Leo Heinrichs


Father Leo Heinrichs, O.F.M. was a Roman Catholic priest of the Franciscan Order. While assigned to St. Elisabeth of Hungary Church in Denver, Colorado, Father Heinrichs was fatally shot while distributing communion. The shooter, a Sicilian Anarchist, later described his motivations as hatred of Catholicism.

Biography

Joseph Heinrichs was born on August 15, 1867, in Oestrich, near Erkelenz, Rhineland, Germany.
Under persecution from Otto von Bismarck's Kulturkampf, the Franciscan Chapter of St. Elizabeth of Hungary fled their monastery in Fulda and settled at St. Bonaventure's Friary in Paterson, New Jersey. Although still studying in minor seminary, Joseph Heinrichs emigrated to America with them. On December 4, 1886, Heinrichs entered the Franciscan novitiate at St. Bonaventure's and received the monastic name Brother Leo. He took his final vows on December 8, 1890, and was ordained to the priesthood on July 26, 1891.
Between 1891 and 1907, Father Leo served in various positions in the New York and New Jersey area including pastor at Holy Angels parish in Singac, New Jersey. In April 1902, a fire devastated much of Croghan, New York. Heinrichs was sent to rebuild the church. The new St. Stephen's was dedicated on Thanksgiving Day 1903. To pay down the debt, Heinrich solicited donations in lumber camps. In a writes to a friend under the date of January 27, 1904 letter to a friend, he describes his travels:
I was away to the woods in order to collect among the lumber men. I was away four days each time, and two nights I had to sleep with the men in the camps. The poor fellows have to work so hard early and late and have so little comfort. We drove 100 miles the first trip with the thermometer at zero. The second trip 20 miles one day at 40 degrees below. But covered from head to foot in fur you don’t seem to mind the cold. You have no idea how nice it is to travel through the woods on a clear day when the wind does not disturb the snow. The winter here is the severest that people remember. We had, more or less since the beginning of December, zero to 40 below, and the snowstorms nearly every other day make the roads almost impassable.

Heinrich was then appointed pastor of the parish of St. Bonaventure in Paterson, New Jersey. While at St. Bonaventure's, there was an outbreak of smallpox in Patterson, during which Heinrichs spent many hours tending the sick and dying.
Heinrichs was assigned to St. Elizabeth's parish in Denver, Colorado, where he arrived on September 23, 1907. As pastor, Heinrichs would distribute food to the poor every morning at the friary gate. He had received permission to return to Germany to visit his family after an absence of over twenty one years; but postponed his journey until after June 7, 1908, when he planned to give First Communion to a class of seventy children. A week before his death, he preached at the Young Ladies' Sodality meeting, remarking, “How sweet it is to die at the feet of Mary.”

Death

Heinrichs normally celebrated the 8am Sunday Mass, but on Sunday, February 23, 1908, as he had a meeting scheduled that day, he switched with Father Wulstan Workman to take the 6am "Workingmen's Mass. Among attending Mass was fifty-year-old Giuseppe Alia, an unemployed shoemaker who had recently emigrated from Avola, Sicily. Alia took Communion at altar rail then flung the Host at the priest and drew a revolver. Seeing the gun, the altar boy tried to warn the priest,but it was too late. Heinrichs attempted to retrieve the fallen host and collapsed mortally wounded on the step of the Altar of Our Lady, and died minutes later.

Aftermath

While attempting to flee, Alia was tripped by parishioner, E.J. Quigley, a conductor for the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad. Off-duty Denver police officer Daniel Crefin arrested Alia after a brief struggle on the church steps.
At the police station, Alia, who did not speak English, reportedly said, "I went over there because I have a grudge against all priests in general. They are all against the workingman. I went to the communion rail because I could get a better shot. I did not care whether he was a German priest or any other kind of priest...I left Italy three months ago and went first to Central America, and then came to Denver. I am an Anarchist, and I am proud of it. I shot him, and my only regret is that I could not shoot the whole bunch of priests in the church."
In the face of rumored threats of summary justice, Denver law enforcement moved Alia to Colorado Springs for his own protection.
Doctor Joseph Cuneo, former Italian consul in Denver, and the then consul Baron Gustavo Tosti, also a physician, testified that they thought Alia insane.
The prosecutions experts said he was not. Alia was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to be hanged.
Alia never expressed any remorse and made two escape attempts from death row. The first involved the attempted murder of a prison trustee and the second of the prison's deputy warden. In both cases, however, Alia was overpowered by corrections officers soon after leaving his cell. Denver police officers expressed a belief, however, that local anarchists had smuggled the knives Alia had used into the Colorado State Penitentiary. Following Alia's first escape attempt, the Italian Consul, Baron Gustavo Tosti, was interviewed. The Baron expressed a belief that Alia's behavior proved him to be mentally deranged. Even so, the Baron declared, "I have no intention of appealing to the Italian Government, or of trying to make this an international affair. It is purely a local case."
Despite the pleas of the Franciscan Order, Giuseppe Alia was hanged on July 15, 1908 at the Colorado State Penitentiary in Cañon City. The Washington Herald reported Alia's execution as follows,
He went to the gallows fighting, biting, and snarling. The night noises of the penitentiary had died away, when Warden Cleghorn summoned the murderer from his cell, and through an interpreter, told him that the hour of his death had arrived. Alia stood for just a moment glaring at the warden and the attendants. Then he raised his head, uttered a string of oaths, and offered his best physical resistance to accompanying the guards to the gallows. The murderer was held by the warden's assistants until he had exhausted himself; then he was supported to the trap, where the noose was adjusted and he was hanged.

Legacy

After a Solemn High Mass of Requiem in Denver, Heinrichs' body was transported by rail to St. Bonaventure's Monastery in Paterson, New Jersey. Thousands of people attended the wake and mass. He was buried in Totowa, New Jersey's Holy Sepulchre Roman Catholic Cemetery.
Alia admitted that he has been in Chicago, St. Louis and other eastern cities, but disclaimed any knowledge or connection with anarchists in any of these cities. No anarchist literature was found in his room. He gave different explanations for the attack. Michele Presutto notes that the murder occurred at a time of anti-anarchism and anti-Italian prejudice. Presutto attributes Alia's anti-clericalism to a rivalry between the Catholic and Waldensian churches in Sicily. In the wake of the widely reported murder of Heinrichs and the attempted assassination of Chicago Chief of Police George M. Shippy, there was a crack down on anarchists, with police departments in larger cities seeking to identify and restrain them. Secretary of Commerce and Labor Oscar Straus ordered immigration inspectors to work closely with local police and the United States Secret Service to find, arrest and deport immigrants with Anarchist political beliefs under the terms of the Anarchist Exclusion Act.
Father Leo's cause for beatification was opened in 1938 and his grave continues to be visited by pilgrims.
Ten years after Heinrichs' death, a Franciscan school in his former posting of Croghan was named the Father Leo Memorial School.
In his native city of Erkelenz, there is a street named for Fr. Leo Heinrichs.