The porter of St. Bonaventure
Ven. Solanus Casey died 50 years ago; his legacy lives on
Robert Delaney of The Michigan Catholic
Published July 27, 2007
Capuchin friar whose superiors didn't consider bright enough to hear confessions or do any serious preaching is on track to become the first American-born male saint.
Fr. Solanus Casey (1870-1957) was given the lowly job of porter, basically doorkeeper, at St. Bonaventure Monastery on Detroit's lower east side, but people lined up to tell him their problems and his words often changed their lives.
Many who asked that he pray for them have reported astonishing healings, and not only those who visited him when he was alive but also those who have prayed for his intercession since his death.
Supporters of his cause for sainthood hope one of those healings that has occurred since his death will be recognized as the miracle needed for him to be beatified declared blessed and worthy of public veneration.
While the course of sainthood causes can never be predicted, the occasion of the 50th anniversary of his death on July 31 has kindled hopes that that the next step might come before too long.
Thousands of people with a devotion to Fr. Solanus are expected to participate in July 23-31 novenas that will include prayers for his beatification, in Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, New York and Minnesota.
Those who participate in the novena at St. Bonaventure Monastery in Detroit can also view an extensive historical exhibit about Fr. Solanus and visit his tomb in the adjacent Solanus Casey Center, which opened in 2002.
Three instances of healing that were thought to be possibly miraculous have already been submitted to the Vatican for certification as miracles, but all three have been rejected. Another case of a purported miracle is being prepared for submission this September.
Fr. Solanus' cause for sainthood was launched in 1966, and the first big step in the process came in 1995 when he was declared venerable worthy of private veneration by Pope John Paul II.
Born Nov. 25, 1870, to Irish immigrants who settled in Wisconsin, Bernard Francis Casey grew up on the family farm, getting the spotty sort of education common for farm boys whose chores often took precedence over their schooling.
Fr. Solanus Casey, Capuchin priest and friary doorkeeper. | He did have early thoughts of a vocation, but to help support his family the still teen-aged Barney Casey got a job as a part-time prison guard in Stillwater, Minn. There, he became friends with some of the prisoners, including Jim and Cole Younger of the notorious Jesse James Gang. When Barney left to find full-time work, Cole Younger gave him a little chest he had made in prison.
Electric streetcars were just being introduced in that part of the country, and Barney spent his early 20s as a streetcar conductor or motorman in several Minnesota and Wisconsin towns. One day, in what proved to be a life-changing experience, Barney chanced to arrive at the scene of a murder in Superior, Wis., with a sailor still brandishing a knife over the body of his slain girlfriend.
As he spent the evening in prayer for the young woman and her murderer, Barney came again to feel the urge to offer his life to God.
But the difficulty of the German and Latin studies at the diocesan seminary he entered were discouraging. Advised to consider a religious order, he made a novena to the Blessed Virgin and felt himself directed to the Capuchins.
Barney arrived at St. Bonaventure Monastery in Detroit on Christmas Eve 1896, with all of his possessions packed in that chest Cole Younger had made for him. He received the brown Franciscan habit and white cord on Jan. 14, 1897, as well as a new name, Friar Francis Solanus. Since the congregation already had a Francis, he came to be called just Solanus.
But when he went on to study for the priesthood at the Capuchins' seminary in Milwaukee, German and Latin continued to be stumbling blocks. Eventually, his superiors decided he would be ordained in 1904 as a "simplex priest," without "faculties" for hearing confessions or giving doctrinal sermons. Brief homilies exhorting people to goodness called "ferverinos" were OK, but not much else.
So, in those days of many priests, Fr. Solanus served as sacristan and director of altar boys, and as porter or doorkeeper at his first assignment in Yonkers, N.Y.
But as his reputation for kindhearted encouragement and his message that people should not only pray to God for blessings, but begin thanking God in advance for the blessings that would come into their lives began to spread, people began to seek him out, to tell him their troubles and have him pray with them.
In a historically German parish, it was only natural for the Irish immigrant minority to incline toward him, but so did Italian immigrants even though most of them could only communicate with him via an interpreter.
And it was in Yonkers that remarkable cures and blessings began to be attributed to his prayers.
That was to continue in his next assignment, at a parish in New York City's Harlem district, during his years in Detroit (1924-46), and in his later ministry in Huntington, Ind.
On a typical day at St. Bonaventure Monastery on Mount Elliott Avenue near Kercheval, the office would be full of people waiting to talk to Fr. Solanus. He comforted them, advised them, and prayed with them, and this humble Capuchin priest began to become famous throughout the area.
Fr. Solanus' custom during the Great Depression of asking the monastery cook to put on extra soup for poor visitors led, in 1937, to the founding of the Capuchin Soup Kitchen. Even in those difficult times, the soup kitchen brought out the generosity of people in metro Detroit.
Today, the soup kitchen operates from two sites one on Conner Avenue and one on Meldrum across from the monastery and is one of the Detroit area's most prominent charities.
During his time in Detroit, Fr. Solanus began helping part time at the then-nearby St. Paul (Maltese) Parish, winning him many admirers among Maltese-Americans.
Although he was to leave Detroit in 1946, he returned in 1956 for medical care, and died the next year at the age of 87.
To learn more, read "Meet Solanus Casey Spiritual Counselor and Wonder Worker," by Bro. Leo Wollenweber, OFM Cap., who worked with him here in Detroit and is vice-postulator of his cause for sainthood.
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