HOT SPRINGS — Father Erik Pohlmeier, pastor of St. John the Baptist Church in Hot Springs, opened the cornerstone of the church Sept. 25 and found many items that were installed there when the current church building was completed in 1910.
The time capsule was opened as part of the parish’s centennial celebration.
Unfortunately, the items were paper and badly deteriorated by exposure to moisture for almost 100 years. Newspapers from the era in the cornerstone included a Nov. 22, 1909, edition of the Jonesboro Evening Sun with an article about the “Twenty-fifth anniversary of the Catholic Church” in Jonesboro, a copy of the Pocahontas Star Herald, dated Friday, Nov. 29, 1909, and a copy of Arkansas Echo, dated October 1910, which was printed in German. An official Year Book and Parish Guide of St. John the Baptist Church, 658 Ouachita Avenue, which was the temporary church while the current church was under construction, was included. There was a Year Book and Directory of St. Bernard’s Hospital in Jonesboro, dated 1902.
Items from Pocahontas and Jonesboro were likely included because of then-pastor Father John Eugene Weibel’s connection to those parishes. Known as the “Apostle to northeastern Arkansas,” Father Weibel established churches, convents and schools in several towns.
Father Weibel was a former Benedictine priest who had come in 1908 from his assignment in Jonesboro to Hot Springs to oversee founding a second parish in the city limits.
The most poignant was a letter dated Nov. 2, 1909, written by Father Weibel to Bishop John B. Morris, bishop of Little Rock. In the letter, the priest asked to be released from his assignment and allowed to return to his home in Switzerland. The letter is signed with the notation, “The 38th year since my Religious Profession. 35th year since the secularization of our Abbey. 34th year of my priesthood. 32nd year of my work in the American Mission.”
Apparently the move was never approved. In 1917, Father Weibel left the Hot Springs parish to become a hospital and Good Shepherd Home chaplain, also in Hot Springs. In 1922 he returned to Switzerland to become a prison minister. He died in 1934.
