NOTE: Enjoy this excerpt from The American Daily Reader, by CatholicVote president Brian Burch and Emily Stimpson Chapman. To order the complete volume, visit the CatholicVote store today!
The Colorado assignment was meant to give Father Leo Heinrichs a rest—that is, as much rest as any priest can have in a large parish. And Heinrichs needed rest.
Heinrichs was born in Germany on August 15, 1867, and entered the Franciscan novitiate in Fulda as a teenager. When Otto von Bismarck’s campaign against the Catholic Church began, Heinrichs’ order fled to America. Five years later, in 1891, Heinrichs was ordained.
One challenging assignment after another followed: nursing victims of a smallpox epidemic; disciplining novices in his order’s seminary; and rebuilding a church, school, and monastery in the wake of a devastating fire. Finally, in September 1907, the Franciscans sent him west.
Before he left, Heinrichs hoped to return to Germany for the first time in 20 years and see his family. But St. Elizabeth’s in Denver couldn’t wait for its new pastor, so Heinrichs decided to delay the trip until the following spring. He never made it.
Five months after his arrival at St. Elizabeth’s, on Sunday, February 23, 1908, Heinrichs left the rectory shortly before 6 a.m. and unlocked the church doors. At 6:30, he began offering Mass. By 7:30, he was dead.
That morning, a Sicilian anarchist intent on assassinating any priest he could find seated himself in the third pew. During Communion, he knelt at the altar rails with the other parishioners. When Heinrichs approached, he pulled out a gun. An altar server tried to warn the priest, but it was too late. The anarchist shot Heinrichs in the heart.
Stunned but not yet unconscious, the priest began gathering up the spilled Hosts. His last act was to place them on the steps of the Marian altar. There he died moments later, at rest at last.
As for the assassin, parishioners tackled him before he could escape. He went to the gallows unrepentant, lamenting that he’d killed only one priest that day and wishing he’d killed more.
