Pioneer Bishops of Minnesota

This blog will discuss bishops that served in Minnesota up to 1900.  For more information about Minnesota, see my blog of March 12, 2017.

The first Catholics to come to what is now Minnesota were French fur traders, including Groseilliers, Radisson, and Du Lhut in the mid- to late-17th century.  Father Louis Hennepin accompanied a party of fur-traders to the Falls of St. Anthony in 1680 (today’s Minneapolis).  Other Frenchmen explored northern Minnesota the same year and the area was claimed by France in 1689.  The French soon established forts on Lake Pepin, one of which, Fort Beauharnois, was established in 1727 near what is now Old Frontenac.  Jesuit missionaries, Michel Guignas and Nicholas de Gonnor, built a small Catholic chapel dedicated to St. Michael the Archangel within the fort, and celebrated the first Mass in Minnesota.  Over the next century, missionaries would occasionally visit the area to attend to the spiritual needs of the few Catholics, including those among the Dakota and Ojibwa tribes. 

Minnesota became part of the United States in three phases—the last of which included northwestern Minnesota in 1818.  The United States Army established Fort Snelling in 1819 at the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers.  A Swiss Catholic colony (Mendota) was established near Fort Snelling in the 1830s and Bishop Mathias Loras of Dubuque, whose diocese included a portion of Minnesota, visited this area in 1839.  The next year, Loras sent a missionary to Minnesota, Father Lucien Galtier, to minister to the 200 or so Catholics in the area.  In 1841, Father Galtier built a log chapel dedicated to St. Paul in a village known as Pig’s Eye, located on a bluff along the northern side of the Mississippi River.

Father Galtier, not surprisingly, did not like the name Pig’s Eye, so he started to call the town St. Paul—after the name of his church.  The name became popular, and the City of St. Paul grew up around this small chapel.  In 1850, shortly after Minnesota became a Territory, Pope Pius IX created the Diocese of St. Paul, which consisted of the current states of Minnesota, and portions of North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.  Minnesota became the 32nd State in 1858.

Meanwhile, in northern Minnesota, in 1835, Bishop Frederick Baraga of Marquette, Michigan, landed on the north shore of a river at the site of present-day Duluth.  Bishop Baraga named the river, Cross River, because he had erected a cross at the site in thanksgiving for a safe crossing of Lake Superior.  German Catholics started settling near St. Cloud in the 1850s and in 1875 Pope Pius IX created the Vicariate of Northern Minnesota to provide the spiritual needs of immigrants and Native Americans.  Rupert Seidenbusch, a Benedictine priest from Germany, served as vicar apostolic of Northern Minnesota from 1875 until 1888.  The following year, Pope Leo XXIII split the Vicar Apostolic of Northern Minnesota into the Dioceses of Duluth and St. Cloud.  Catholic settlement in Southern Minnesota dates to 1683 when Nicolas Perrot established a trading post near what is now Wabasha, but few towns were established in the area until the 1850s.  Bishop Cretin, the first Bishop of St. Paul, established parishes in Mankato and Winona in the mid-1850s.  By 1860, with an influx of immigrants from Ireland, Germany, Poland, and Eastern Europe, there were about 10 parishes.

The population of Minnesota almost doubled between 1880 and 1890.  Minneapolis’ population grew from 47,000 to 165,000 during the decade to become the nation’s 18th largest city.  Similarly, St. Paul’s population increased from 41,000 to 133,000.  The population of the Dakotas tripled during the decade.  In response to this growth, Pope Leo XIII raised the see of St. Paul to the level of an archdiocese in 1888.  The new Province of St. Paul included the states of Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota.  The following year, the Pope created the Dioceses of Duluth, St. Cloud, and Winona, as suffragan sees of the Archdiocese of St. Paul.  Pope Pius X created the Diocese of Crookston in 1909 and Pope Pius XII created the diocese of New Ulm in 1957.  The Archdiocese of St. Paul was renamed as the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis in 1966.  The Diocese of Winona was renamed Winona-Rochester in 2018.

Joseph Cretin was born in France in 1799 and ordained a priest there in 1823.  He had success reviving the Faith among his parishioners, but he longed to be a missionary.  His friend, Mathias Loras, the Bishop of Dubuque, Iowa, invited Cretin to come to the United States.  Cretin did so in 1838.  Cretin served in parishes in Iowa and western Wisconsin until his appointment as the first Bishop of St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1850. 

Bishop Cretin’s new Diocese covered Minnesota and both Dakotas.  There were 1,000 Catholics served by four log churches (in St. Paul, Mendota, and St. Anthony, in Minnesota, and Pembina in North Dakota).  He actively recruited Irish, German, and Canadian Catholics to settle in Minnesota and the Dakotas and he built new churches and schools for them.  He established St. Joseph’s Hospital—the first in Minnesota.  He brought in religious orders, including Benedictine priests and sisters and the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, to teach in the schools and staff hospitals.  He was a leader in the temperance movement, and he built the second and third Cathedrals of St. Paul.  (The current cathedral is the fourth.)  At the time of his death, there were about 50,000 Catholics, 29 churches, and 35 stations in the Diocese.  Bishop Cretin died in 1857.

Thomas L. Grace was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1814.  He studied in Cincinnati, Kentucky, and Rome, and was ordained a Dominican priest in Rome in 1839.  Grace was the first South Carolinian to be ordained a Catholic priest.  Grace returned to the United States in 1844 and served in churches first in Kentucky and then for 13 years in Memphis.  Grace was appointed Bishop of St. Paul in 1859.

Bishop Grace was a skilled administrator who worked to increase vocations, improve Catholic education, and he wrote a constitution to govern the Diocese.  He also built schools, hospitals, and homes for orphans and the elderly, and gave special attention to Native Americans and immigrants.  Grace established lay organizations and a Diocesan newspaper to counter anti-Catholic attacks by the Know-Nothing party.  The Catholic population continued to grow and at the time of the Bishop’s resignation in 1884 due to poor health, numbered 130,000 served by 195 churches and 51 missions.  Grace was given the personal title of Archbishop in 1889 and he died in 1897.

John Ireland was born in Ireland in 1838, moved with his parents to the United States in 1848 and came to St. Paul, Minnesota in 1852.  Ireland was ordained a priest for the Diocese of St. Paul in 1861 and served as a chaplain during the Civil War and then as cathedral rector.  Pope Pius IX appointed Ireland as Vicar Apostolic of Nebraska in 1875, but Bishop Thomas Grace of St. Paul convinced the Pope to appoint Ireland as coadjutor bishop of St. Paul instead.  Thus, Ireland became Bishop of St. Paul upon Bishop Grace’s retirement in 1884.  He became the first Archbishop of St. Paul in 1888.

Archbishop Ireland worked with railroad magnet, James Hill (whose wife was Catholic), to establish Catholic colonies in rural areas, especially for the Irish living in urban slums, along railroad lines.  Ireland, an advocate for total abstinence, banned saloons in the towns.  More than 4,000 Catholic families were resettled in rural Minnesota.  Ireland built both the current Cathedral of St. Paul and the Basilica of St. Mary, helped establish the University of St. Thomas and St. Catherine’s College, founded St. Paul Seminary, and promoted the Catholic University of America.  He devised a creative, though unsuccessful method of public funding for Catholic schools.  He was a leading figure in the Americanist movement—a movement that sought to show that Catholics could be good American citizens while remaining Catholic.  Ireland took progressive stands on labor and race relations.  Ireland gave a sermon in 1890 at St. Augustine’s Church in Washington, DC, an African-American parish, and argued that people should be judged on their own merits and not on their race—a radical concept at the time.  Ireland was not as tolerant of Eastern-rite Catholics.  Ireland would not allow Alexis Toth, a Ruthenian-rite Catholic priest to serve Ruthenian-rite Catholics in Minnesota.  As a result, Toth and many other Ruthenian-rite Catholics left the Church and became Orthodox Christians.  Ireland was regarded as one of the most prominent U.S. Catholics of his time and he eloquently presented his thoughts orally and in writing.  Archbishop Ireland died in 1918.

James McGolrick was born in Ireland in 1841.  Two of his brothers became priests and two of his sisters became religious sisters.  Recruited by Bishop Thomas Grace to come to Minnesota while he was still in seminary, McGolrick completed his studies in Ireland and was ordained a priest for the Diocese of St. Paul in 1867.  Arriving in Minnesota in 1867, he served first at the Cathedral of St. Paul before being assigned as pastor of the new Immaculate Conception parish in Minneapolis.  While in Minneapolis, McGolrick built a new parish church, started an orphan asylum, an abstinence group, and became a trustee of the Minnesota Academy of Science.  McGolrick was appointed first Bishop of Duluth in 1889.

Bishop McGolrick’s new diocese had a Catholic population of 20,000 served by 32 churches and 22 priests.  At the time of his death from acute indigestion in 1918, there were 60,000 Catholics in almost 90 churches served by 59 priests.  There were also 11 parochial schools.  He built a new cathedral in 1894 to replace one destroyed by fire and he also founded St. Mary’s Hospital and St. James Orphanage.  McGolrick also served on Duluth’s library board and park board.

Rupert Seidenbusch was born in 1830 in Munich and came to the United States in 1850.  He finished his seminary training at Saint Vincent Abbey in Pennsylvania and joined the Benedictines in 1852.  He was ordained a priest the following year.  He served at parishes in Pennsylvania until 1857 when he was assigned to a Germany parish in Newark, New Jersey.  He came back to Saint Vincent Abbey as prior in 1862.  In 1866, he became the first abbot of what is now St. John’s Abbey in Minnesota.  He authorized the construction of several Abbey-related buildings and increased the enrollment of St. John’s College from 28 to 150.  Seidenbusch was appointed first (and only) Vicar Apostolic of Northern Minnesota in 1875.

Seidenbusch’s Vicariate was the frontier and consisted of all of northern Minnesota.  One source says that there were more bears and coyotes than people.  Primitive roads were often impassable in winter.  That did not deter Bishop Seidenbusch who traveled throughout the vicariate.  He also built Holy Angels Cathedral in 1884—the original cathedral in St. Cloud.  At the time of his resignation in 1888, the Vicariate had 45,000 people, 70 priests, 140 churches and chapels, 14 convents, and one hospital.  Bishop Seidenbusch died in Virginia in 1895.

Otto Zardetti was born in Switzerland in 1847 although his family was originally from Italy.  He studied in Switzerland and Austria and became fluent in French, English, German, and Italian.  He was ordained a priest in 1870 and was appointed director of an abbey library in Switzerland.  He visited the United States in 1879 and was accepted a teaching position at the seminary in Milwaukee in 1881.  He was appointed the first Bishop of St. Cloud in 1889.  Pope Leo XXIII split the Vicariate of Northern Minnesota into the new Dioceses of St. Cloud and Duluth in 1889.

In 1889, and appointed Otto Zardetti as the first Bishop of St. Cloud.  Bishop Zardetti established a monthly newspaper, promoted Catholic schools, imported priests, and brought Franciscan sisters to Little Falls.  Most Catholics were German, but there were Poles, French-Canadian, and Irish as well.  Nearly all were poor and were often in isolated parishes serving a particular ethnic group.  Churches and schools were built through hard work and sacrifice by these good people.  Bishop Zardetti worked to unite his Diocese and was also known as being a good homilist.  Bishop Zardetti grew tired of the difficulties of travel within his Diocese, and he had health issues that were aggravated by the Minnesota climate.  He returned to Europe in 1894 and was named Archbishop of Bucharest, Romania, the same year.  His health led him to resign as archbishop in 1895 and he accepted a position in Rome.  He wished to return to St. Cloud but was not healthy enough to do so and he died in 1902. 

Martin Marty was born in Switzerland in 1834 and was ordained a Benedictine priest there in 1856.  His Swiss abbot sent him to take charge of St. Meinrad’s Abbey in Indiana in 1860.  He was successful there and in 1876 was sent to the Dakota Territory to work in the Native American missions.  The Native Americans referred to him as Black Robe Lean Chief and he often traveled long distances in harsh conditions.  Pope Leo XIII appointed him Vicar Apostolic of the Dakota Territory in 1879 and he became the first Bishop of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in 1889.  He was named Bishop of St. Cloud, Minnesota, in 1894.  Bishop Marty served slightly more than a year in St. Cloud before his death in 1896.  His major contribution there was the incorporation of parishes.  At a time and place when churches and schools were often built by the labor and funds of the parishioners, there was often confusion about parish ownership and finances.  Incorporation legally brought the parishes into control of the Diocese.

James Trobec was born in Slovenia in 1838 as Jakob Trobez.  He initially entered seminary in his native land, but he and 15 other seminarians were recruited to come to America.  Trobec arrived in 1864 and completed his training in Pennsylvania.  He was ordained a priest for the Diocese of St. Paul in 1865 and served in parishes n Belle Prairie and Wabasha until 1887.  He was then assigned by Archbishop Ireland to establish a new parish—St. Agnes for German-speaking people in St. Paul.  He built a church and a school and was in the process of building a larger church when he was appointed Bishop of St. Cloud in 1897.

Bishop Trobec found a Diocese that was no longer on the frontier—transportation and commercial systems were well in place.  It was a period of great growth and the number of parishes, priests, and Catholic students nearly doubled while he was Bishop.  Trobec retired in 1914 due to ill health at which time the Diocese had 123 parishes and 25 schools.  He spent his retirement living with his sisters and a nephew, who was the pastor of the parish in St. Stephen, Minnesota.  Trobec had two other nephews who were priests in Minnesota.  Trobec died in 1921.

Joseph B. Cotter was born in England in 1844 and moved with his family to the United States in 1849.  The family lived in New York City and Cleveland before settling in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1855.  Cotter attended seminaries in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota, before being ordained a priest for the Diocese of St. Paul in 1871.  Cotter was serving as pastor of what became St. Thomas Cathedral in Winona when he was named the first Bishop of Winona in 1889.

As bishop, he increased the number of parishes in the diocese from 45 to 72, the number of diocesan priests from 45 to 85, and the number of Catholic school students from 2,700 to 4,600.  Bishop Cotter also invited orders of religious sisters to work in the Diocese.  Mother Alfred Moes had already moved her Sisters of St. Francis to Rochester, Minnesota, in 1882.  They opened what later became the College of St. Teresa in Winona in 1894.  Mother Alfred also wanted to build a hospital in Rochester and worked with local physicians William Mayo and his sons William and Charles to open St. Mary’s Hospital 1889.  This hospital evolved into the Mayo Clinic.  Bishop Cotter died in 1909 of a heart condition.