August 15, 1917

Forty-one years to the day after he was ordained, Swiss-German Catholic priest and missionary Father Eugene John Weibel resigned from the church and school he founded, St. John the Baptist in Hot Springs (Garland County), to become the chaplain at St. Joseph’s Hospital and at the Convent of the Good Shepherd, both in Hot Springs. In 1919, he began writing his account of his years in Arkansas, later titled Forty Years Missionary in Arkansas. By 1922, he returned to Europe, serving as a prison minister in Lucerne, Switzerland.