Nerinckx, Charles

Nerinckx, Charles

(1761–1824) religious leader; born in Belgium. Ordained in 1785 and forced underground after the French Revolution, he emigrated to the U.S.A. in 1804 and became a missionary in the wilderness frontier of Kentucky. Zealous and accused of excessive rigorism, he cofounded the Sisters of Loretto (1912), imposing on them a stringent rule of life.