USA > Maine > The Catholic church in Maine > Part 16
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Durnin was born the year Father Ffrench started the construction of the first Catholic church in Eastport. Very probably he was baptized by Ffrench. In the summer of 1844, when he was approaching his sixteenth birthday, young Durnin must have been envied by his companions and the talk of the Catholic community of Eastport. He was going to college, to Bishop Fenwick's college in Worcester, and very few Catholic youths in Maine had that privilege in the pre-Civil War decades. He registered at the college on September 27 and deposited ninety dollars for his education, - a sum of money that would indicate his father, James Durnin, was not in strait- ened circumstances. Young James was among the first students at Holy Cross, entering a year after the college opened; he was among the first ten members of the college's Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary. He was not graduated, however, until 1851, when he received the bachelor of arts degree at the third commencement. Undoubtedly his college education was inter- rupted and probably more than once.
Nine years after graduation Durnin was a curate at the cathedral in Dubuque, Iowa. Since his name appears for the
1 He registered at Holy Cross as James Durnin, but in the Alumni Directory he is listed as James A. Durnin. His name appears for the first time in the 1860 edition of the Catholic Directory and it is given as James A. Durnin, but it is James T. Durnin in the obituary notice in 1874 edition of the Directory. The historians of the parishes he served refer to him as Jas. Dernen, James A. Durnen, James T. Durnin. It is the business of college registrars and writers of obituary notices to identify persons correctly and so they have been accepted as the best guide.
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first time in the 1860 edition of the Catholic Directory, he prob- ably was ordained the previous year. Why was he in the Dubuque diocese and not the Boston or the Portland diocese? There are no answers to these and other questions in the avail- able sources, and the likely conjecture is he went west after graduation and was accepted by a bishop who knew him. In any case, a year or so after his ordination he sought a transfer to his home state and was accepted by Bishop Bacon.
He spent the remaining thirteen years of his life in the diocese of Portland, as pastor in Lewiston, Great Falls (New Hampshire), Ellsworth, Eastport, and finally Calais where he remained for three years. One of his first projects in the parish of the Immaculate Conception was a sodality for the Catholics of Calais. He was somewhat of an organizer, for he also founded a temperance and a debating society in this town. The parish historian gives the impression that membership in these two societies was associated, as if Durnin was persuaded that debating promoted temperance. His health had long been poor and he died April 15, 1873, "after a prolonged and painful illness, which he bore with truly Christian patience and resig- nation." He was buried in the parish cemetery, not many miles from Eastport, his birthplace.
Twelve more priests were added to the roster during the four years of the Civil War, and definite signs of advance can be found in the fact that six of them were young men ordained for the diocese. Two of these newly ordained priests made important contributions to the diocese meriting more recogni- tion than can be given in these pages: Daniel W. Murphy, a young Irishman ordained by Bishop Bacon August 26, 1861 at the age of twenty-three, who became the builder of Catholic schools, and John E. Barry, the first Maine native ordained by Bishop Bacon for the diocese and later the Vicar-General of the diocese.
Daniel W. Murphy completed his classical studies at All Hallows College, Dublin, before coming to the United States and had been accepted by Bishop Bacon before he completed
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his theological studies at Montreal's Grand Seminary. Follow- ing his custom of ordaining only one at each ceremony, the bishop raised Murphy to the priesthood on August 20, 1861. After a period of briefing under the eyes of the bishop Murphy was given his first pastorate in Houlton. He was a young man, only twenty-three, healthy, athletic, zealous. He remained at his first post no more than three years, but that was time enough to build a school there. He then went to Bath in 1864, and although only a year in this town he added a school and a new rectory to the parish buildings. Bishop Bacon now knew he had a man with a talent for raising money and buildings and, after this second move, Murphy must have realized that he was destined to move periodically.
Portsmouth was his next stop. One chronicler has remarked that Portsmouth was too confining for a young and active pastor like Father Murphy and that he was soon given a larger field, - Keene, New Hampshire. Actually, he remained there for four years and by 1868 he had completed his school. His plans for an academy as well as a parish school staffed by the Sisters of Mercy went awry. Three Sisters had established their first house in Manchester in 1858 and their second house in Bangor in 1865; in both cities they had an academy and taught in the parish schools. That was what Father Murphy wanted in Ports- mouth. So certain was he that their third branch would be in this community that Bishop Bacon noted in his report for the 1869 Catholic Directory that seven Sisters of Mercy conducted an academy and the parish school there. Something, however, intervened, for no convent was founded until 1887. One reason suggests itself. Bishop Bacon transferred Father Murphy to Keene in 1869, and the change of pastors may have changed the mind of Mother Warde. The success of a pioneer house in any parish depended more on the pastor than on the bishop. Murphy did, however, succeed in another plan. He arranged with Bishop Bacon to have the ordination of his younger brother, John W. Murphy, take place in his parish church, the Immaculate Conception, in 1867, - the first ordination to the
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priesthood in New Hampshire. John Murphy, too, became one of the leaders in the diocese, the first pastor and builder of St. Mary's, the new parish (1872) in Bangor, and the builder, as Vicar-General of the diocese, of the new St. Dominic's in Port- land.
The parish in Keene did prove to be a larger field for Daniel Murphy, for he was asked to take care of more than twenty missions besides the parish of St. Bernard's. But this was an area that needed churches rather than schools. He did his best during the seven years (1869-1876) he was there. Besides re- modelling St. Bernard's and building a new rectory in Keene, he built St. Peter's in Peterborough and St. Michael's in Ashue- lot, purchased an Episcopal church and converted it into a church for the Catholics of Walpole, and started building funds for a church in Charlestown and a new church at Claremont. For the next four years he was at St. Mary's, Augusta, and here, again, churches were his concern. He built the Sacred Heart church in Hallowell, one of his missions, and enlarged St. Mary's in Augusta. At last he was given a permanent assign- ment: St. Mary's in Dover. Although he had been pastor of five widely separated parishes and a score of missions and had been a priest twenty years, he was only forty-three when he went to Dover. He still had a score of years to make St. Mary's a model parish with a school for girls under the direction of the Sisters of Mercy and another for boys staffed by the Christian Brothers. The Catholics of Maine and New Hampshire are still in debt to this man, and as a fine representative of the Irish clergy, who volunteered to work in Maine, his labors under- score the diocese's debt to Ireland.
June 29, 1864, the day John E. Barry was ordained, was long awaited by Bishop Bacon. Barry was the first born Catholic of Maine ordained by Bacon for the diocese of Portland; to the bishop he was the first vocation. Vocations were slow in de- veloping in the diocese, and Bacon hoped the ordination of young Barry would be an earnest of many more in the immedi- ate future. Again, Eastport, the gateway for the Irish into New
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England where Bishop Fenwick was so anxious to have a resident priest, has another claim to a first. John Barry was born there in 1836, attended the church built by Father Ffrench and no doubt heard in his youth stories about this colorful priest. During his early teens he met the Jesuits who had assumed charge of Eastport after a rapid succession of pastors during the 1840's. Barry attended Holy Cross, but for only one year, 1854, according to the college records; he may have been directed to the college by Father Kennedy, S. J., who was at that time stationed at Eastport. When the news of the attack on Bapst reached the college, he was one of the few students who could add some local color about the priest and the town of Ellsworth.
There is a span of ten years between his year at Holy Cross and his ordination. We only know that he made his theological studies at the Grand Seminary in Montreal. After ordination he spent a little more than a year as a curate in Portland and then was given the responsibility of reorganizing the parish in Concord. He was assigned there on September 30, 1865; he remained there until his death in 1900. He was not the first pastor in Concord. Father O'Reilly, one of the nine priests accepted by Bacon in 1855, had been the first resident priest, but he had died suddenly within six months, and the Catholics of Concord were attended by the pastor of Nashua until Barry was appointed. Five hundred Catholics awaited him when he first held services in Phoenix Hall. It seems his first task was to break some of the Catholics of the custom of attending Protestant services after Sunday Mass. One wonders how wide- spread this practice was in other towns of the diocese; this is the only instance where this custom is admitted, but the chron- iclers of the parish histories have very carefully avoided any reference to events and persons that would taint their pages. That this did happen in Concord indicates the pressure on the Catholics to conform to the prevailing religious views of the locality and shows how necessary parish life and a zealous pastor were to preserve the faith.
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The Catholics of Concord needed a church. Land was ac- quired a year after Barry's arrival, and its location was a measure of his character and of the improved status of Irish- Americans due to their contribution to the Civil War. It was a fine piece of property on Main Street. There were no objec- tions; the days when the Catholic church was located on the side street near the shanty section of the town were passing. There Father Barry built the beautiful St. John's church, later enlarged to handle the growing parish. In due time a cemetery was acquired, and the body of Father O'Reilly was transferred from Manchester to the new Concord cemetery. Later a parochial school was built and placed under the direction of the Sisters of Mercy. Father Barry became a highly respected citizen of the city and his worth was recognized by his bishop and his fellow-citizens. Bishop Healy, soon after his consecra- tion, appointed Barry a Vicar-General, sharing the work of this office with Monsignor O'Donnell until the latter died early in 1882.
When the diocese of Manchester was established, Barry continued in the same post in the new diocese. When he cele- brated the silver jubilee of his ordination the aged Archbishop Williams travelled to Concord to sing a pontifical Mass and Bishop Healy came to preach. He was elected to one of the most coveted posts in a nineteenth century New England com- munity, - the school board, and the governor appointed him a trustee of a state institution. Bishop Bacon waited a long time for the first vocation from Maine, but Father Barry was worth waiting for. He set a high mark for the others who followed him.
Bishop Bacon neglected his memorandum book on the clergy after the Civil War. One can think of many reasons for this; preoccupation with the construction of the cathedral and de- cline in health first come to mind. Whatever the reason, he has given us little information on the remaining twenty-two priests listed in the small note book. The names are the only information on the next fifteen priests.
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This lack of information is regrettable, for it would seem that one of them, John Duddy (called Edward in the bishop's mem- orandum book), was the first vocation to the diocese from the Cathedral parish. One source tells us that Duddy was Bishop Bacon's altar boy, but does not state where he served the bishop. Another, and more reliable source, tells us that Duddy was born in Portland in 1845, graduated from St. Charles' College, Maryland in 1865, and completed his philosophical and theological studies at St. Joseph's Seminary in Troy, New York which was dedicated December 1, 1864. He was ordained in Portland in 18691 (according to our better source), but we do not know if this noteworthy day both for the Catholics of Portland and the Cathedral parish was before or after the dedi- cation of the cathedral on September 8. One would expect a grand celebration of his ordination, but we must bear in mind the many woes which were distracting Bishop Bacon as he ar- ranged for the completion and dedication of the cathedral. He was, however, master of ceremonies when the cathedral was dedicated, and was sub-deacon at Bishop Bacon's funeral Mass. After serving as curate to Father Lucey in Lewiston and to Father McDonald in Manchester, New Hampshire, Father Duddy was pastor at Oldtown, Winterport, and Somersworth, New Hampshire; in the latter town he remodelled Holy Trinity, the brick church constructed under the direction of Father Lucey, and added costly stained-glass windows. He was pastor of Holy Trinity when the diocese of Manchester was established and hence became a priest of this new diocese.
For the last seven entries in the book, the bishop reverted to his practice of giving some data on the priest although this has been curtailed. There was a good reason for finding the time to add a few items about these seven men. All were young seminarians ordained during the years 1870-1873 for the diocese of Portland and they were either from the diocese or accepted as seminarians. The first and second names in this
1 John Duddy is listed for the first time in the 1870 Directory and he is the only priest with this family name during these years in the Portland diocese.
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group of seven are D. Bradley and Thomas Wallace. Did the bishop recognize the worth of these two young men when they applied for acceptance as seminarians and later as he inscribed their names in his book? No doubt he did. Denis M. Bradley would be the first bishop of the new diocese of Manchester where, as a child of eight he had arrived with his widowed mother and four brothers and sisters from County Kerry in 1854. After a public education in Manchester he went to Holy Cross, graduating in 1867. While at college we are told by a classmate that he "kept aloof from the wilder element of the college." Who these wilder students were at the college while young Bradley was a student we are not told, but we trust they were not Matthew Harkins, Thomas D. Beaven, Thomas J. Conaty, Michael J. Hoban, and John Stephan Michaud, all of whom later became bishops. And we can be quite certain Wallace, who graduated the year after Bradley, was not among the un- disciplined element. The two young men were ordained a year apart, Bradley at St. Joseph's Seminary by Bishop Bernard McQuaid June 3, 1870, and Wallace in the cathedral by Bishop Bacon August 5, 1871. Bradley as bishop in Manchester and Wallace as pastor and monsignor in Lewiston labored long and well for the Catholic faith.
When Bishop Bacon died late in 1874 there were sixty-three churches, twenty-three schools, and fifty-two priests in the diocese, eighteen of them in New Hampshire and the others in Maine. His successor, Bishop Healy, found this number far too small to care for the rapidly increasing Catholics in the diocese. But Healy, who had celebrated the first anniversary of his ordination about the time Bacon was installed as the first bishop of Portland and who knew Maine well since his student days at Holy Cross, appreciated the remarkable advance made with- in nineteen years: from five diocesan priests to fifty-two. And Bishop Healy could anticipate immediate help, if the Catholic Directory was correct. There were twenty ecclesiastical stu- dents studying for the diocesan priesthood.
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3. DOMUS DOMINI FIRMITER AEDIFICATA
No history of the diocese of Portland can with any justifi- cation omit the story of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. The importance of the story does not, of course, derive simply from the building itself; one would expect that a new diocese would, sooner or later, have a new cathedral. It was, however, an impressive cathedral; the third bishop of Portland, William O'Connell, his taste for architecture refined by his years in Rome and his travels in Europe, recognized it as a "very imposing Gothic" edifice. But that is only part of the story. The story is important because it tells us so much about David William Bacon who was determined to build a magnifi- cent church in Portland and succeeded despite an incredible series of frustrating obstacles that ranged from lack of funds to delays from a war and the destruction of fire and storms. A veritable conspiracy of the forces of man and nature attempt- ed, it would seem, to prevent him from building a monument to the Mother of God and he refused to be defeated. It was completed fourteen years after his installation and five years before his death. The cathedral, better than any book, reveals the character of the man.
The cathedral entered into the bishop's plans from the start, although other problems, such as the need for priests and schools, had priority. The land, the Senter estate and a strip of adjoining property on Cumberland Street, was acquired in the spring of 1856. This was not the best site for the cathedral, but in the 1850's good sites for Catholic churches were not on the market. Later, in 1863, another adjoining piece of land, the Covell estate, fronting on Congress, Portland's main ave- nue, and extending the property from Cumberland to Congress, was purchased. This latter acquisition gave him a fine location for a cathedral facing the city's main street with his residence in the rear and fronting on Cumberland, but he did not alter his original plans. It could well be that he acquired this prop- erty on the condition that his plans would not be altered.
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Bacon began to build immediately on the Senter property. There was need for another church in Portland, and he solved this problem by first concentrating on the cathedral's chapel which would be, until the entire building was completed, the cathedral church. The chapel, with a seating capacity of six hundred, was finished by December. He planned a gala event for December 14, the day of dedication, but a severe storm, the first of many apparent tokens of ill fortune, prevented many from attending. Portland now had two parishes, and Bishop Bacon now made the chapel his cathedral.
There was a pause now to recuperate from heavy expenses before breaking ground for the main edifice. The parting gift of thirty thousand dollars from his Brooklyn friends must have been nearly depleted by the time the chapel was fittingly fur- nished and decorated, for Bacon was extravagant in church appointments. The parishioners of St. Dominic's could not be expected to contribute to any cathedral fund until they dis- charged the debt incurred by augmenting and remodeling their own parish church which was rededicated in the summer of 1859. And a few months after this ceremony Bishop Bacon had to make his first ad limina visit to Rome, and to accept, in the name of the American hierarchy, the gift of the American College from Pius IX on December 8. He had asked the par- ishes of his diocese to contribute to the expenses of this trip, a collection that was new to the Catholics of Maine and New Hampshire. Nothing could be done, then, until he returned from Rome and that was not until May 30, 1860, after an absence of seven months. He had embarked from Boston on November 1 with his namesake, Father Patrick Bacon and his sister, as companions on the Romeward trip. The priest and his sister were going to Ireland for a vacation, but he never re- turned, as we know, to his parish in Biddeford. He died while in his homeland.
The plans were ready on the bishop's return from Rome and the ground was broken before the year had ended. He had obtained the services of the best Catholic architect in the
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country, Patrick C. Keeley. He may have been an acquaintance of the bishop since he, too, was from Brooklyn, and well known in church circles. If he had not examined a Keeley church closely before he came to Portland, the bishop had the oppor- tunity to do so when he went to Bangor a week after his installation to bless St. John's. He evidently liked the work of the architect; he liked the church and the parish, too, for he soon decided that it must return to diocesan control, a decision that resulted in the withdrawal of the Jesuits. It could well be, too, that this visit determined the size of the cathedral, for his heart was set on building a church that was unexcelled in New England, and as of 1855 few if any surpassed St. John's in Bangor.
Before much progress could be made the Civil War inter- rupted work on the cathedral. Lesser but important projects, however, were constructed during the war years. St. Aloysius school was built on the corner of Congress and Sheridan Streets and was opened for class in September 1864. This school brought to Portland the first group of Catholic nuns, the Sisters of the Congregation of Notre Dame. Father Müller at St. Dominic's followed the bishop's example, and before the next year was over the second Catholic parish school in Portland was in operation. The launching of a Catholic school system naturally gladdened the heart of the bishop and his heart was in need of balm these days, for he was a lonely man. His mother died on March 7, 1863 at the age of seventy. The ties between the mother and this only surviving child were strong, and she had been living with him since he came to Portland. Her death meant that the bishop was the last of the Bacons in this country. She was buried from the cathedral chapel, and the bishop must have been surprised to see Father Bapst, now President of the new college the Jesuits had established in Bos- ton, at the funeral. The two had not parted good friends when the Jesuit mission in Maine had been terminated in 1859. The death was a shock to the bishop. One who had seen him within the span of a few months, before and after her death, was
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surprised at the sudden change in the man; he looked ten years older. He did not, however, have much time to brood over the loss.
Work on the cathedral got under way in real earnest in the spring of 1866 and May 31, the eleventh anniversary of his installation, was selected for the cornerstone ceremony. Prog- ress could be noted daily and the walls were a fair way upwards when work was suspended as the city prepared to celebrate the Fourth, a memorable day in Portland. A good part of the city was destroyed by fire that day, by a firecracker carelessly thrown into a boat builder's shop on Commercial Street, the busy road along the waterfront with wharves, docks, and store- houses on the ocean side, and wholesale trade houses and shops on the opposite. It was a fire that ranked with the Chicago fire of 1871 and the Boston fire of the next year: 200 acres ruined, 1500 buildings destroyed, 10,000 made homeless. Help from departments as far away as Augusta and Boston was of no avail. The cathedral property was destroyed; gone were chapel, the Sisters' convent, the bishop's residence, St. Aloysius school, and two other buildings. The walls of the cathedral were no more. Only the land remained.
The bishop was now faced with the same situation that was his on the day of his installation, minus considerable money, and many of his parishioners were homeless. He took up lodgings in St. Dominic's parochial school which had been spared, and from there directed the rebuilding. First a tem- porary chapel was thrown up in haste and work was started on the cathedral chapel and the school. He did not change the location of the cathedral, although the fire gave him the oppor- tunity to use the Covell estate and to build a cathedral fronting on Congress Street. Both buildings were nearing completion late in September when he prepared for a trip to Baltimore to attend the Second Plenary Council. He returned from Balti- more greatly encouraged. This council was a milestone in the history of the Catholic Church in the United States, for it was a magnificent expression of the unity and growth of the Church
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