Father Leo Heinrichs

The clear gaze of a modern St. Francis “The eyes are the mirror of the soul.” (Denver Public Library, Western History Department )

MARTYR OF THE HOLY EUCHARIST

By Rev. William Jenkins Fr. Leo Heinrichs and Therese's Communion Rail

Fr. Leo Heinrichs knelt down before the Blessed bells. The swarthy drifter, recently arrived in Denver, Sacrament in his parish church to prepare for Sunday arose from his boarding house bed. He dressed quickly . At 5:30 a.m. on February 23rd, the new pastor and quietly. His final preparations before leaving the found Saint Elizabeth's Church in Denver, Colorado, room were to throw over himself his bulky winter coat still shrouded in the chill darkness of a winter's night, and to tuck into the band of his trousers the loaded illuminated by the flickering of the parishioners' votive pistol with which he had been practicing for months. candles. Slowly the faithful began to file into the Thus attired and armed, he stepped out into the crisp tranquil solemnity of Saint Elizabeth's from the still pre-dawn darkness and followed the peals of the bells to sleeping street and take their places in the pews. The Saint Elizabeth's Church. There he signed himself with church bells rang to announce the Mass that would the holy water and made his way to the third pew from soon begin with the Franciscan priest's sign of the the front on the Gospel side - near the pulpit where he cross. thought Fr. Leo would soon be preaching. Several blocks away, Giuseppe Alio suddenly None of the three hundred or so Catho- awoke to the sound of tolling church Reprinted from the Roman Catholic September 1989 Vol. XI No. 8

Stpiusvchapel.org 1 lics at the Mass seemed to pay much attention to was conscious. When Father Wulstan said: the swart little stranger in the third pew. He stood "Brother, I am giving you the last sacraments," and sat and knelt with everyone else. He even went Father Leo did not answer him. He was smiling, up with the others to receive Holy Communion. At and after the doctor arrived I left, for I heard him the rail, Alio knelt as Fr. Leo approached with the say the father was dead. servers holding candles on either side of the "I then ran to my home at 1112 Eleventh Street, Blessed Sacrament. What happened next is best for I could not bear to see him lying on the altar told by young Hines, one of the lads who dead." was serving Mass that morning, as reported by The FR. WULSTAN ANOINTS HIS DYING Denver Post on February 24, 1908: SUPERIOR "I was standing on one side of Fr. Leo and Joe Father Wulstan Workman was one of the Miller was on the other. I was closer to him and Franciscan priests assigned to serve Saint had my eyes on the people to whom he was giving Elizabeth's under Father Leo. It was Father Communion. I saw this man come from his seat, Wulstan who was originally scheduled to offer the about the third row from the pulpit, and kneel 6:00 a.m. Mass that Sunday. As it happened, Fr. down at the rail. He had his arms crossed when I Wulstan was there not to offer Mass but to anoint first saw him kneel. He took the sacred Host from the dying celebrant of that Mass, his friend and Father, I think, but whether he finished or not I superior. He describes the scene: could not say positively. I turned away for a "I was to say that Mass, but last night Brother minute, and when I looked at him again I saw a Leo came to me and said he would say the 6 gun in his hand. o'clock Mass, and I could say a later one. He told "Quickly I stepped up to Father Leo and me this just before we retired Saturday night. I did grabbing his robe I said: 'Look out, Father!' He not see him again until I found him on the floor turned his head in my direction, but did not say a dying. word. I tried to pull him away, for I almost knew "I was upstairs in the church when I heard a he was going to be shot. I was too late, though, for deadened report. I started down. I met young just as his head was turned that man rose to his Joseph and he told me what had happened. I rushed feet. He pointed the gun at the father's breast and to the brother's side and, kneeling over him, I said: pulled the trigger. Father Leo fell back to the floor, 'Brother, I am giving you the last sacraments.' He directly in front of the statue of Mary. A said nothing, but I think he was conscious. I could man by the name of Frederick Fisher caught him see his lips, which seemed to bear a smile, murmur and sort of broke his fall. something. I could not hear what he was saying, "I placed the candle on the altar and leaned but I think it was his dying prayer. over the father, saying: 'Aren't you shot, Father?' "Before I had finished giving him the last "He raised himself up a little and picked up two sacrament the police surgeon had reached his side. of the sacred Hosts, placing them in the chalice, He said the brother was dead. then lay down again. His lips moved for a few "After I had become more composed I thought minutes, I suppose in a dying prayer, and then all of what Brother Leo had told me the night before. I was silent. knew then that had he not changed his mind I "I ran upstairs and got Father Wulstan, who would have been killed and he would be alive now. came down and, bending over the dying father, There is but one way to solve the affair that I can administered the last sacrament. Father did not say see, and that is that God chose the better man." a word, but still I think he

Stpiusvchapel.org 2 (from The Denver Post, Feb. 24,1908) While the scene described by Father Wulstan was unfolding in the sanctuary, the gunman was making his way down the center aisle of the church, waving his revolver and gesticulating wildly. He finally gained the door of the church when he was seized by an off-duty policeman, Daniel Cronin, who had been assisting at Mass. After a struggle in which the assassin fell down the church steps, he was hustled into a nearby carriage and quickly sped away from the gathering crowd toward the police station. Over the next several days while in police custody, Alio gave a series of stories. At first he insisted that the shooting was an accident. He told police he had shot at the silver ciborium in self defense because the Host had burned his mouth! He then asserted he was a lone assassin who had sought to kill a priest in carrying out a personal vendetta. But in his final story he claimed he was the agent of a secret society of anarchists who had sent him on a mission to murder several Catholic priests. ANARCHIST IN EXILE: A DEATH PACT Giuseppe Alio had been born in Avolo, , in 1857. He lived a simple life as a cobbler with his wife and three children, apparently content with his Catholic religion until he was thirty-eight years old. One Easter Sunday in his home town, his life changed drastically. News reports differ as to what actually happened. Some say that Alio followed the Easter procession to his parish church, where he heard a priest condemn the socialist agitation and the riots that had recently broken out there, threatening the anarchists with hellfire. Others report that Alio had joined a protestant group and was denounced by the parish priest, so that his wife left him. Still others have it that Alio himself led an assault on the Easter procession and was marked in the territory as an anarchist, so that he had to leave Father Lso Hemvici/is as a yawig religious his homeland for exile (Denver Public Library, Western History Department)

Stpiusvchapel.org 3 abroad. In any case, Alio did in fact leave Italy and to get a look at the priests. He worshiped with the sought refuge in Buenos Aires. various congregations, knelt with those who knelt The true story seems to be that Alio had fallen and stole furtive glances at the priests. He saw no in with a sect of anarchists and socialists in Sicily. priest who remotely resembled the man he had He and his friends became so infamous as been sent to kill, and no priest with a big white scar troublemakers and agitators that they feared arrest on the side of his head." and all fled the area, regrouping in Buenos Aires. A Finally, one Sunday in late January, he heard young priest had courageously and successfully the sound of Saint Elizabeth's church bells, and the opposed their socialist propaganda in Italy, and in thought struck him that perhaps there he might find their South American exile they determined to his prey. After visiting the church on the following assassinate him and a number of other priests who several Sundays he became convinced that the had withstood them. They drew lots to see which newly arrived Franciscan pastor, Father Leo of them would be sent on the mission to murder the Heinrichs, was the man who had been awaiting priests. The lot fell to Alio. They provisioned him Alio's bullets. All this time Alio had been with what little money they had and sent him to practicing with his revolver, going into the New York, since they believed their quarry was countryside and shooting at trees the width of a now in the United States. The one young priest man. He had filed down his bullets to a sharp point. they sought most avidly had suffered a vicious He was clearly bent on murder. blow to the head during the Easter Sunday attack in Alio satisfied himself that if he could just get Avolo. They thought Alio would recognize the within ten yards of the priest he could shoot him priest from the scar of that wound. dead. On the Sunday of the murder the assassin On May 22nd, Alio arrived on Ellis Island, originally positioned himself near the pulpit, to gun New York, without passport or funds, but with the down the priest during the sermon, but there was cheap pistol he had bought in Buenos Aires. In no sermon at the 6:00 a.m. Mass. As it turned out, America, he waited for two months for a letter the miserable murderer stood across the furnishing him with the address of the priest he Communion rail from Fr. Leo, spat out the sacred sought to kill. All he received from his friends in Host which he later said burned his mouth, and at Buenos Aires were two small red flags as a token point-blank range fired into the heart of the man of his mission. He decided to leave New York and who had just given him the very sacrament of strike out on his hunt for the victim. Everywhere he Divine Love. But enough about Giuseppe Alio. It went in the Italian communities he discreetly is time to speak of the character of the priest he left inquired about newly arrived Italian immigrant dying on the floor of the sanctuary. priests, and when he heard of one he went to the FATHER LEO'S PATH TO DENVER church. He was always disappointed - they were all strangers to him. Fr. Leo was born and baptized Joseph Upon learning that a new Italian priest had Heinrichs on August 15,1867, in the village of arrived in Denver, Alio headed for that western Oestrich, Germany. At the age of nineteen, he city. According to The Denver Post report of Feb. applied to the Franciscan Province of for 25, 1908: "Alio visited all the Catholic churches in admission to the Franciscan Order. Due to the anti- the Italian quarter of Denver on one Sunday Catholic laws of Bismarck, young Joseph was sent morning in January. This little rat of a man with to Paterson, New Jersey, where the had murder in his heart and a big revolver concealed in founded a monas- his clothes visited all the churches, staying just long enough

Stpiusvchapel.org 4 tery at the parish of St. . It was to be In April of 1902 Fr. Leo was sent as pastor to the center of the future Province of the Holy Name. 's Church in Croghan, New York. It was not an enviable assignment, but one which showed the esteem his superiors had for his diligence and responsibility. A fire had destroyed the entire group of church buildings there, and Father Leo was charged with the task of rebuilding. Within just two years the church, the school, the convent and the monastery were all rebuilt and debt free. But Father Leo was not to bask in the glow of his achievement. No sooner had he com- pleted this task than he was recalled to Pater-son to serve as the vicar of the monastery and pastor of the church. Finally, in the summer of 1907, Father Leo was given what was to prove his last earthly assignment: he was appointed superior of the monastery and pastor of Saint Elizabeth's Church in Denver. A GOOD SHEPHERD Father Leo arrived in Denver on September 23, 1907. His new parish had been founded in 1878, and now had grown to comprise the parish church, a parochial school, a monastery and an orphanage - all debt free. Since the in Colorado would not consecrate a church building until it was free from debt, the new pastor assumed Father Leo (inset) and St. Elizabeth's Church in Denver command of one of the few consecrated churches Joseph arrived in Paterson in the fall of 1886. in the State. He became a novice, receiving the Franciscan habit The Franciscan soon endeared himself to all by on December 4th. It was then that he received, with his extraordinary cheerfulness and charity. He was the habit, the religious name of Leo. He a forward thinking and energetic priest, no doubt pronounced simple vows on December 8th, 1887, similar to Saint John Bosco and Fray Junipero and made his solemn profession exactly three years Serra - a fellow Franciscan. He was a great friend later. Finally, on July 26, 1891, he was ordained of children, and knew by name every child in Saint priest. For the next eleven years he remained at the Elizabeth's large parish. One of the members of monastery in Paterson, exercising positions of Father Leo's Franciscan community, Father responsibility in the community. During that time Eusebius, wrote upon his death: "In our parish he was raised to the office of vicar of Saint today there are no hearts heavier than those of the Bonaventure's and director of the Franciscan third little children to whom he was indeed a father. He order. took upon himself the special care of the children and found a favorite in each."

Stpiusvchapel.org 5 After twenty-three years of exile from his himself. Just the day before, the mother of one of German homeland, Father Leo was given the lads serving the Sunday Mass had asked Father permission to return to visit his remaining family. Leo to offer that Mass for a special intention - As much as Father Leo was anticipating that visit, Father Leo himself was that special intention. he postponed it for months. He was preparing The pastor made the change so that he might seventy children for their First Holy Communion attend a Communion Breakfast for the Knights of and would not leave until he had the happiness of his parish later on that morning. As always, he was administering the Blessed Sacrament to them all on thinking of how he might be at the service of his June 7th - a day he never lived to see. people. "He had the faculty of teaching his people," Father Leo's kindness was not limited to his wrote John M. O'Con-nell, the commentator for own parishioners, however. The poor of Denver The Rocky Mountain News. "He mingled with saw him as a great friend and knew that they would them, and his visits were always cheerful. He could never be turned away from the door of Saint sympathize with the sinner or laugh with the Elizabeth's without receiving something from the happy, and yet, when he stood upon the altar before pastor's own hand. It is ironic that Giuseppe Alio his flock, he was the soul of dignity and piety." hated priests, as he said, for taking advantage of the His all-consuming piety and devotion were poor. The Rocky Mountain News (Feb. 24,1908) manifest as he sank to the floor of Saint reports of Father Leo: "No word has been Elizabeth's. His heart pierced by a bullet, the mentioned in the newspapers of Father Leo's priest's last act - his last concern - was to retrieve charity, and no man resented publicity more. But the consecrated Hosts that had spilled from the the poor of the city, regardless of their religious ciborium as he fell. "Call Father Eusebius," he told beliefs, will mourn in him a benefactor. People the server. Not for himself did he send for the other living in the vicinity of the church tell the story of priest, but to care for the Blessed Sacrament by his the line of hungry men, women and children at the side. friary gate every morning, where they were The sharpened bullet, fired within a foot of his received by Father Leo and given food and chest, pierced the left ventricle of his heart. Oddly clothing. enough, when the chasuble was removed from his "The neighbors had become so accustomed to body while he lay still in the sanctuary, there was seeing this line of people every day that it ceased to found no blood staining the white alb. At the place be a topic of conversation. Wherever Father Leo of the wound there was only the mark of the heard of a sick person in destitute circumstances he bullet's passage. Otherwise the alb's purity went in person. How many people received succor remained unsullied. from him will never be known because he never Charity toward the poor and afflicted, with a spoke of his charitable deeds. It is only through particular love of children, have characterized the physicians who were called at his expense and the greatest - and Our Lord Himself. But one sick and poor themselves that this phase of the hidden aspect of Father Leo's life which also priest's character can be learned." emulated the saints would not become known until the hours after his death, when his body was taken FR. LEO'S SECRET MORTIFICATION to the morgue. There the coroner found, wrapped The pastor of Saint Elizabeth's customarily tightly around the priest's waist and also around offered the 8:00 a.m. Mass on Sundays. On the day both of the shooting, Father Wulstan Workman was slated to offer the 6 o'clock Mass. But late the night before, the pastor arranged for himself to offer the earlier Mass. It seems the Mass he offered that morning was for

Stpiusvchapel.org 6 arms, metal chains of steel wire, spiked at intervals missionary, Father Junipero Serra, who undertook of one-half inch, rusted with blood. So tight were severe penances to generate the graces needed for the cincture and armlets that the coroner had to file the conversion of the Indians of California. them off his body. Unknown to even his closest It was indeed fitting that this priest met his associates, he had been schooled in silent death before the statue of the Virgin, that he fell at mortification for years. the foot of her altar and there carefully set the ciborium of Hosts on the altar step. He had been born and baptized on the feast of her Assumption; he had professed his first vows and later his solemn vows on the feast of her . Just a few days before that fateful Sunday morning, the pastor delivered a sermon to the young women of the parish sodality in which he exclaimed: "How sweet it is to die at the feet of Mary!" Perhaps these thoughts recurred to him as he lay dying. A number of observers have noted that, prostrate in the sanctuary with a bullet through his heart, Father Leo prayed silently with an evident smile upon his face. FAITHFUL NUMBER THOUSANDS AT The Solemn Requiem Mass for Fr. Leo took place in Saint Elizabeth's at 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday, February 26th. Among the several hundred parishioners within the church were the governor of Colorado and the mayor of Denver. Another five thousand men and women stood outside in the frigid morning air. The dead pastor's

body lay in the church sanctuary, the foot of the casket toward the communion rail and the head of Father Leo's Franciscan Habit (notice bullet hole at left breast) the casket elevated so that all could see the face of their beloved pastor. The Denver Post of February 25th carried an article by Elizabeth Kelly describing the scene. She reported of Father Leo's In this way he sought to gain the mastery over his face that "an expression which might be called troublesome temper. Here, too, was obviously to be ecstatic rested on the purple-white features. There found the secret of his cheerfulness in the face of was no death agony written there. adversity, the secret of his perseverance and his "Yes, Father Leo had been glad to die." influence over souls. He endured constant "Verily, he was as much a martyr as the discomfort to win the graces needed by his flock. In this way, too, he resembled the great 18th century Franciscan

Stpiusvchapel.org 7 men the Church has canonized." several cures of family members, notably that of "On a pillow of snowy whiteness the tonsured one son given up by several doctors as hopelessly head lay. Simplicity itself was the coffin of black ill, as the fruit of Father Leo's intercession. wood which held the dead priest. It was of black ______wood, for metal caskets are a luxury, and luxury is a word foreign to the lexicon of a Franciscan friar." The Communion rail at which Father Leo "Before the tabernacle it reposed on an gave Giuseppe Alio improvised platform, slanting so that the features Holy Communion and over which the of the martyred priest could be seen from the pews lethal bullet flew now stands away back into the body of the church." in Saint Therese of the Child Jesus "The center gates of the chancel rail were Church in Cleveland, Ohio . thrown open and the aisle made by the two rows of ______palms was just wide enough for the casket. The roses and the candelabra stood at the head of the bier near the main altar, and above all the figure of The Catholic newspaper of Denver reported in the Crucified One looked down from a cross of April of 1919 that the Catholics of that area had ebony." received numerous favors through the martyred "There was pain written on the face of the Man priest. "These facts have not been officially of Sorrows." investigated, but they are worthy of remembering, "There was rapture traced on the countenance for we all hope to see the movement set well under of His humble who lay dead at His torn way to gain for Father Leo the highest honors that and bleeding feet." can be accorded him by the Church," The Catholic Register stated. "To have prayers to this saintly BURIAL AND REPORTED MIRACLES martyr answered is not a new experience for After the funeral Mass the body was conducted Denver people. Some remarkable instances can be in procession to the train depot. There it was placed cited." One author points out that the novena of on the 2:30 p.m. train bound for Paterson, New Communions on nine successive days in reparation Jersey. Father Eusebius accompanied the body of for the sacrilegious Communion of the anarchist his former superior back to its resting place at Saint who shot him has been found particularly Bonaventure's, where Father Leo had begun his efficacious in obtaining favors. religious life twenty-two years earlier. There his Almost four years after burial, in November of remains were laid to rest in the friar's burial plot. 1911, the body of Father Leo was exhumed for re- Immediately the veneration of Father Leo took interment in a larger section of Holy Sepulchre root among the Catholic faithful. This confidence Cemetery. The casket was thoroughly water soaked in Father Leo's holiness did not go unrewarded. In and rotted, and the fabric lining the coffin as well the years following his death many blessings were as the brown habit in which the body was buried attributed to his intercession. A rose taken by a crumbled at the touch. Yet the body itself was friend from the priest's casket was still perfectly found in an extraordinary state of preservation. The preserved and fragrant eleven years later - and this priest's head and face were in perfect condition, despite rather rough handling in the intervening showing no signs of decay. years. The family keeping the rose regards After a lapse of eighteen years, in the

Stpiusvchapel.org 8 summer of 1926, the General of the Franciscan he had murdered the wrong priest. The two Order asked that the Processus Ordinarius begin for unfortunate men even shared somewhat the same Father Leo's . In fall of that same year, fate, save that Judas hung himself in despair, while the Most Reverend John J. O'Connor, Bishop of Alio was hung by the State of Denver, despite the Newark, New Jersey, organized the Beatification plea for mercy by the Franciscan Fathers of Saint Committee. In the months afterward, the various Elizabeth's Church. steps of the process shifted from Denver, to Father Leo's death also bears some slight Paterson and to Cologne, Germany. There were similarity in circumstances to the death of his examined the circumstances of his death, the facts Savior. As Christ died on Calvary, so the young of his life, the quality of his writings and the pastor also died on Calvary - in the sanctuary suitability of the Catholic people's veneration for during the Holy Sacrifice Itself. His heart also was him. pierced, not by the head of a spear, to be sure, but During the phase of the Process in Denver in by the lead of Alio's bullet. the winter of 1927, the bishop of that diocese During a funeral Mass the previous Friday, appointed an old and venerable Jesuit priest, Father Father Leo admonished the congregation to live so Aloysius Brucker, a member of the Beatification as to be prepared for death and judgment. "Death Board. Father Brucker carefully documented some may come at any time and under peculiar forty extraordinary cures attributed to the interces- circumstances," he said. "We must live so that sion of Father Leo Heinrichs. The Vice Postulator when the end comes we will be at peace with God, of the Process summoned witnesses of several of and then to us death will have no terror, but will be these cases to place them on the official record. merely the transition to a happier life." (The Rocky Mountain News, Feb. 24,1908) A DEATH ON CALVARY The Communion rail at which Father Leo gave In some ways, the circumstances of Giuseppe Giuseppe Alio Holy Communion and over which Alio's murder of the priest resembles the treachery the lethal bullet flew now stands in Saint Therese of Judas Iscariot. Like Judas, Alio took the Blessed of the Child Jesus Church in Cleveland, Ohio. Sacrament in the process of disguising his Saint Therese's was the first church building of our murderous intent. As Alio professed to be moved traditional Mass chain which was erected entirely by concern for the poor and condemned priests for new, and which has been from the moment of its taking advantage of them, so Judas protested that inception consecrated exclusively to the traditional the precious ointment which Mary Magdallen Catholic Mass. We feel honored and blessed by poured over Christ's head should not have been Divine Providence to have this sacred "relic" of the wasted but rather been sold and the money given to martyrdom of the Servant of God, Father Leo the poor. When Christ's death was decreed, Judas Heinrichs, and we pray that he will protect and raged in desperation that he had betrayed innocent nurture our parish, and that all of our fellow true blood, so Alio shrieked in misery and rage when he Catholics will find strength in the example - and, learned God willing, aid in the intercession - of this devout pioneer priest.

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Some First Communicants at Saint Therese’s receive The scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.

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Fr. Jenkins, after offering the traditional Latin Mass on Corpus Christi. Bestows Benediction on the Faithful. F. Jenkins is the Pastor of St. Therese of the Child Jesus Church in Parma, Ohio.

After Mass Fr. Jenkins blesses religious articles at the communion rail at which Fr. Leo Heinrichs died .

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A detailed view of the intricately-carved communion rail.

Reprinted with the permission of the author. ©2007

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