Pioneer Bishops of South Dakota

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

French explorers and fur traders, such as Joseph La Frambois and Charles Pierre Le Sueur, came to present day South Dakota throughout the 1700s and early 1800s.  Father Augustine Ravoux came from Minnesota in 1841 to minister to the Dakota tribe and to Catholics at Fort Pierre and returned to minister to Catholics in Vermillion in 1845.  Father Pierre DeSmet worked as a missionary among the Native Americans in the region from 1839 to 1870.  In 1850, Pope Pius IX made the Dakotas east of the Missouri River part of the Diocese of St. Paul, Minnesota, and the Dakotas west of the River part of the vast Vicariate Apostolic of the Indian Territory East of the Rocky Mountains.  The Bishop of St. Paul, Thomas Grace, sent Father Pierre Boucher to the town of Jefferson and he established, in 1867, the Church of St. Peter, the first Catholic parish in South Dakota.

The Dakota Territory (consisting of what is now South Dakota and North Dakota) was established in 1861, but settlement was slow in the southern half of the Territory until the discovery of gold in the Black Hills in the mid-1870s.  Within about five years, much of the land east of the Missouri River had been settled.  Pope Leo XIII named Abbot Martin Marty, OSB, of St. Meinrad's Abbey in Indiana to be Vicar Apostolic of the Dakota Territory in 1879.  Within the next decade, the population of the Territory nearly doubled.

Two significant events took place in 1889:  South Dakota became a State and Pope Leo XIII created the Diocese of Sioux Falls.  At the time, the Diocese and the State were coterminous.  Pope Leo XIII created a second diocese, the Diocese of Lead, in 1902.  The Diocese of Lead consisted of that part of South Dakota west of the Missouri River.  Lead was the second largest town in South Dakota at the time the diocese was created.  With a population of 6,000, it was smaller only than Sioux Falls with its population of about 10,000.  Bishop John Lawler moved his see from Lead to Rapid City in 1930, because Lead had not increased in size, while Rapid City’s population of about 10,000 made it the third largest town in the State, behind Sioux Falls and Mitchell.

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 continued to work closely with the Native Americans, notably the Sioux, within the diocese and translated hymns and prayers into their languages.  He invited religious orders to staff schools, hospitals, and Native American missions.  He was named Bishop of St. Cloud, Minnesota, in 1894, and he died in 1896.

Thomas O’Gorman was born in Boston in 1843 and moved as a child with his family to Chicago and then to St. Paul, Minnesota.  He was sent to Rome for his seminary studies, and he was ordained a priest for the Diocese of St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1865.  He was a pastor in Rochester until 1878 when he joined the Paulist Fathers and went to New York City as a missionary.  O’Gorman returned to Minnesota in 1882 to serve as pastor in Faribault and then as the first president of the College of St. Thomas in St. Paul.  In 1890, he was appointed a professor of church history at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.  O’Gorman was appointed Bishop of Sioux Falls in 1896.  Bishop O’Gorman built many schools and churches, including St. Joseph Cathedral.  He also built six hospitals and established Columbus College.  He was also a noted preacher.  During his 26 years as Bishop, the number of Catholics increase from 30,000 to 70,000; the number of parishes from 50 to 114; and the number of priests from 65 to 140.  O’Gorman died of a stroke in 1921.