Stafford: Scholar and Social Worker (1986-1997)

Denver's sixth bishop and third archbishop came from Baltimore, the hometown of Catholicism in the United States. Maryland, one of the few English colonies to welcome Catholics, became the first Catholic community. After the American Revolution, Baltimore became the seat of the first bishop and, later, of the second cardinal in the United States.

Archbishop Stafford's grandfather, an immigrant from Dungannon in Northern Ireland, opened a furniture store in 1902. The archbishop's father, Emmett, worked in this family business until his retirement in 1980, five years before his death. Stafford & Brothers is still in business in West Baltimore, operated by the archbishop's uncle and cousins.

James Francis Stafford was born July 26, 1932, the only child of Emmett and Mary Dorothy (Stanton) Stafford. The youngster excelled at St. Joseph Monastery Grade School, where his third-grade teacher, Sister Mary Pacifica, SSND, recalled in 1986 that Frank was "responsible and studious . . . a natural leader. . . always trying very, very hard . . . he always wanted to do things perfectly."

Raised in the West Baltimore suburb of Catonsville, Stafford attended Loyola High School, where friends remembered him for his loyalty. Once, when a chum was hospitalized with polio in an isolation ward, Frank "borrowed" two cassocks from his parish church so he and another friend could visit the hospital without interference. Boyhood pals, reported the Denver Catholic Register on July 30, 1986, said that Stafford's face "has always been a barometer. The redder it gets the more intense his feelings."

After high school, Frank Stafford entered Loyola College in Baltimore as a premedical student. The death of a close friend in a car crash and the guidance of his Jesuit teachers, however, led him to rethink his life. Subsequently, he entered St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore in 1952, going to Rome two years later to complete a bachelor's degree in sacred theology at the North American College. He was ordained by Bishop Martin J. O'Connor in Rome on December 15, 1957, at the age of twenty-five.

Father Stafford returned to Baltimore where he began parish work. In 1964, his concern for social justice led the young priest to complete a master's degree in social work at the Catholic University of America, writing his thesis on foster care of children. To learn more about the poor, the 5-foot-8-inch, 170-pound priest lived and worked in core city parishes, also serving as the chaplain for the Villa Maria home for disturbed children. Even after his elevation to the rank of auxiliary bishop, which entitled him to live in a large home with a housekeeping staff, Stafford chose to live in a rectory in one of Baltimore's poorest neighborhoods.

When Baltimore businessmen pressured him to move a soup kitchen to another neighborhood, saying it drove their customers away, Stafford stood his ground. "This is where these people are," he told protesters, "and we have to come to where they are to serve them." In his native archdiocese, Stafford served as the associate director (1964-1966) and then as the director (1966-1976) of Associated Catholic Charities, and on numerous church and civil boards.

Father Stafford became Monsignor Stafford on September 8, 1970, and was consecrated an auxiliary bishop of Baltimore on February 29, 1976, in the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen. On January 17, 1983, he was installed as the second bishop of the diocese of Memphis in Tennessee. When Stafford was tapped to become archbishop of Denver, the Tennessee Catholic Register of August 4, 1986, praised him for giving "direction, strength, piety and trust to the 45,000 Catholics in the state's 21 western counties." In this southern Bible Belt city with many poor blacks, the Tennessee Register complimented Bishop Stafford on

forthright policies asserting the dignity, and demanding justice for all . . . with the unique ingredient of his own gifted, compassionate, and gentle personality. . . . Together with the Bishop of Nashville, he urged state officials to recognize and rectify—Tennessee's wretchedly deficient progress in aiding poor families with dependent children.

His early days as archbishop

After Archbishop Casey's death in March 1986, six priest consultors were appointed to elect an administrator to guide the archdiocese until Pope John Paul II selected a new archbishop. This team of priests chose Lawrence St. Peter, the archdiocesan vicar for priests and pastor of Mother of God Church. "I was honored and surprised to be elected administrator," Father St. Peter said in a December 29, 1987, interview:

I tried to keep things going, not to make any great changes and prepare the way for a new archbishop while fifteen cardinals in Rome made the final decision for Denver. We were delighted with how quickly Rome acted and with their choice of Archbishop Stafford. I helped the new archbishop move in. We unpacked three solid walls of books. I opened some of them and found they were underlined, with notes scribbled in the margins. The archbishop's library is extensive and very well used. He is a scholar.

"As for my plans for Denver, Archbishop Stafford told the Denver Catholic Register of June 11, 1986, "I do not carry a suitcase full of pastoral blueprints. Usually I strive for two hallmarks in my ministry: compassion and fidelity. Compassion means among other things to listen attentively to the priests and the people of the church, to learn about your history, current vision and mission."

On July 30, 1986, 1,200 people squeezed into the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception for the canonical installation of the new archbishop of Denver. Mary Dorothy Stafford sat in a front pew, tears of joy streaming down her face as her son formally accepted the care of the 310,000 Catholics of the Archdiocese of Denver. The next day, in order to accommodate all who wanted to honor the new archbishop, an installation Mass was celebrated at the Currigan Convention Center. One plane load of Stafford's friends had flown from Baltimore; another from Memphis. Nearly 12,000 people joined the pope's personal representative, Archbishop Laghi, and numerous cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and religious in prayer and thanksgiving for Denver's new spiritual shepherd.

"Although I did not know the late Archbishop Casey," Stafford told the crowd, "I am mightily impressed with his catholic sense of the Church's mission, especially to the poor. . . . I am very impressed with what I've seen of the City of Denver. Its citizens appear to have achieved a level of civility especially evident in the well-placed and flower-decked parks. At the same time, tensions between the deprived and well-to-do cannot be absent," he added, noting "the omnipresent neighborhood watch signs."

On August 9, 1987, Archbishop Stafford celebrated the centennial of the establishment of the Archdiocese of Denver with a solemn Mass at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, jammed with a capacity crowd of 1,200, including thirty visiting bishops and archbishops and the papal pronuncio to the United States, Archbishop Pio Laghi. Archbishop Stafford shared his reflections in his pastoral letter of May 28, 1987, "This Home of Freedom":

We of the Church of Denver mark a pair of anniversaries, the centennial of our diocese and the bicentennial of the United States Constitution. . . . As we enter our second century as the Church of Denver, may we each contribute to the building of the public community of virtue without which there cannot be liberty and justice for any, much less for all.

"There's no way they could have known who I was," he told religion reporter Terry Mattingly of the Rocky Mountain News on August 1, 1986. "Of course I sat, like a good Catholic, in the last pew." To the astonishment of the incognito archbishop, Reverend Ron Swensen of Augustana Lutheran asked his flock to pray for the new Roman Catholic archbishop. "That," Stafford smiled, "was a very warm and hospitable greeting." "I also went incognito to the Samaritan Shelter for dinner," the archbishop confessed in a December 5, 1986, interview. "I found that two-thirds of the people I ate with were willing and able to work. I'm amazed Colorado doesn t have a work program for them."

The archbishop described his day, in a 1988 interview, as beginning with meditation in his home chapel from 6:15 to 7:15, followed by a home Mass. Over a breakfast of high-fiber cereal and fruit juice, the archbishop reads both Denver dailies, weekly magazines, and theological journals before heading for his office around nine o'clock. He frequently hosts business lunches in his home with various guests, including Denver's Mayor Federico Fabian Peña.

Daily, the archbishop does the Royal Canadian Air Force exercises and takes frequent walks. "In town, I walk three times a week to Cranmer Park. Weekends, I love to get to the mountains for hikes, at places like Wild Basin in Rocky Mountain National Park. Or when I'm retreating to Snowmass Monastery, I enjoy hiking around Independence Pass." Besides walking, the archbishop is fond of tennis and skiing, which he tries to do several times each winter. In his younger days, Stafford was one of the priest-ski bums who slept in the basement of St. Mary Church in Aspen in order to try out that resort's celebrated champagne powder snow. The archbishop is an intermediate skier, says Father Lawrence St. Peter, who welcomed him to Colorado with a ski trip to Keystone.

Ecumenism

Archbishop Stafford has long shown a keen interest in the ecumenical movement to further understanding and work for unity among religions. He has cochaired the national Oriental Orthodox-Roman Catholic Consultation, the international Roman Catholic-World Methodist Council Bilateral Dialogue, and the national Roman Catholic-Lutheran Dialogue as well as serving on the Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs Committee. In 1987, he was elected to a three-year term as chair of the Catholic Bishops Committee on Ecumenical and Interfaith Affairs. In Denver, Archbishop Stafford pursued his ecumenical efforts, joining in Orthodox, Protestant, and Jewish activities. "Healing the divisions between religious people has been a major concern for me ever since I became a bishop," Stafford explained in an August 25, 1988, interview. "The division of the Christian community is a scandal to the faith."

Stafford likewise took a lively interest in the Lutheran Anglican Roman Catholic Dialogue, which was founded by Bishop Evans during the 1970s. With his counterparts in the other two churches, Archbishop Stafford launched an annual three day joint retreat for Anglican, Lutheran, and Roman Catholic clergy. During a January 1989 retreat, Stafford became the first Catholic archbishop to preach in St. John's Episcopal Cathedral, where he joined Episcopal Bishop William C. Frey and Evangelical Lutheran Bishop Wayne Weissenbuehler for an ecumencial service. The three men agreed that it was painful and very difficult to try to negotiate agreement on divisive issues; best to focus on, as Stafford put it, "working together in areas of justice, helping the poor, building programs to help those with AIDS, and trying to find ways to worship together."

Jewish-Catholic relations also interested Stafford, who became the first archbishop to appear in a Denver synagogue, where he helped to open an exhibit at the Mizel Museum of Judaica in Denver's BMH Congregation synagogue. This 1986 exhibit, "It Shall be a Crown Upon Your Head: Headwear Symbolism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam," emphasized common roots of the three religions. Stafford noted that the Vatican, in 1965, had issued the Nostra Aetate (In Our Times), which officially struck down the charge of deicide against Jews. "The prayer hat worn by Jews," Stafford added, was adopted by Catholic bishops because "of the cold churches of Europe and bishops wanting to protect their bald heads."

Early disappointment

Asked about his biggest disappointment since coming to Denver, the archbishop, after several minutes of thought, replied:

It has been my own lack of familiarity with the richness and traditions of the church here. This is a different world for me. The Civil War, for instance, which is so important back East, played little role here. People seem to think not in terms of North and South, but of East and West.

The fierce, immense Colorado landscape has shaped people here, making them more independent. Coloradans show a greater respect for climate and environment. When I go hiking in these awesome, solitary mountains, I sometimes think of Bishop Machebeuf, who first faced them. They provide a marvelous opportunity for reflection.

My impression of Northern Colorado, after two years here, is very positive. It's a young society of many newcomers, searching in new ways to discover the truth. People are more independent, less institution-minded. For example, I was surprised to find that the cathedraticum tax on each parish here is only 3.4 percent of ordinary collections. It was 12.5 in Baltimore, 16 percent in Memphis. But we must live within our means.

Asked in our August 25, 1988, interview if he planned to stay in Colorado, the archbishop smiled and said, "I have just changed my will. I added a codicil specifying that I am to be buried in the Gallagher Memorial at Mt. Olivet, with my predecessors Machebeuf, Matz, Tihen, Vehr, and Casey."

Archbishop Stafford as scholar

The archbishop's slow, thoughtful style, his love of books and his bright, blue eyes sparkling behind his spectacles are not deceiving—he is a scholar. He frequently astonishes religious and laity alike with his references to and quotations from early churchmen. He began our first interview in 1986 by showing me some musty, leather-bound books in Latin. In subsequent interviews, he made it clear that he feels answers to current church problems may lie in thousand-year-old writings: "I'make a priority of reading. We must draw upon the riches of Catholic tradition, on the church fathers. They can help us with our own problems."

Stafford is a writer as well as a reader. Besides numerous public addresses and the weekly columns he has contributed to the Memphis diocesan newspaper and to the Denver Catholic Register, he has published a dozen articles and book reviews for such journals as Origins, Our Sunday Visitor, and America. Most frequently, he has written on the church and family policy but occasionally tackles new ground, as he did in "Options for Those on Society's Margins" in Origins and "The Compassionate and Faithful High Priest" for The Priest Magazine.

Stafford's many articles on family life have made him a nationally recognized scholar on the topic. In 1980, he was one of four U.S. bishops to participate in the General Synod of Bishops on Marriage and Family Life, in Rome. His fellow prelates of the National Council of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) chose Stafford, in 1986, for the NCCB Ad Hoc Committee on Biblical Fundamentalism; a year later, Stafford also took on the chairmanship of the NCCB's Ad Hoc Committee to assess the Catholic Telecommunications Network; and in 1988, he was elected to the standing committee overseeing the North American College in Rome.

In the April 19, 1987, National Catholic Register, Archbishop Stafford's review of George Weigel's book, Tranquillitas Ordinis: The Present Failure and Future Promise of American Catholic Thought on War and Peace, provides an answer to those who have condemned him for not denouncing nuclear weapons and war. Stafford concurred with Weigel's defense of St. Augustine's argument for the "just war," suggesting that "the liberal Catholic establishment" has dealt with only one of "modernity's twin horrors: the destructive capabilites of weapons and totalitarianism." Stafford defends what he calls "the use of power, even coercive power, by the state to pursue the public order necessary for creating the conditions for the possibility of virtue."

Referring to the controversial 1983 letter of America's Catholic bishops, "The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response," Stafford wrote:

As one bishop who took part in the deliberations preceding the publication of the letter, I believe that it is legitimate to question whether our discussions focused too much on the casuistry of weaponry. This raises several further questions in my mind. Does this emphasis lead to a latent pessimism in the letter about the affirmation of peace as a human possibility? Does the "terror" over the nuclear threat in the letter's opening paragraphs create subtle survivalist distortions about the meaning of peace?

In 1986, while bishop of Memphis, Stafford published a two-part booklet, In Christ Jesus, which discussed various topics including racial and ethnic justice. He concluded his study of racism with initiatives "to lessen racial and cultural hostilities," including his order that "no Catholic parish or organization is to make any use of facilities or services of a segregated club or group."

With the bishop of Nashville, Bishop Stafford of Memphis conducted hearings on capital punishment. Crime victims, criminals, criminologists, theologians, and concerned citizens were asked to focus on the death penalty as a public policy issue. Subsequently, James D. Neidergess, bishop of Nashville, and Bishop Stafford published "But I Say to You . . . : A Pastoral Letter on Capital Punishment, May 14, 1984," concluding: "It is painful to develop an entirely new attitude toward violence. It can be done through the transforming grace of Christ. We, too, pray that capital punishment will not happen again in the State of Tennessee. It is unworthy of us."

While bishop of Memphis, Stafford also issued "In the Person of Christ: A Letter on the Ministerial Priesthood," in which he took a strong traditional stance on the nature of the priesthood, including a defense of male, celibate priests. Stafford further elaborated on the priesthood in his pastoral letter of September 27, 1988, "In the Person of Christ, the Head of the Body: The Mystery of the Priestly Vocation." Here, he emphasized the mystical nature of the church and of the clergy, declaring that celibate, male, ordained priesthood is characteristic of Catholicism. While all Catholics are called to the universal priesthood of the baptized, this should not be confused, Stafford contended, with the ordained priesthood.

While some have expressed disappointment with Stafford's traditionalism, others point out that he has pursued liberal change within the traditional framework of the Church. "I realize tradition is living and changing," Stafford said in our 1988 interview, indicating he will listen with an open mind even to his critics. In Memphis, he said "he felt the pressure of Christian fundamentalists"; in Denver, he has experienced more criticism from the liberal wing of the Church.

For Stafford the scholar, answers lie in the Church's 2,000-year-old tradition, in the classics of Church Fathers such as Tertullian, St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, and in the best modern Catholic thinkers such as the late Jesuit philosopher John Courtney Murray, whom Stafford called "the finest public theologian produced by the Catholic Church in the United States."

Charities

Sister Loretto Anne Madden noted upon the archbishop's arrival, "He is an ideal person for the position in Denver . . . with his degree in social work from the Catholic University and his work in Baltimore and Memphis towards eradicating racism." Two years later, Sister Mary Lucy Downey, SCL, gave the archbishop high marks for his concern about housing the elderly poor: "We were only able to start Higgins Plaza, which we hope to open as a combination senior residence and nursing home, because the archbishop loaned the Archdiocesan Housing Committee, Inc., start-up money of $150,000."

Reaching out to one of the most stigmatized groups in society, Archbishop Stafford set up an Archdiocesan AIDS [acquired immune deficiency syndrome] Task Force soon after his arrival. He conducted a special Mass at the cathedral on October 23, 1987, for AIDS victims and asked all Catholics to pray for them. "Many people are afflicted with the AIDS virus," the archbishop noted, "and seek the healing which only the Lord can give. . . . Christians are not to judge one another, for God calls us all to a deeper conversion and healing."

A year later, Archbishop Stafford repeated what he promised will be an annual AIDS Mass. More than 150 people gathered for the AIDS Mass, some of them weeping as the archbishop anointed the foreheads and palms of AIDS victims with the holy oil of the sick.

As a former social worker and director of Catholic Charities in Baltimore, Archbishop Stafford took a special interest in Catholic Community Services, whose capabilities were stretched by the depression that began in 1982 with the international collapse in crude oil prices. Stafford, who was honored in 1988 by the Catholic University of America Alumni Association as one of its outstanding social work graduates, acknowledged the frustration of social services: "The needs of hungry, homeless and hurting people far outrun our resources."

James H. Mauck, secretary for Catholic Charities, reported in 1987 that CCS served nearly 400,000 persons in a variety of programs. "There is not a person in the archdiocese who at one time or another might not need our services," Mauck added. Sponsoring adoption as an alternative to abortion has been a major thrust of the CCS Adoption/Foster Care/Pregnancy Counseling office, which traces its origins to the Infant of Prague Nursery opened in 1946 in the old St. Clara's Orphanage next to St. Elizabeth Church. This nursery took care of unwanted babies from Catholic hospitals. In 1954, Infant of Prague Nursery moved to West 33rd Avenue and Eliot Street, where the Franciscan sisters have established their new complex of social services at St. Elizabeth Gardens.

Queen of Heaven Home for Girls closed its doors in 1966, in keeping with a national trend away from institutionalization and toward foster homes. Subsequently, Infant of Prague Nursery pioneered archdiocesan efforts to place unwanted babies with foster families. This program has grown over the years, with foster parents now adopting babies two or three weeks after birth. In 1987, according to Family and Children Services director Gail Shattuck, "We counseled 203 birth mothers, fifty-two birth fathers, made 449 contacts with other family members, and placed forty-one children in foster homes."

Cam Krysko, a social worker who did her graduate work at the Catholic University of America, has served as an adoption counselor for CCS since 1962. "We have a long waiting list for babies," she reported in 1988,

so we can select a foster home even before a baby is born. The societal stigma of being an unwed mother is lessening, and more and more pregnant girls are keeping their infants. In 1986, our department counseled 257 pregnant women but only fifty-two relinquished their infants for adoption. Since 1985, mothers read profiles on adoptive couples so they can help pick the home. It's reassuring to them.

By 1987, CCS was spending $3.2 million a year on social services and operating twenty major programs. Program fees covered 34 percent of the budget, according to Mauck, while United Way contributed another 26 percent. Other revenues are donations from individuals, parishes, and the AACP. Mauck reported in 1987 that about 85 percent of the budget goes for programs and only 15 percent for administration; his staff of 120 is assisted by over 1,200 volunteers. "Our CCS budget has increased fivefold since 1974," Mauck said in a 1988 interview, "and this growth is due largely to the imput of the laity and of volunteers."

CCS has been devoting more time to senior citizens, who, with improved modern health care, are now the fastest growing age group in the United States. Sister Mary Lucy Downey and the HCI continued to plan new HUD-financed senior low-income housing. In 1986, the Sisters of Charity Health Care Systems formed a corporate partnership with Sunny Acres that, by 1987, cared for approximately 1,000 seniors in four retirement communities: Sunny Acres Villa in Denver; Medallion and Medallion West in Colorado Springs; and Villa Pueblo Towers in Pueblo.

Mullen Home

Shortly after he came to Denver, Archbishop Stafford helped his mother move into the Mullen Home for the Aged, where he paid frequent visits. Mrs. Stafford was delighted with Mullen Home, the first Catholic home for the elderly in the archdiocese, where the Little Sisters of the Poor, since 1918, have operated what many consider the finest nursing home in Colorado.

Mullen's spacious, elegantly landscaped two-block site at West 29th Avenue and Lowell Boulevard is impressive, as is the interior with its glistening linoleum floors, freshly vacuumed carpets, and bright, homey decor. Mother Agnes Bernard, LSP, administrator of Mullen Home since 1986, reported in 1987:

Since December 22, 1917, when the first five sisters arrived from France to open the Mullen Home, we have grown to our current staff of twelve Little Sisters of the Poor. We care for both the physical and spiritual needs of our residents. We reach out to them in their last days, to see them through their death. When someone dies all of us try to be with them. Last week, when someone died suddenly, we were all there with them and comforted them with songs. If it's a slow death, someone is with them all the time, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

The hardest part of our job is having to turn people away. We have hundreds of people on our waiting list.

"A beer can?" he asked.

"Yes," a sister told him. "At lunch time—the big meal of the day here—we give our residents a can of beer if they want it. The trouble now is that we re out of beer, and we re asking St. Joseph to find some for us."

"Do you mind a rival brand?" asked the visitor, who turned out to be a Coors Brewery executive.

"Indeed not. The residents here would drink any kind of beer."

The next day, eighteen cases of Coors were delivered to the Mullen Home, along with word to telephone the warehouse whenever the supply was running low.

Mullen Home, one of thirty-four nursing homes operated by the Little Sisters of the Poor in the United States, seeks out the poor—two thirds of its residents are on welfare. The sisters are assisted by a paid staff of almost 100 and by hundreds of volunteers. In 1975, a $3.1 million expansion included remodeling the older facilities and construction of a three-story south wing on 29th Avenue, which became the main entrance. As of 1988, the Mullen Home had eighty-eight residents, as well as those in the Jeanne Jugan Apartments (fourteen self-care units), and a day care program for seniors.

Immigrants

During the 1970s, CCS started the Hospice of Peace to offer support and home health care programs for those wishing to die at home. Once persons, their families, and their doctors agree on a hospice death, the Hospice of Peace provides nurses, social workers, volunteer hospice friends, and pastoral care counselors, regardless of religion or ability to pay.

The Archdiocese also concerns itself with new Americans. The Immigration and Resettlement Office grew out of the Displaced Persons program established after World War II by monsignors Kolka and Monahan. While resettling Cuban refugees was the major undertaking of the 1960s, during the 1970s and 1980s the office helped hundreds of Southeast Asians resettle in Colorado. In 1975, the Immigration and Resettlement Office set up shop at 3417 West 38th Avenue in Denver to provide sponsors, translation services, legal aid, assistance with citizenship applications, visas, alien cards, and affidavits of support. Barbara Carr, the supervisor in 1988, had a staff attorney, receptionist, secretary, and two counselors.

The 1987 Federal Immigration Act, which offered amnesty to undocumented workers who had been in the United States for a long time, put a heavy burden on the office. Counselor David Moore told The Denver Post of November 20, 1988, that he had talked to several thousand undocumented workers. Moore reported that of the 40,000 undocumented aliens living in metro Denver in 1987, about 15,000 had been granted amnesty and citizenship, another 10,000 had been deported, and about 15,000 remained. As the 1987 law provided stiff fines for employing undocumented workers, they were having a very tough time finding jobs. But many of them told CCS that they would stay because, as Moore reported, "they still believe that life in Colorado as an undocumented worker is superior to life in their own country."

Archbishop Stafford, who had served on the governor's Committee on Migrant Labor in Maryland, beefed up the Denver Archdiocesan Migrant Labor Ministry. Directed since 1982 by Father Thomas More Janeck, OFM Cap., the migrant ministry had grown by 1988 into a team of two priests, two sisters, and fourteen lay persons.

Father Janeck asked for the migrant ministry at an age when some priests retire. When his request was granted in 1982, he left the pastorship of Denver's Annunciation parish for a roving pastorship. His altar was the folding card table he carried in the back of his car, and his church was often a parking lot or the fields where he celebrated a Spanish Mass, wrapped in his multicolored serape-chasuble. Father Janeck ended each Mass with cookies and small talk in fluent Spanish.

Father Janeck was chosen in 1988 to be president of the Colorado Rural Migrant Coalition, an umbrella group of forty public and private agencies concerned with migrant laborers. In 1988, he logged over 200,000 driving miles, saying Masses, baptizing babies, blessing cars, helping his people to celebrate and to mourn.

"These people have none of the comforts that we take for granted, like running water or privacy or a chair to sit in," Father Janeck told the Rocky Mountain News, of October 12, 1987. Migrant laborers in Colorado earn about $5,000 to $6,000 a year: "They show us the value of poverty. They show us the value of work. They show us the value of simplicity."

Providing religious education to migrants is particularly difficult, noted Sister Ann Lucia Apodoca, SCL, a native of Windsor, Colorado, where she and her family once worked beside migrant laborers. Since the children of migrant laborers toil in the fields, Sister Apodoca explained, "there are very few hours left for education. Sadly, in most cases, the migrant kids have dropped out of school because of their tough work schedule."

Care of the disabled

The first program in the archdiocese specifically designed for developmentally disabled persons was established in Longmont in 1941. That October, five Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, opened St. Coletta School for atypical children in conjunction with their parochial school at St. John the Baptist. This school, opened in the old St. Joseph Academy at 6th and Atwood streets, welcomed mentally handicapped children from throughout the Midwest, who were given religious, academic, and vocational training. In 1948, the Franciscans moved the school to Chicago, leaving Colorado without a Catholic center for the developmentally disabled.

That void inspired Cary Carron to establish a Ministry for the Handicapped in Denver in 1960, working at Notre Dame parish with William Joseph Koontz. After Father Koontz died in 1969, Archbishop Casey asked Carron to establish an Archdiocesan Ministry to the Handicapped. From 1969 to 1975, she supervised the ministry out of the former St. Philomena Convent. In 1975, the archdiocese leased the old Notre Dame parish convent for the Ministry to the Handicapped until its 1981 move to 1050 South Birch Street, where the archdiocese leased the former conference center of St. Andrew's Seminary from the Theatine fathers.

Carron, founding supervisor of the program, relied heavily upon volunteers to provide services not available through government agencies. CCS handicapped programs include a coffee house, a college for living, respite care, a group home, service for the hearing impaired, and a metro Denver youth group. A Follow-Along plan developed in 1985 dispatches friend-counselors to accompany clients, helping them with such everyday ordeals as check-writing, telephone-dialing, and teeth-brushing.

The Knights of Columbus have adopted the developmentally disabled among their many causes, bankrolling the coffee house at 1050 South Birch. The Knights also undertook, in 1987, official sponsorship of the Colorado Special Olympics Basketball Tournament. "Since 1960," Cary Carron said in a 1989 interview,

we have evolved from a small special religious education program to a $300,000-a-year program of many support services for the handicapped and their families. We now offer many programs with the help of generous funding from the State of Colorado, the City and County of Denver and private donors. Our mission, however, remains the same—to further, regardless of their race, religion, and financial status, the spiritual, intellectual, emotional, and physical well-being of of our disabled brothers and sisters.

Father Larry Freeman and I started the Office of Special Religious Education and Pastoral Care in 1976 and now have two additional staff members. We have tried to create a family community for the disabled by offering weekends at Camp Santa Maria and annual trips to Disneyland. We now have three programs for the developmentally disabled. First, we sponsor weekly parish programs with one religious education teacher for each student. As of 1989, we have over 200 students and 130 volunteer teachers in twenty parishes throughout Northern Colorado.

Secondly, in 1979 we established at the state's Wheat Ridge Regional Center an interdenominational "religious nurture" program for the severely retarded people there. We use music, puppets, singing, dancing, prayer, and talk about Jesus. Lynne Thier of our staff coordinates this program, and two of us spend four nights a week at Ridge Home.

Thirdly, in 1985 we started Bridge Home, a community for eight developmentally disabled women in the old convent of All Saints parish. Three of our staff, Sister Sue Rogers, SL, Lynne Thier, and myself, live there and provide twenty-four-hour-a-day companionship in this unique program. The ladies there all work in sheltered workshops, such as those of Goodwill Industries and Laradon Hall. At the Bridge Home and in our other programs, our aim is to give the developmentally disabled opportunities to grow by structuring a safe environment that gives them a maximum amount of freedom.

Care of the needy

The St. Vincent de Paul Society, the oldest charitable arm of the Church in Colorado, has been active ever since its 1876 establishment by Bishop Machebeuf. Santos C. Vega, executive director, noted that the society receives no money from the government or the archdiocese. "Our lifeline," Vega told the Denver Catholic Register of February 11, 1987, "is the annual St. Nicholas appeal and people who contribute generously throughout the year."

The society has a small basement office at St. Thomas Seminary, 3434 East Arizona Avenue, and a store at 10829 East Colfax Avenue. Sixteen parishes of the archdiocese maintain St. Vincent de Paul ministries with about 100 volunteers handling calls for everything from rent money to automobile repairs. The society continues to ask the fortunate to help the unfortunate with the slogan, "We Give to Others What You Give to Us."

"If You Seek Peace, Work for Justice" is one of the bumper sticker slogans of the Justice and Peace Office, which was created by Archbishop Casey during the 1970s. Archbishop Stafford, who for years has spent Christmas and Easter celebrating Mass in jails and visiting with prisoners, reorganized the office in 1988. Dennis Kennedy, CM, an assistant professor of liturgy and education at St. Thomas Seminary, was appointed director of the office. One of Father Kennedy's first efforts was a "Way of the Cross" march through downtown Denver on Good Friday. Starting at St. Elizabeth Church on the Auraria Campus, the marchers stopped at twelve sites, including the United States Mint, the Denver Police Headquarters, and the Market Street Station shopping area. "At Market Square," Father Kennedy told the Rocky Mountain News of March 19, 1988, "we ll be talking about the sin of consumerism, something I believe we all need to pray about." At the police headquarters and jail, the marchers prayed for improvements in the nation's justice system and for officers killed in the line of duty.

The Justice and Peace Office has joined protests against violations of human rights in Central America, including U.S. interference in Nicaragua. Father Kennedy says his office focuses on "Gospel values—living with others in peace, helping the needy and speaking out for those who do not have a voice."

Peace and justice is likewise the preoccupation of James C. Sunderland, SJ, chaplain for the Adams, Arapahoe, Denver, and Jefferson county jails. To tend his flock, Father Sunderland spends much time behind bars, where, he confessed, "I do not put a Bible in their hands and preach. I find out what they need."

Father Sunderland founded the Coaliton to Abolish the Death Penalty in 1984 because

life is sacred, even when a person has done the worst possible thing—take a life. The death penalty just perpetuates a cycle of violence. You have to make a distinction between the sin and the sinner. Nobody else is going to speak for them. Sometimes they re the lowest of the low, but if they can be given a spark for something better, that's my role.

Father Jim, as some prisoners call him, frequently appears in court on their behalf, urging juries to recognize the sanctity of human life and spare one of his flock the death penalty. His unpopular position has earned him many critics, within and without the Church. "One lady called me to tell me what a disgrace I was to the Catholic Church," he reported in 1988. "I told her, I know, but how did you find out? She didn t see the humor."

The Justice and Peace Office and Archbishop Stafford have announced support for Amnesty International in its campaign for worldwide human rights. Masses and prayers were held throughout the archdiocese to call attention to the work of the Vicariate of Solidarity, a Catholic order internationally noted for its human rights work. Members have suffered death threats, abduction, torture, and murder at the hands of some Central and South American governments.

The Missions Office set up by Archbishop Casey was enlarged by Archbishop Stafford, who placed Reverend Edward M. Hoffmann in charge of collecting and distributing funds. Among the programs supported are the Society for Propagation of the Faith, the Society of St. Peter the Apostle, the Holy Childhood Association, and the Catholic Relief Services Rice Bowl Project.

The archdiocese also maintains its own mission at Monteria, Columbia. Archbishop Casey adopted the Monteria Mission in 1979, after spending a week there. He assigned a priest, lay missionaries, and funding to the mission, where the archdiocese works in partnership with the Bethlehem fathers of Inmensee, Switzerland, who founded the mission to minister to an estimated 100,000 barrio dwellers.

The Bethlehem fathers withdrew from the mission in 1988, where upon Archbishop Stafford committed the Archdiocese of Denver to sole sponsorship. He doubled the staffing to two priest-led teams. Reverend Bert Chilson, a St. Thomas Seminary graduate who took Spanish lessons before taking over one of the archdiocesan teams, told the Denver Catholic Register of February 1, 1989:

The population of Monteria is 300,000 and the archdiocese has two parishes in the poorest parts of the barrio, which lack running water, electricity, telephones and automobiles. It is important to know other people of our faith, to know other cultures so we can know what it means to be Catholic. The mission experience expands our vision and faith and it gives us the opportunity to learn other cultures. I receive much more than I give.

Hospitals

Catholic hospitals, like American health care institutions in general, underwent growth and consolidations during the 1980s. St. Joseph Hospital, the largest and oldest private hospital in Colorado, has expanded considerably since its 1873 founding. The Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth financed early expansions by traveling in pairs to beg for support.

The original hospital at East 18th Avenue and Humboldt Street in Denver was replaced at the turn of the century by a much larger twin-towered structure. An east wing was added in 1905 and a north wing in 1911. After the dedication of the fifty-bed, $100,000 north wing, Sister Mary Irene McGrath received a gentleman caller who insisted upon seeing the superior. When Mother Irene entered the parlor, he exclaimed, "I just wanted to look at you. I heard a woman ran this establishment, and I wanted to see her for myself."

St. Joseph's celebrated the 1933 opening of the $115,000 Catherine Smith Mullen Memorial Home for Nurses on the north side of the hospital. This elegant art-deco building, donated by Ella Mullen Weckbaugh and designed by Denver architect Temple Buell, remains a functional, ornate part of St. Joseph's to this day. St. Joseph's opened in 1917 an Infants Home that has evolved into its widely acclaimed birthing center, where by the 1980s approximately one in every ten Colorado babies was born.

The 1940 Dower Surgical Pavilion, with its modern equipment and air conditioning, was donated by May Mullen Dower (another daughter of J.K. Mullen who had received kind attentions at St. Joseph during his final illness). After the opening of an air-conditioned, sixty-five-bed north wing in 1952, St. Joseph's bed capacity reached 400 patients.

Sister Mary Asella, director from 1936 to 1963, oversaw completion of the Weckbaugh Chapel in 1940 and undertook the hospital's most ambitious expansion. The old twin-towered main building was demolished and replaced by a $9-million, twelve-story structure, dedicated in 1964. Although decidedly modern in style, the new main building incorporated the twin-towers motif of the old building: Circular towers contain wedge-shaped patient rooms, which all open to a core nurses station. This "health care in the round" solved the usual hospital problem of long hallways separating nurses from their patients. Sister Asella retired in 1963; she was succeeded as hospital administrator by Sister Mary Andrew Talle. Sister Mary Andrew emerged as a civic leader at the same time she made St. Joseph's a pacesetter in hospital care. While serving on the boards of the Denver Chamber of Commerce, Great West Life Insurance Company, and United Banks of Colorado, Sister Mary Andrew also joined efforts to revitalize the north Capitol Hill neighborhood. As part of its 1973 centennial, St. Joseph's sponsored a community health fair for employees and neighbors.

In 1974, St. Joseph's opened a $5-million surgical wing where Colorado's first open-heart surgery was performed. Since the 1970s, the hospital has continually expanded and updated its facilities, including, in 1973, a three-floor radiology-cardiovascular wing, a Day Surgery Wing in 1983, a Senior Care Center in 1986, a Women's Pavilion in 1984, and a $6-million expansion of the surgical facilities in 1988. When Kaiser Permanente—a pioneer health maintenance organization—opened a Colorado program in the 1970s, it chose St. Joseph's as their hospital. Willingness to work with Kaiser personnel and patients has helped keep St. Joseph's successful at a time when many hospitals are faltering. Sister Mary Andrew Talle, chosen as the Woman of the Year in 1982 by the Denver Chapter of the National Federation of Business and Professional Women, shared her management philosophy in a 1986 interview:

We're as much a university as a hospital. We have the largest private hospital teaching program for interns and residents in the region. Education and growth are the ways in which we become better people, and my whole job in management is to aid the growth of people.

St. Anthony Hospital in west Denver has evolved from the 180-bed hospital dedicated by Bishop Matz on June 13, 1893, into a vast health care system embracing six hospitals. St. Anthony answered so many of the prayers of Sister Mary Huberta and the Poor Sisters of St. Francis Seraph that they named the hospital, opened in 1892, for him.

This hospital on the south shore of Sloan's Lake added a chapel and a laundry in 1901. The facility at West 16th Avenue and Quitman Street was enlarged in 1918; its new west wing increased its bed capacity to 200 patients. In 1921, a convent was erected to house forty Franciscan sisters. St. Anthony's nursing school opened in 1919 and became a full four-year program in 1948. By 1960, St. Anthony's was overflowing, with an occupancy rate of 115 percent; patient beds lined the hallways. That year, the hospital launched a fundraising campaign that led to completion of a new south wing (1962) and west wing (1964), which became the new main building. The old main hospital was demolished in 1965 to make way for a new east wing.

Ellsworth V. Kuhlman became the first lay administrator of St. Anthony's in 1969. Two years later, St. Anthony North, a 194-bed satellite hospital, was opened in the Denver suburb of Thornton. As of 1988, St. Anthony's also operated two emergency room outreach programs on Colorado's Western Slope: the Summit Medical Center in Frisco and the Emergency Medical Center in Granby.

St. Anthony's pioneered same-day surgery, a Neuro Trauma Unit, and a helicopter ambulance service in the Denver area. The helicopter Flight for Life program, launched in 1972, provides an airborne emergency room as well as rapid transportation to St. Anthony Central. The whirlybirds carry emergency equipment and staff to the sites to stabilize victims before transporting them. Since St. Anthony's pioneered Flight for Life, other cities have adopted similar programs.

A giant step forward for St. Anthony Hospital came on March 16, 1987—merger with the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati Health Care Systems. The combination created a $1-billion operation that was the fifth largest health care system in the nation, according to the Denver Catholic Register of March 25, 1987. St. Anthony's parent organization, the Franciscan Healthcare Corporation of Colorado Springs, operated six hospitals, and a retirement home and centers in Colorado, Nebraska, and New Mexico. The Sisters of Charity Health Care Systems consisted of eleven hospitals, three nursing homes, and retirement centers in Colorado, Kentucky, Michigan, New Mexico, and Ohio, including Penrose Hospital in Colorado Springs, St. Mary-Corwin Hospital in Pueblo, St. Joseph Hospital and Manor in Florence, and four Sunny Acres retirement communities.

St. Anthony Hospital Systems, as the new outfit was called, continued to expand. In 1987, it purchased Mercy Medical Center in East Denver and Beth Israel Hospital, a Jewish hospital founded in 1923, in West Denver. St. Anthony's thus emerged as the largest Colorado-based hospital system. With over 4,700 employees by 1989, St. Anthony's is ranked by the Greater Denver Chamber of Commerce as the thirteenth largest employer in metro Denver.

Mercy Hospital of Denver, after its 1901 establishment by the Sisters of Mercy on the south side of City Park, initially specialized in treating nervous and lung disorders. As it soon evolved into a general hospital, the name was changed from Mercy Sanitarium to Mercy Hospital in 1903. Further expansion came for the hospital and nursing school in 1932, when a $350,000 addition increased the hospital's capacity to 275 beds and added new surgical, X-ray, and laboratory facilities. Thirty years later, a ten-story addition designed by Linder, Wright, and White Architects cost $8.6 million. Subsequently, the fine 1901 building—the only Spanish-style building in the hospital complex—was demolished, and the 1932 wing became an administrative, educational, and residence center for the Sisters of Mercy.

Mercy opened the first combined intensive care/coronary care unit in Denver in 1966, building a special wing for that program in 1975 —where open-heart surgery was first performed a year later. During the 1970s, the physical medicine program was expanded to encompass speech and occupational therapy, and social service. A year later, Mercy became a pioneer center for microsurgical procedures of the eye and ear and, in 1974, made local medical history with its first cochlear implant. During the 1970s, Mercy also set the pace for regional hospitals by opening a drug and alcohol abuse treatment center.

Mercy Medical Plaza opened in 1976, providing parking and office space for physicians. To serve Denver's far-flung suburbs, Mercy also started a twenty-four-hour emergency center, clinic, and pharmacy at Highlands Ranch during the 1980s, as well as a similar facility for northeast metro suburbs—the Green Valley Family Health Center. Mercy Hospital had come a long way since that cold day in February 1882 when Sister Mary Baptist and a little band of nuns arrived in Colorado in response to Bishop Machebeuf's plea to tend the sick.

Catholic schools

Education, as well as health care, remained a major thrust of Colorado Catholicism under Archbishop Stafford. During a 1988 conference at the Loretto Heights Campus of Regis College, Stafford unveiled initiatives to preserve Catholic schools. These included establishment of an endowment fund, which would provide tuition assistance for poorer families and boost teacher salaries by 25 percent within three years in the thirty-eight Catholic schools of the archdiocese. To aid in guiding schools, the archbishop announced that St. Thomas Seminary would provide education courses and have seminarians do field work in parish schools.

The archbishop told the 300 principals, teachers, administrators, and parents at the Loretto Heights conference that he did not foresee establishing any new schools "in the immediate future" but would "focus on stabilizing the schools we have at present." Stafford added that he once felt Catholic schools should be phased out and replaced by religious education programs. He had changed his mind after seeing Catholic schools out-perform public schools, especially in educating minority and disadvantaged youth. He also noted that in Northern Colorado, parochial school enrollment actually increased for the first time in years during the fall of 1988, when enrollment was 4 percent higher than in 1987. Yet, the archbishop noted, only 48 percent of Catholic children were receiving religious education, and only 15 percent attended Catholic schools. Catholics, Stafford concluded, must find a way to keep their schools open to preserve "our Judeo-Christian value system" and help young people tempted to seek "escape through drugs, cults, various kinds of self-indulgence or self-abuse, fantasy, materialism or the ultimate escape of suicide."

Although only about 13,000 students were enrolled in Catholic schools—half the number enrolled in the peak year of 1965—the Archdiocesan Education Office could point to some bright spots in 1988. Denver's Schools in Urban Neighborhoods was working, according to Sister Jean Anne Panisko, SCL, principal of Annunciation School. Sister LaVonne Guidonni, SCL, had worked with seven core city schools to form SUN in 1987; enrollment had climbed from 1,167 to 1,243 a year later. By pooling resources, these schools have strived to make sure that no child is turned away for lack of tuition.

SUN schools received a boost from the Paroke Alumni Association formed in 1986. The Parokes, graduates of Denver's Catholic high schools and members of the old Parochial Sports League, contributed to a half-million-dollar endowment in conjunction with the Elementary Education Fund, which, by 1987, was awarding $35,000 in tuition grants for 162 children. And the Parokes were having fun fund raising with an annual Old Parokes Round Robin Basketball Tournament launched in 1986. This was followed by a match between the All Star Old Parokes and a team of Denver Broncos stars, including Randy Gradishar, Haven Moses, Dennis Smith, Norris Weese, and Louis Wright. While reviving the glory days of parochial league basketball games, the Parokes raised money for SUN schools with the help of paying spectators. SUN schools are now up to snuff with the other thirty-six elementary schools and two high schools in the archdiocese, according to Sister Patricia Beckman, who was appointed superintendant of Catholic Schools in 1989.

Although Regis College prospered during the 1980s, Loretto Heights College succumbed to the many problems besetting Catholic education. After World War II, the college had flourished, adding 160 acres and seven new buildings. Enrollments peaked during the 1960s, reaching some 900 students. The fine craftsmanship and loving care given the building are reflected in the original, unmarred tile floors. Next to the main building, the Chapel of Our Lady of Loretto, completed in 1911, glories in twenty-three stained glass windows from the renowned Meyer studios in Munich, Germany. On December 12, 1968, the Sisters of Loretto sold the college for $1 to the board of trustees, which continued to operate it as a nondenominational school until 1988, when Regis College took over to prevent closure threatened by dwindling finances and enrollment.

Priests, deacons, and laity

"One of Bishop Machebeuf's problems with the pioneer church in Colorado is also one of mine—finding enough priests," Archbishop Stafford noted in 1988, a year after he was elected to a three-year term as chair of the seminary's board of directors. Enrollment had fallen to thirteen that year, with another thirty-three seminarians of the archdiocese studying in other seminaries or assigned to parishes. The local decline in the number of new priests was part of a national trend. By 1988, the nationwide numbers had dropped to 8,921—a 5.2 percent decline from 1987 and half the number of seminary students twenty years ago. As enrollments shrank, the seminary welcomed the general public as tuition-paying students. The public was also welcomed in the three-floor, 120,000-volume library. Marguerite Travis, librarian since 1966, says, "Just show us your driver's license and you can check out a book."

Lawrence St. Peter, a St. Thomas graduate who served as vicar for priests from 1982 to 1988, reported in 1987 that "so far we don't have any priestless parishes in this archdiocese. We do have business managers, pastoral assistants, professional counselors, permanent deacons, and lay volunteers doing much of what priests used to do." Father St. Peter added:

The vocations are out there but we no longer have so many Catholic high schools to nourish them. And although we desperately need more priests, we will not drop the standards. We accept about 70 percent of the applicants each year. In 1987, only twelve of eighteen applicants made it. A beginning priest's salary is only $850. Although they receive free housing, health insurance, and retirement benefits, men don t join the seminary to get rich.

Some were very successful in business with homes and cars and great incomes, but they found the fulfillment wasn t there. Many had the seed of a vocation sown years ago, a seed which would never go away. To experience God in himself and in other people, the priest needs to be a man of interior silence so he can hear and act on the word of God. . . . The whole idea of the priesthood and religious life has changed. It used to be a status symbol. Now a priest is part of the counterculture.

"There is a deep lay tradition in the church," Archbishop Stafford noted in a 1988 interview.

Relying on the laity has been done since the early centuries of the church. And we are fortunate to have burgeoning lay minstries to do what priests and sisters once did. To help train lay people for church responsibilities, I'm hoping to open a catechetical center at St. Thomas Seminary in the next year or two.

The archbishop doesn't shoot from the hip. He's very thoughtful and cautious about the church and very sensitive to people. He consults very broadly and will listen to ideas on how to try a new track. He's been very careful about how to build up a team to replace the one built by Archbishop Casey.

Marcian T. O'Meara was reappointed episcopal vicar for religious, vicar and director of the permanent diaconate, and the archbishop's liaison for Catholic health. Lorenzo Ruiz, OFM, was appointed episcopal vicar for Hispanic affairs, and Edward L. Buelt was named secretary to the archbishop, master of ceremonies to the archbishop, and ecumenical officer of the archdiocese.

Three laymen served in key secretariates: Michael J. Franken as secretary for education and superintendent of Catholic schools; Robert H. Feeney as secretary of communications and executive editor of the Denver Catholic Register; and James H. Mauck as secretary of Catholic Community Services.

Religious sisters and lay women

Upon his arrival in Denver, Archbishop Stafford had observed, according to the Denver Catholic Register of June 11, 1986, "I would like to see a greater role for women with particular gifts in this Church. I believe in absolute equality of the sexes." Two years later, he appointed Sister Rosemary Wilcox chancellor of the archdiocese. Sister Rosemary became the sixth sister to be elevated to such a high rank in the Catholic Church in the United States. Upon her appointment, Sister Rosemary, a former English teacher and principal, fetched her dictionary and read the old definition for "chancellor" with a twinkle in her eye: "A Roman Catholic priest heading the office in which diocesan business is transacted and recorded."

A native of St. Louis, Missouri, Sister Rosemary entered the Sisters of Loretto novitiate at their motherhouse in Kentucky in 1944. She professed first vows in 1947 and came to Denver to teach at St. Philomena's school, pronouncing her final vows in 1950. After earning an English degree from Loretto Heights College, she went to Marquette University to complete a masters degree in education. In 1958, she became the founding principal of Machebeuf High School.

In 1984, Archbishop Casey named her vice chancellor, the first woman to hold the post. Four years later, when Chancellor Edward M. Hoffmann was named vicar general, Archbishop Stafford selected Sister Rosemary as chancellor, with responsibility for the archdiocesan archives, records, and statistical data, for maintainance and operations of the Pastoral Center, and for coordinating the Office of Financial Management. Sitting behind a spotless desk, piled high with computer printouts and a relentlessly ringing telephone, Sister Rosemary is known for a smiling disposition that matches her wall plaque: "Peace to All Who Enter Here."

Another Sister of Loretto, Sister Loretto Anne Madden, received the CCS's Hospice of Peace 1988 Tribute for Caring. Born in Denver in 1923, Sister Loretto Anne is the daughter of Captain Edward Madden of the Denver Police Department and sister of Edward Madden, pastor of St. Bernadette parish in Lakewood. Her sister, Sister Theresa Anne Madden, works at St. Mary's Academy. Another of the Madden girls, Sister Karen Madden, SL, works with Sister Loretto Anne as an administrative assistant.

In 1974, Sister Loretto Anne, after teaching sociology at Loretto Heights and chairing the Social Concerns Committee of the Sisters Council, became executive director of the Colorado Catholic Conference, the public policy office of the archdiocese. A champion of the elderly, homeless, and poor, she was honored at the state capitol in 1988 as an advocate for better handicapped services, health care, housing, minority relations, prison reform, and welfare systems.

Since 1974, Sister Loretto Anne has been the only nun registered as a lobbyist with the state legislature. Although she has neither the desire nor the funds to wine and dine legislators, she has earned their respect because of her diligence and compassion, according to State Senator Dennis Gallagher. She has likewise endeared herself to the press corps by sharing her copious notes on the legislative agenda with reporters. Representative Wilma Webb has christened her "the conscience of the legislature."

On May 20, 1988, hundreds of friends and admirers gathered at St. Mary's Academy to honor another Sister of Loretto, Sister Mary Luke Tobin. A Denver native, she served for twelve years as national president of her order and as president of the National Leadership Conference of Women Religious. A nationally noted peace activist, Sister Mary Luke has led antiwar demonstrations and joined protestors at Denver's Rocky Mountain Arsenal and the Martin Marietta Aerospace plant. At age eighty, Sister Mary Luke Tobin still traveled widely as a speaker and demonstrator, directed the Thomas Merton Center for Creative Exchange, swam daily, and taught at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver.

Sister Helen Flaherty, SC, member of Cathedral High School's state championship debating team in 1938, made news when she was chosen as the national president of her order. Sister Susanna Kennedy, another Sister of Charity, converted the old Sacred Heart Convent at 2844 Lawrence Street into Sacred Heart House in 1987. This is a short-term shelter for families and single women, annually housing about 800 of the 7,000 homeless women wandering around Denver. Sister Susanna reported in 1987, "Women with no place to go are a serious, ongoing problem. It's not getting any better. About 35 percent of the homeless are women. They could be our mothers, our sisters—even ourselves."

Sister Bernadette Teasdale, SCL, has done as much as anyone to make the archdiocese prayerful. She was a sparkplug for the Renew program, and, in 1987, Archbishop Stafford appointed her the Liaison for Contemplative Outreach. According to Father Edward Buelt, the archbishop's secretary, "Sister Bernadette is fulfilling a role of inestimable value, teaching people how to center their prayer and achieve a contemplative life."

In Fort Collins, Victory Noll Sister Mary Alice Murphy opened her $776,000, two-story, 8,600-square foot "impossible dream" in 1989—the Mission. This shelter for the homeless at Linden Court and Linden Street is a complex for the homeless, hungry, jobless, and elderly. Sister Mary Alice is the director of the Northern Colorado Catholic Community Services, which was established in 1972 with headquarters in Fort Collins. To complete her long-time dream, she worked with the four Fort Collins parishes, six non-Catholic churches, and over 200 volunteers. As a result, the Mission opened its doors to forty overnight guests and 100 diners every day of the year, while simultaneously offering the community a Hostel of Hospitality, a Job Bank, a Hospitality Kitchen, and an Elderly Outreach Program.

Several new orders of women religious has been welcomed to the archdiocese by Archbishop Stafford. In September 1987, the Spirit of Life Monastery was established in Lakewood as an independent Benedictine monastery. The Benedictines, who first came to the archdiocese in 1984, run the Spirit of Life Holistic Spirituality Center. The tiny, five-sister monastery, says the prioress, Sister Charlotte Redpath, hopes to recruit more members and expand its programs.

Sadly, the Sisters of St. Francis of Penance and Christian Charity closed their Marycrest High School in Denver in 1988. This ending of an era inspired Sister Julia Benjamin, OSF, to undertake an ambitious oral history project, "Sharing Hearth and Home: The Daily Life of Sisters." With funding from the Colorado Endowment for the Humanities, younger sisters interviewed the order's old timers for a series of public programs, exhibits, publications, and oral history transcripts donated to the Western History Department of the Denver Public Library.

"Sharing Hearth and Home" revealed to the general public a handful of biographical sketches from among over a thousand sisters who worked and died in Colorado. A typical story is that of Sister Julia Schneider, OSF, as recorded in the 1988 interview by Sister Rosie Drey, OSF. Sister Julia, a farm girl from South Dakota, was one of the pioneers to open Marycrest in 1938.

After arriving by train in Denver, Sister Julia recalled taking a street car—"they let sisters ride free in those days"—to 50th and Federal, which

was all farm land then. . . . We wore long blue aprons that covered us completely, you know, to keep us clean. We had a white veil, stiff white veiling. . . . You had your jaws tied up with this guimpe pinned on the top of your head and tight around your face. . . . We had the big habits, our arms were folded in our sleeves. . . . We weren t allowed to dangle our arms. So I have a hard time, even now, when I go walking even to let my arms hang loose.

In the early days at Marycrest, the sisters . . . were very work oriented. It was easy to know what God wanted you to do cause all you had to do was look at the schedule. . . . The Superior just made all your decisions for you.

In the olden days . . . someone would go through the house, and rap at everyone's door and say, "Arise you who sleep, let Jesus Christ be your light." And we all answered, "Deo Gratias" and jumped out of bed . . . at 4:30 in the morning.

In the olden days, there was so much penance and so much suffering that was offered to God. . . . When I first entered [the convent] we were not allowed to run. And I thought to myself, "I ll never be able to run again." I really liked to jump around and not just walk stately, you know. But then, after . . . after years, things got where you could do a little more, you know, jump and run around and have fun. You know. Play.

I don t remember having to make very many decisions, even after Vatican II. I still wore the veil until 1972 . . . without it you felt sort of naked. We started wearing shorter habits, and when you go out in the cold, your legs get so cold. When you took your veil off, you were two colors . . . reddish, and then white up on your forehead. Then, you know, you had to allow for your hair to grow.

In 1988, ten Capuchin Poor Clare nuns in Mexico were invited by Archbishop Stafford and the Capuchin fathers of the Mid-America Province to open a monastery in North Denver at the former St. Patrick parish house. The old St. Patrick's church, a National Register and Denver landmark, was converted to a cloister for these Spanish-speaking nuns. They come from an order established by St. Francis of Assisi and St. Clare in thirteenth-century Italy. In the 1500s, this particular Franciscan order initiated a reform to return to a stricter observance of the rules of St. Clare and St. Francis. They adopted habits with long cowls, or hoods, which led children on the streets to call them Capuchins (hooded ones).

Sister María Inez Cacho, president of the Federation of Poor Clares in Mexico, escorted the ten sisters to Denver. She told the Denver Catholic Register of December 7, 1988, that "the order does not advertise for vocations but interested women between the ages of 17 and 25 may come on their own. Six years of training is required before final vows and applicants can leave at anytime during the six years if they decide a vocation is not for them." They came to Denver from their home convent of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Irapuato, 165 miles northwest of Mexico City. Dressed in traditional black and white garb, the sisters arrived to be greeted in Spanish by the archbishop. "What a fiesta," he observed, praising the sisters as a "source of great strength" who "will make the evangelization of the Hispanic people of the archdiocese one of the chief concerns of your intercessory prayer and community life."

The Capuchin abbess, Sister Josefina Vargas, smiled silently and led her sisters out to the monastery they named Our Lady of Light. There, the nuns adhere to rigid cloister, have no possessions, sleep on hard wooden planks, and pray around the clock. Visitors are admitted to the waiting room at 3325 Pecos Street, where one nun is designated to accept prayer requests.

Catholic lay women, like religious women, have made tremendous but largely undocumented contributions to the archdiocese. For instance, a small, back-page article in the Denver Catholic Register of October 7, 1986, reported that the Theresians are an organization of Catholic women dedicated to a deeper appreciation of the vocation of Christian women. Four Denver-area ladies—Josephine Taylor, Shirley Moriarity, Agnes Pino, and Laura Salvato—have been elected to the national presidency of this 2,000-member organization in recent years. Maesel Yelenick of Denver, vice-president of the board of directors of the Theresian World Ministry, traveled, in 1987, to lecture and facilitate workshops and seminars in Australia, Ghana, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Thailand, and West Africa.

The Archdiocesan Council of Catholic Women (ACCW), founded in 1926, has supported foreign missions, aided Colorado's migrant laborers, and visited Denver's needy in homes, hospitals, and nursing homes. In 1986, ACCW president Marie Jennings declared that the council was revising its priorities "to concentrate on areas of social justice." Among those new goals, she listed bringing minority women into ACCW, supporting literacy programs, finding financial support for retired religious, promoting a women's auxiliary for the Samaritan Shelter, and pursuing areas of "social justice that are not being worked on."

Hispanic Catholics

In his March 18, 1988, pastoral letter Archbishop Stafford declared that "a top priority" should be ministry to "thousands of Hispanics who have been drawn to other Christian denominations, notably the Jehovah's Witnesses and fundamentalist Christian groups." He estimated that 100,000 Northern Colorado Hispanics are not registered in any parish.

To underline his commitment to Hispanics, Stafford began taking Spanish lessons soon after his arrival in Denver. Publicly defending Spanish and other non-English-speaking cultures, the archbishop condemned the English-only language campaign of the 1980s. Inspired by passage of constitutional amendments in California and twelve other states, some Coloradans launched a referendum to make English the official language of Colorado. Calling this campaign "a lightning rod for the evils of mindless prejudice," the archbishop denounced it as "pointlessly provocative" because it could "encourage discrimination and division in our society." Despite the early, vocal opposition of the archbishop and most political leaders, the amendment passed in the 1988 fall general election.

Surveying the archdiocese

Shortly after his arrival in 1986, Archbishop Stafford began using his grey Nissan automobile to visit the 112 parishes and thirty-eight missions in the twenty-four counties of Northern Colorado. He started with the farming and ranching communities of the eastern high plains. The economic plight of many farmers attracted his attention in his first Denver pastoral letter, "The Crisis of Rural Colorado," which was issued January 14, 1987. In 1988, the archbishop commemorated St. Isidore's feast day by visiting the rural, ranching community of Eagle and its Catholic parish, St. Mary's. There, the pastor and parishioners gave the archbishop a white hat and a horse named Hammerhead for a cattle round-up. Although many of the beeves proved to be "Protestant," the archbishop managed to give about fifty head a St. Isidore's Day blessing.

Not only ranching towns on the Western Slope but also farming communities on the eastern plains welcomed the archbishop's interest. "I'm very pleased," Reverend James Morgan of St. John's parish in Yuma told the Denver Catholic Register of September 10, 1986, upon the archbishop's arrival in this little town near the Kansas border. "I know there are several large parishes in Denver he hasn t visited yet."

At St. Anthony's in Julesburg, Reverend Thomas S. Fryar said he and his congregation were "tickled to hear he's coming. It's kind of a rarity to have a bishop coming this far out. A lot of the young have never had a chance to meet or hear an archbishop." On his tours of prairie parishes, the archbishop blesses farms and ranches, crops and livestock. On his St. Isidore's Day visit to Roggen, he pointed out to the congregation at Sacred Heart that St. Isidore, the patron of horticulturalists, "did not even own his own farm but like all good farmers was a man of profound faith."

By 1988, the archbishop had visited every parish in his archdiocese. "We're building new churches in Aurora, Basalt, and Carbondale," he revealed in 1988, "but need new parishes in Aurora, north of Northglenn, and south of Fort Collins. And the Vietnamese are pushing hard for a national parish. But we have limited funds and Camp St. Malo and Samaritan House are draining them."

Archbishop Stafford began his tenure in Denver by asking the priests and the Presbyteral Council (an advisory board overseeing archdiocesan ministry) to recommend priorities for his administration. One of the most pressing needs, according to priests, was to establish orderly, uniform guidelines for pastors and parish councils. Archbishop Stafford responded by issuing new "Norms for Parish Pastoral Councils and Finance Councils" in December 1988. These norms attempted to standardize the work of parish councils, which wielded great power in some parishes and did not even exist in others. The guidelines specified that parish pastoral councils were to advise and assist the pastor, not usurp his power. And parishes without pastoral and finance councils were instructed to establish them.

"The Catholic Church," Stafford reflected in 1989,

is an institution that is working on interpersonal levels. I see its basic strength in its ability to bring about conversations between people, especially in the neighborhoods and at the parish level. The strength of the Catholic Church is also its greatest challenge—to open up areas of communication between husbands and wives, rich and poor, Hispanics and Anglos. That's no easy task in this very privatized world. To see what the church is doing for the 310,000 Catholics in northern Colorado, we must look to the parishes.