Wattson, Lewis Thomas (1863–1940)

US Catholic religious leader. After a decade as an Episcopalian pastor in 1898, he cofounded, with Lurana Mary White, the Society of the Atonement, a Franciscan-type religious congregation, at Graymoor in Garrison, New York. There he sheltered homeless men, started a religious magazine, the Lamp, and launched the Church Unity Octave to pray for Christian unification. The society became Catholic in 1909 and he became a Catholic priest. A tireless fundraiser, he authorized missions both in the southwestern USA and abroad. In 1924 he cofounded the Catholic Near East Welfare Association. Wattson was born in Millington, Maryland.