Leo Heinrichs, O.F.M. Protomartyr of Colorado 1867-1908

Joseph Heinrichs was born on the Feast of the Assumption, August 15th, 1867, in Oestrich, Rhineland, Germany.  Young Joseph felt a call to the priesthood, but events in Germany thwarted religious studies.  Iron Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck believed the Roman Catholic Church was too independent and too powerful.  In 1871, Bismarck began his kulturkampf (sometimes translated as “culture struggle”) against the Church.  He expelled the Jesuits from Germany in 1872.  In 1873, his “May Laws” required all candidates for the priesthood to study three years at a secular German university before entering the seminary.  In 1875, Bismarck exiled all religious orders from Germany.  Bishops were expelled or imprisoned, and over a thousand German parishes went priestless.

The Franciscan friars of the Province of St. Elizabeth of Thuringia fled to New York from their mother house at Fulda, Germany.  In New York the German-speaking Capuchins welcomed the refugees to America, and sheltered them until they could establish themselves.  After several months Bishop Edgar P. Wadhams, the first Bishop of Ogdensburg, New York, invited the refugee friars to staff St. Stephen’s parish in Croghan, New York.

In 1876, more friars arrived from Fulda.  Bishop Michael Corrigan, of Newark, New Jersey, invited the Franciscans to take possession of a former Discalced Carmelite friary in Paterson, New Jersey.  In 1877, the Franciscans, who were learning English, established St. Bonaventure’s parish and friary in Paterson.

By 1886, the oppressive May Laws were fading in Germany, but the Franciscans still did not trust the Bismarck regime, so Joseph Heinrichs and other aspirants were sent to St. Bonaventure’s Friary in Paterson to begin their religious lives.  On December 4th, 1886, Joseph Heinrichs received the Franciscan habit and the name Leo.  He made his temporary profession on December 8th, 1887, and his final vows on December 8th, 1890.  Newark’s Bishop Winand Wigger ordained him to the priesthood at St. Bonaventure’s in Paterson on July 26th, 1891.

Between 1891 and 1897, Father Leo served as assistant master of novices and as an assistant at St. Bonaventure’s.  Father Leo also ministered as Spiritual Assistant to the Third Order Franciscans (now Secular Franciscans).  In 1897 he was named pastor at Holy Angels parish in Singac (Little Falls) New Jersey.  He was later pastor at St. Stephen’s, in Croghan, New York, and St. Bonaventure’s, Paterson, New Jersey.  Father Leo’s parishioners knew him as a compassionate, cheerful priest.  During a smallpox epidemic while he was pastor at Paterson, Father Leo selflessly spent many hours at a nearby “pest house” ministering to the sick and the dying.  In September, 1907, the Provincial Chapter appointed him pastor of St. Elizabeth’s parish in Denver, Colorado.

 

Bishop Joseph Machebeuf, the Vicar Apostolic of Colorado, established St. Elizabeth of Hungary parish in 1878, for German-speaking Catholics living west of the Cherry Creek.  In 1887, Bishop Machebeuf invited German-speaking Franciscans from Paterson, New Jersey, to staff the parish.  The Franciscans served at St. Elizabeth’s, Denver’s second-oldest parish, until 1983.

 

Father Leo Heinrichs, O.F.M., arrived at St. Elizabeth’s on September 23rd, 1907.  His term as pastor lasted exactly five months.  Soon the poor of Denver learned they had a friend in the pastor of St. Elizabeth’s, and every morning a line formed at the friary gate.  No one went away without food and a kind word.  Father Leo received permission to return to Germany to visit his family after an absence of over twenty one years; but he postponed his journey until after June 7th, 1908, when he planned to give First Communion to a class of seventy children. Death interrupted Father Leo’s plans.

 

A week before his death, Father Leo spoke at the Young Ladies’ Sodality meeting. He remarked, while speaking of the Ever-Immaculate Mother of God, “If I had my choice of a place where I would die, I would choose to die at the feet of the Blessed Virgin.”  Father Leo usually went to confession on Tuesdays, but he also made his confession the night before his death.  That Saturday night he asked Father Wulstan Workman to celebrate the 8 a.m. Mass, so that he (Father Leo) could attend a meeting.  That change to the 8 a.m. Mass spared Father Wulstan’s life, and led to Father Leo’s murder at the early Mass.

 

Father Leo’s murderer was a fifty year old anarchist, Giuseppe Alia, recently arrived through Ellis Island.  Alia hated priests because of some wrong, real or imagined, that he suffered in Sicily.  The would-be assassin arrived before Mass and seated himself in the third row, in front of the pulpit, alone in the congregation of three hundred souls.  The anarchist intended to shoot a priest during the homily, but at the 6 a.m. “Workingmen’s Mass,” there was only a short sermon from the altar steps, so the men would not be late for work.  Thwarted but undismayed, Alia remained at Mass, and at Communion knelt at the altar rail to receive the Host from Father Leo.  Alia received the Host, then spat it into his hand and flung it at Father Leo’s face.  The Host dropped to the floor outside the communion rail as Alia drew his handgun and aimed it at Father Leo’s heart.  An altar boy screamed “Look out, Father!” as the anarchist fired at Father Leo.  The mortally wounded priest exclaimed “My God, my God!”  The priest fell to the floor; he placed the ciborium on the step of Our Lady’s altar, and managed to place two spilled Hosts back into the ciborium before strength left him.  In a last gesture, Father Leo pointed to the spilled Hosts that he was now too weak to pick up.  Rose Fisher, an eyewitness, reported that Father Leo died smiling, at the foot of the Blessed Mother’s altar.  Father Wulstan Workman, who had switched with Father Leo for the later Mass, administered the Last Rites.  Father Wulstan told the Denver Post, “I would have been killed and he would be alive now.  There is one way to solve the affair that I can see, and that is that God chose the better man.”

 

Alia attempted to flee the Church, but E.J. Quigley, a conductor for the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad, tripped him, and Daniel Cronin, an off-duty policeman, subdued and arrested the murderer.  Alia stated that, if he had not been stopped, he would have shot more priests.  Alia was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death within a few weeks of the murder.  Shortly before the execution, a Franciscan priest from St. Elizabeth’s visited Alia in prison.  The unrepentant anarchist cursed and swore at the priest.  Alia never expressed any remorse, and, despite the pleas of the friars at St. Elizabeth’s, he was hanged at the Colorado State Penitentiary in Canon City.  Alia’s last words, reportedly, were “Death to the priests!”

 

At the post mortem examination, the coroner found that a bullet through the left ventricle of Father Leo’s heart was the cause of his death.  The anarchist had loaded his pistol with sharpened bullets, so, as the murderer thought, to inflict maximum damage.  The coroner also found that Father Leo’s upper arms and waist were wrapped in leather straps.  Each strap was studded with rows of pointed iron hooks, which pierced the skin.  Around the priest’s waist the skin was calloused and scarred, but showed no sign of infection.  Father Leo secretly practiced this extreme form of mortification, perhaps to help him master his quick temper.  None of his confreres had any idea of his self-inflicted penances. When the friars entered Father Leo’s room after his death, they found that he slept on a wooden door.  Also discovered in his room was a translation Father Leo made, from German to English, of the life of Father Victorin Delbrouck, O.F.M., a young Belgian missioner who died a martyr in China in 1898.  The short biography was published after Father Leo’s death.

 

Because of the murder, Bishop Nicholas Matz of Denver had to reconsecrate St. Elizabeth’s church.  Father Leo Heinrich’s funeral, on February 26th, 1908, was the largest seen in Denver in many years.  The Governor of Colorado and the Mayor of Denver attended, as well as thousands of ordinary folks.  The crowds followed the cortege to the railroad station, where Father Leo’s casket was placed on an eastbound train.  After a four day journey, Father Leo’s body returned to St. Bonaventure’s in Paterson, New Jersey.  Twenty thousand people viewed Father Leo’s body at the friary there.  On March 2nd, 1908, after the funeral Mass at St. Bonaventure’s, three thousand accompanied his body across the Passaic River to burial in the Franciscans’ plot at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Totowa, New Jersey.  Father Leo was buried in his Franciscan habit, sandals on his feet, and a purple and gold stole over his shoulders.

 

In 1911, the Franciscan church in East Paterson (now Elmwood Park), New Jersey, was dedicated to St. Leo the Great, but was named in memory of Father Leo Heinrichs, O.F.M.

 

In November, 1911, the Franciscans’ graves were moved to another part of Holy Sepulchre Cemetery.  When Father Leo’s grave was opened, workers found that the outer box had disintegrated; the inner casket was water soaked; the satin lining and his Franciscan habit were decaying; but his body was intact. Father Leo’s head and face were in a perfect state of preservation. In fact, his body was in much better condition that the bodies of other friars who had died after his murder.

 

Father Leo’s name appears in the American Martyrology.  He is one of one hundred twenty five persons who have died for the Faith on the soil of the United States.  Of these, seventy five are Franciscan friars (O.F.M.).  Giuseppe Alia murdered Father Leo because he was a Catholic priest.  Alia told the police, “I just went over there because I have a grudge against all priests in general... I did not care if he was a German priest or any other kind of priest.  They are all in the same class…  I shot him, and my only regret is that I could not shoot the whole bunch of priests in the church.”  Death due to hatred of the Faith (odium fidei) is a prime element of the definition of martyrdom.

The Diocese of Denver initiated the beatification process of Father Leo Heinrichs, O.F.M., in October, 1926.  The Diocese of Newark and the Archdiocese of Cologne, Germany, where Father Leo had lived for long periods, also began investigations.  The diocesan records were forwarded to the Vatican in 1933.  Unfortunately, there has been little activity with the cause since the beginning of the de non cultu (non-cult, meaning no public veneration) process in 1938.  The Cause did appear in the Index ac Status Causarum (Index and Status of Causes) in 1999.  There still are reports of favors and healings of a spiritual or physical nature being obtained through Father Leo’s intercession.

 

People still visit Father Leo’s grave at the Franciscan Friars’ plot in Holy Sepulchre Cemetery, in Totowa*, New Jersey.  His grave occupies the end of a row of friars’ graves.  Two empty gravesites separate Father Leo’s grave from the others.  A small plaque containing a photograph of Father Leo, and a prayer for his beatification, readily identify the site.  Father Leo would have objected to this “singularity.”  Petitioners, and the grateful, still leave flowers, mementos, and prayers at his grave.

 

 

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(*) Father Mychal Judge, O.F.M., the New York Fire City Department chaplain killed at the World Trade Center on September 11^th, 2001 (also a member of Holy Name Province), is buried in another section of Holy Sepulchre Cemetery, among the graves of more recently deceased Franciscan Friars.