukee in May 1878.

On August 31, 1880, Bishop Ireland advised the sisters that St. Gertrude’s was suppressed, and the thirty sisters needed to join St. Benedict’s Convent in St. Joseph, Minnesota or be dispensed from their vows. Sister Gertrude Flynn, OSB, and the other sisters who had come originally from St. Mary’s Pennsylvania moved reluctantly to St. Joseph.

According to a letter to Bishop Ireland, Abbott Alexius Edlebrock of St. John’s Monastery noted: “They believe they were wrong, and in my own impression is that they were wronged.”

In Shakopee, Father Plut was called to St. Paul in 1886. He filed various pastorates until 1903. Then he returned to St. Mark’s in Shakopee. While there, Father Plut was made a Domestic Prelate by Pope Pius X in May 1906, and by July 24 he became Most Reverend Archbishop.

Monsignor Alois Plut’s vigor and health waned, according to Julius A. Coller, II.

Monsignor Alois Plut, the oldest priest in the diocese of St. Paul, died at the age of 76 on February 20, 1917. He was buried at St. Mark’s Catholic Cemetery, now called the Shakopee Catholic Cemetery, on February 23.

Bibliography

Coller, Julius A. II. The Shakopee Story.

Neill, Edward D. History of the Minnesota Valley including the Explorers and Pioneers of Minnesota.