Our Hundred and Twenty-Fifth

Details: 05 October 2012

Exciting - Joyful

Our Diocese of Lincoln is approaching a special time that we can prudently foresee as particularly promising, exciting, and joyful for us. We are already involved in celebrating our diocesan quasquicentennial. Now, in the course of that celebration, we shall soon be joining the Universal Church, that is, all our Catholic brothers and sisters throughout the whole world, in a greater celebration of a "Year of Faith", proclaimed by our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, to extend from October 11, 2012, to November 24, 2013. Then, in the midst of these happy celebrations we shall have the additional joy of welcoming our new Bishop, His Excellency, the Most Reverend James Conley, as the ninth Ordinary of our Diocese of Lincoln, who is scheduled to take possession of this See in the course of a Sacred Liturgy in our Cathedral of the Risen Christ on November 20th. As we experience these events, it is a most appropriate time to express a special amount of prayerful gratitude to God for these gifts and graces He has given to us.

It seems it is also a suitable time to think back to the earlier days of our diocesan existence and to reflect on some of our early Bishops, who laid the historical foundations upon which our present diocesan arrangements are so securely situated. There may still be some senior citizens among us who can remember such ecclesiastical giants in our diocesan history, as Bishop Francis J. Beckman (1924-1930), Bishop Louis B. Kucera (1930-1957), Bishop James V. Casey (1957-1967), and Bishop Glennon P. Flavin (1967-1992). Monsignor Denis L. Barry, a priest of our Diocese who died at the age of 100 on November 10, 2000, boasted before his death that he had shaken hands with all eight of the Bishops of Lincoln, beginning with Bishop Bonacum, for whom he had served Mass as an altar boy when he was 10 years old. However, lesser known might be those Bishops who preceded those later Bishops, such as Bishop Bonacum, our first Bishop, Bishop Tihen, our second Bishop, and Bishop O’Reilly, our third Bishop.

Bishop J. Henry Tihen

After only six years as the Bishop of Lincoln, Bishop Tihen was named by Pope Benedict XV, on September 18, 1917, as the Bishop of Denver. He was quite popular throughout the State, and so his leaving Nebraska caused considerable sadness for both Catholics and non-Catholics. On November 26, 1917, the priests of the Diocese of Lincoln sponsored a farewell banquet for him in the dining hall of Saint Mary’s Cathedral, and the Vicar General, Monsignor Alois J. Klein, delivered a farewell address. After this, it was announced to the priests through a letter from Archbishop Giovanni Bonzano, the Apostolic Delegate in Washington, that Monsignor KIein was appointed by the Holy See to be the Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese until a new Bishop would be named. Following the banquet, there was a farewell program presented by civic officials in the Lincoln City Auditorium, with presentations and speeches by politicians and leaders of the University community. The Mayor of Lincoln, John E. Miller, praised the Catholic Church in his talk: "It is the organized Church and the spirit of the Church in the hearts and minds of its members that today is doing more than any other agency to save society from anarchy."

Bishop Tihen went by train to Denver the next day, and was installed the day after, (November 28, 1917), as the third Bishop of Denver. He served there until his health gave way in 1931, when he retired and took up residence in Wichita at Saint Francis Hospital, where he died of pneumonia on January 14, 1940. He was buried in Denver at Mount Olivet Cemetery.

Bishop Charles O’Reilly

The shortest tenure in the Lincoln Diocese of any of its Bishops was that of five years of Bishop Charles O’Reilly, the successor of Bishop Tihen. A native of New Brunswick, Canada, whose family immigrated to Portland, Oregon, O’Reilly was at first a college professor and high school principal before entering the seminary in Montreal. He was ordained a priest of Portland by Archbishop William Gross on June 29, 1890, and distinguished himself in many diocesan duties. He was named the first and founding Bishop of Baker and consecrated on August 25, 1903. The territory of the new Diocese, all of Eastern Oregon, was huge (65,000 square miles) with only eight priests and 6000 Catholics. He exhausted himself with raising money, finding clergy, and travelling and living in primitive conditions. When appointed to Lincoln on March 15, 1918, and installed as Bishop on June 25, 1918, he was already quite sickly and weak. He was warmly welcomed by the clergy, religious, and laity, as well as by the Governor of Nebraska, the Mayor of Lincoln, and the Chancellor of the University.

He, however, sick or not, swung into immediate action with remarkable energy. Impatient and irascible, he founded six parochial schools and three parishes in five years. He especially labored to find priests for an enormous influx of Bohemian Catholics in Southern Nebraska and to provide for the German-speaking population, too. With sermons, pastoral letters, and other activities he tried mightily to foster vocations to the priesthood and religious life. His biggest problems involved religious indifference, with consequent low attendance at Sunday Masses, along with many tragic deaths of good priests and religious sisters because of the often fatal influenza epidemic that swept the world after the First World War. He also had to face down some vicious anti-clericalism, especially with the Bohemian "Sokols", among the Czech settlers, where anti- Catholic newspapers also abounded. By strenuous efforts he managed to get Father Hubert Campo, a native of Holland and a precious priest collaborator of his from Baker, to come to Lincoln, where he functioned as O’Reilly’s much needed secretary and as the Chancellor of the Diocese for all the time the Bishop lived.

Bishop O’Reilly travelled to Rome in January of 1921 in order to find some more needed priests, especially Czech speakers for the Diocese. He did meet with Vatican officials and was able to get several priests from Moravia and Bohemia (which at that time along with Slovakia formed the newly constituted country of Czechoslovakia). Monsignor Klein in those days reported to O’Reilly that there were at least 20,000 Czechs in the Diocese, but many of them were only baptized and did not practice their faith or know much about it.

Sick with heart disease and arteriosclerosis, Bishop O’Reilly fell on the ice-covered steps of his residence on December 6, 1922. He had to stay in the hospital after the fall until February 2, 1923. He returned home but almost immediately turned critical and died on February 4, 1923. His funeral Mass on February 8, 1923, was celebrated by his predecessor, Bishop Tihen who came back from Denver for that occasion. There were eight other Bishops and one hundred priests at the Mass. He was buried in Calvary Cemetery in Lincoln. Later, Bishop Casey moved his body and that of Bishop Bonacum, who was buried first at Saint Thomas Orphanage and then later at Calvary, to entombment in the Cathedral of the Risen Christ, where Bishop Casey also entombed the body of his immediate predecessor, Bishop Kucera. May they rest in peace and, we hope, they will pray for our Diocese of Lincoln in the halls of eternity.