October 20, 2010

Joseph Machebeuf: Pioneer bishop of Colorado

By John Gleason

October 29 is a special day in the life of the Church in Colorado. On that day 150 years ago a short, wiry man arrived in what was then nothing more than a village on the banks of the Platte River to minister to the small, but growing number of Catholics in the wilds of the frontier.

Father Joseph Projectus Machebeuf, 48, was the vicar general of Santa Fe when he arrived in this territory with Father Jean Baptiste Raverdy and a supply-laden wagon drawn by mules to begin work on what would one day be known as the Archdiocese of Denver.

“He always struck me as the most unlikely of pioneers,” said Tom Noel, a 20-year professor of history at the University of Colorado at Denver and author of “Colorado Catholicism and the Archdiocese of Denver, 1857-1989.” 

Machebeuf was a small man—slight of stature and bookish—not the type you would expect to find in what was then considered to be wild, untamed country. During one of his many travels he suffered an injury, the result of falling from a stagecoach, which left him lame.  He spent the rest of his life hobbling around the territory carrying out his ministry. 

“Let’s just say he’d have never made it in Hollywood as the rugged outdoors type,” Noel said.

But the homely little man who looked like he didn’t belong left a long history in building the foundation of the Catholic Church in Colorado.

“He founded parishes, schools, hospitals,” Noel said, “and he wasn’t afraid to stand up to people either.”

One of Noel’s favorite stories is how Father Machebeuf, having grown tired of always having to seek out a place to say Mass when he travelled to Central City, decided on a more pro-active approach.

“During the Mass, he ordered the doors shut and bolted and refused to open them until, “people ‘contribute or subscribe (pledge) for a church,’” he said with a chuckle.  “They did.”

Born Aug. 11, 1812, in Riom, France, the future bishop entered the seminary in 1831 and was ordained five years later.  He came to America and settled in the Diocese of Cincinnati where he worked in a parish in Tiffin, Ohio, and later, was the founding pastor of Holy Angels Parish in Sandusky, Ohio.  In 1850 he came West with his friend John-Baptiste Lamy and served as pastor of parishes in Albuquerque and Santa Fe.  During this time Machebeuf’s travels as missionary took him all over the southwest, through Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah.  He fashioned a wagon which served as transportation, apartment and rolling church complete with a flip-down tailgate that he pressed into service as an altar.

Arriving in Denver on Oct. 29, 1860, Father Machebeuf wrote that he spent his first night, “camped out on two bare lots donated in Denver by the Express Co. and having no neighbors but squirrels (prairie dogs) and rattlesnakes.”  As he walked around the area he found, “not a city, but the little village of Denver, made up of low frame stores, log cabins, tents and Indian wigwams on the banks of the Platte.”

It may not have consisted of much, but it was precisely where he needed to be, according to Bishop Joseph F. Martino, retired bishop of the Diocese of Scranton, Pa., who now teaches history at Redemptoris Mater Archdiocesan Missionary Seminary in Denver.

“It was a time of desperate need for missionaries because of the small but stable population of settlers,” Bishop Martino said.  “There are countless examples in the history of the Church where the presence of a priest in a mission or a bishop in a geographic territory helped the Church grow.  And how could you not feel awed by the courage of these missionaries leaving the relative comfort of the eastern side of the Mississippi River for what was then the Wild West?

“They had all kinds of hardship and challenges: no highways, no telephones—nothing,” he continued. “A journey of any great distance could take weeks, and Bishop Machebeuf was famous for undertaking these journeys.”

During his almost three decades in Colorado, Machebeuf travelled 100,000 miles ministering to his people of the plains and in the mountain mining towns.  He extended invitations to priests to be part of the mission ministry of the West and never stopped in fundraising activities for whatever project was next on his agenda.  Ordained a bishop in 1868, Bishop Machebeuf was assigned as the vicar apostolic of Colorado and Utah territories. In 1871, to Machebeuf’s great relief, his vicariate was cut in half when Utah was transferred to the San Francisco Archdiocese. When the Diocese of Denver was created in 1887, he became its first bishop.

Two years later, on July 10, 1889, Bishop Machebeuf died, his seemingly endless supply of energy finally having run out.  More than 100 priests attended his funeral and he was laid to rest in a temporary tomb in the chapel of St. Mary’s Academy.  Three years later his remains were reinterred at Mount Olivet Cemetery.

In his book, “Life of the Right Reverend Joseph P. Machebeuf,” Father William Howlett wrote: “When Father Machebeuf came to Colorado in 1860 he was ... without a single church, or roof over his head; when he died the Diocese of Denver counted 64 priests, 102 churches and chapels, nine academies, one college, one orphan asylum, and over 3,000 children in Catholic schools. This was primarily the work of Bishop Machebeuf. In contemplating it we must concede that (he) was a great priest, a great bishop and merited well the title by which posterity shall know him—The Apostle of Colorado.”

Noel agrees that Bishop Machebeuf should be remembered as a hard worker who gave his all to his Church and his parishioners. But he should also be remembered as a far-seeing historical figure, one who believed in the future of Denver and Colorado.

“Many people thought that Denver was going to be a boom and bust town. It took confidence and optimism in 1860 to imagine a huge city and state,” Noel said.

“Remember when the railroad came through in 1867 it went through Cheyenne.  Half the Denver population moved up there because they thought that would be the rail hub and the city could very easily have become a ghost town.  You can mention all the visionaries like Gilpin, Evans and Byers who are responsible for building the state, but Bishop Machebeuf is right there alongside.”

Upon his death, Colorado’s first Catholic newspaper, the Colorado Catholic wrote of Bishop Machebeuf, “No man in the Rocky Mountain Country has ever gone to his grave more universally respected for his sanctity of motive than the pioneer bishop of Colorado.”