DETROIT — It was, at that time, the wild west, an untamed expanse near the headwaters of the Mississippi River just outside what now is the bustling metropolis of the Twin Cities.

The Casey farmstead near Prescott, Wis., with its sloping hills and vast meadows surrounded by green troves of pines and babbling rivers, was a boyhood paradise for the young Barney Casey Jr.

Born Nov. 25, 1870, the sixth of 16 children to Irish immigrants Bernard James Casey and Ellen Elizabeth Murphy, the future Fr. Solanus Casey was an adventurous lad who relished finding wild berries and trapping rabbits and prairie chickens that scampered across the countryside.

The pioneering family was generally well-fed, thanks in large measure to the tireless work ethic of the devoutly Catholic Bernard Sr., who left Ireland in 1857 for a new life in the States. His future bride had left the Emerald Isle amid the great potato famine a few years before, and the two had met in Boston.

“In terms of their Catholic faith, these were very devout, Irish Catholics. Part of the reason they came from Ireland was the poverty they experienced there, but they were part of the whole building up of the Catholic Church in the United States in the 1800s with the increase in immigrants,” said Fr. Larry Webber, OFM Cap., one of the two vice-postulators of Fr. Solanus’ sainthood cause.

Two of the 16 Casey children — an older and a younger sister — succumbed to diphtheria at a young age, a disease that also afflicted the young Barney.

“One was a girl, a sister four years younger than him, and one was older than him, 12 years of age. Both of them died within a couple of days,” Bro. Richard Merling, OFM Cap., the other vice postulator, told The Michigan Catholic.


“At times he would reflect his experiences to people when he was speaking with them about the situations they had in their own families,” Bro. Merling said. “He was very compassionate and was able to feel into people’s situations of life even as a youngster.”

Prayer was hugely important for the faith-filled Caseys, who built a life for their children based on the bedrock of American liberty, under which they could practice their Catholic faith free from the religious persecution they left in Ireland.

The family’s little log cabin — a “one-story mansion about 12 x 30 feet,” as Fr. Solanus would later put it — was barely large enough for all to fit, but there was always room for the Holy Spirit.

“With 16 children, they lived six or seven miles away from church, and only half of the family could travel in a wagon, so they would take turns going to Sunday Mass,” Bro. Merling said. “Part of the family stayed home, and they would read together the prayers of the Mass.”

The future Fr. Solanus would later credit such a model of the “domestic church” — with regular rosaries, devotions and prayers led first by the parents, and later by some of the older children — with inspiring a fire for the faith he would never relinquish.

“Surely, we were fortunate children that the Good God gave us such sturdy, honest, virtuous parents. How can we ever be grateful enough? Thanks be to God!” Fr. Solanus later wrote in a letter to his sister, Sr. Margaret Theresa LeDoux, in 1930. “I often think of the wonderful designs of Divine Providence as revealed in the plans and strivings of these and similar ‘children of St. Patrick’ — so often pioneers indeed.”

Such a profound example of his parents’ faith also instilled a love of vocations in the Casey children; besides the future Fr. Solanus, two of his brothers would eventually become priests, and several sisters entered the convent.

Such a strong family faith wasn’t without foundation; in Ireland, the religious persecution that many Catholics suffered was a cause for fierce loyalty to the faith in the New World.

“One of the things I always remember about him is that he always called his grandfather — his mother’s father — a ‘martyr for the Eucharist,’” Fr. Webber said. “His mother came from northern Ireland, and her father was clubbed to death by the Protestants.”

Fr. Solanus’ maternal grandfather had been at a 40 hours’ Eucharistic devotion with other men of the town, “and the church was torched,” Fr. Webber said. “Just half of the people came out of the church, but when they came out, they were clubbed to death by the Orangemen. So Fr. Solanus always had this strong devotion to the Eucharist because of his grandfather.”

A thoughtful young man, the future friar was deeply disturbed by the violence he witnessed in the world — he viewed it a symptom of mankind’s failure to see the beauty of God’s creation in one another — and as a teenager, he’d held several jobs in which he’d seen firsthand the effects of personal sin, from the foul-mouthed lumberjacks in the logging mill to the crime and punishment of the state prison in Stillwater, Minn., where he’d worked as a night guard.

So when, as a street car operator in Superior, Wis., his train was stopped when a woman was brutally attacked with a knife in broad daylight, the experience literally forced Barney Casey to his knees. Recently rebuffed in his attempts to marry a young woman of his own, a wave of intense sorrow came over him, and he immediately felt called to offer reparation for the heinous act.

“He began to pray for the woman and her assailant, and realized while praying that he must pray for the entire world,” wrote James Patrick Derum in his 1968 biography of Fr. Solanus, "The Porter of St. Bonaventure’s." “He saw as in a white light that the only cure for mankind’s crime and wretchedness was the love that can be learned only from and through Him who died to show men what love is. He felt an intense desire to join himself to Savior in making reparation for himself and for his fellowmen.”

A few days later, the future Fr. Solanus found himself knocking on the rectory door of his parish priest, asking about the seminary.

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The Life of Fr. Solanus Casey

This article is the first of six about the life and ministry of Fr. Solanus Casey.

• Irish immigrant family instilled virtue, love of God in young Fr. Solanus


• A struggling student heeds a woman’s advice: ‘Go to Detroit’


• A ‘simple’ friar meets people where they are: at the monastery doors


• God sends a healing prophet: Fr. Solanus and the power of the Mass


• For Fr. Solanus, Jesus and the saints were a powerful combination


• Fr. Solanus’ last days: An ‘aura of holiness’ and suffering lifted to God