Pioneer Bishops of Utah

This blog will discuss bishops that served in Utah up to 1900.  For more information about Utah, see my blog of May 4, 2018.

The first Europeans to come to Utah were two Franciscan priests, Francisco Dominguez and Silvestre de Escalante, who crossed Utah in 1776 seeking a route from Santa Fe to California.  They brought the Faith to several Native Americans and named many of Utah’s rivers and mountains.  Fur traders came beginning in 1819, but the first permanent non-Native American settlement was not made until 1846 (at what is now Ogden).  Mormons, led by Brigham Young, arrived in Utah in 1847 and two years later established the independent state of Deseret.  Utah had become part of the United States in 1848 and Congress created the Utah Territory in 1850, which included modern-day Utah, as well as portions of Colorado, Nevada, and Wyoming.  Utah became the 45th State in 1896.

The great pioneer priest, Pierre de Smet, visited Utah in the 1840s and priests came as early as 1859 to minister to the few Catholic soldiers, miners, and railroad workers, who then lived in the State.  The first Catholic parish in Utah, now the Cathedral of the Madeleine, was established in 1866.  Two years later, the Vatican created the Vicariate Apostolic (a pioneer diocese) of Colorado and Utah under the leadership of Bishop Joseph Machebeuf of Denver.  The Catholic population of Utah by the early 1870s was about 800, less than one percent of the State’s population.  Over the next few years, parishes were established in Ogden, Park City, and Eureka.  Pope Leo XIII created the Vicariate Apostolic of Utah in 1886, which became the Diocese of Salt Lake in 1891.  By 1910, there were about 20,000 Catholics in the Diocese (which then included part of Nevada) served by nine parishes and about three dozen missions and stations.  With the creation of the Diocese of Reno, Nevada, in 1931, the Diocese of Salt Lake consisted only of the State of Utah.  The name of the diocese was changed to the Diocese of Salt Lake City in 1951.

Lawrence Scanlan was born in Ireland in 1843 and attended a seminary there that trained priests for missionary service.  Scanlan was ordained a priest in 1868 for the Archdiocese of San Francisco.  He served in San Francisco and Northern California until 1871 when he was assigned a parish in Nevada.  He was sent further east in 1873 to the Utah Territory.  Utah had one parish serving 800 Catholics.  He traveled on foot and on horseback visiting Catholics throughout Utah, including those in mining camps.  Scanlan established new parishes, a school, a hospital, and a seminary.  Scanlan also established good relations with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and even celebrated Mass at the Mormon temple in St. George, Utah.  Scanlon was appointed Vicar Apostolic of Utah in 1887 and first Bishop of Salt Lake in 1891.  

As bishop, Scanlan built hospitals, schools and churches, including the Cathedral of the Madeleine, and established the Intermountain Catholic diocesan newspaper.  He also established an orphanage in his former rectory and opened Mount Calvary Cemetery in Salt Lake City.  Scanlan fought for the spiritual and economic well-being of poor immigrant Catholics.  Scanlan suffered from rheumatism starting in 1912 and often sought treatment in Arizona.  His vicar general was nearly blind, and a church-appointed investigator determined that the Diocese was largely unmanaged.  Bishop Scanlan died in 1915 at which time the Diocese had 27 priests, 24 churches, four parochial schools, two hospitals, one orphanage, one boys' college, two girls' academies, and a Catholic population of 13,000.