Lookout Point Sonny Longtine

St. Peter Cathedral in Marquette is adorned with beautiful stained-glass windows depicting saints and scenes from the Catholic tradition.

REACHING FOR HEAVEN

Marquette’s St. Peter Cathedral is a Romanesque masterpiece

Story and photos by Sonny Longtine

New York has St. Patrick’s, London has St. Paul’s, both grand cathedrals of the first order, but the Upper Peninsula has its own impressive house of worship: St. Peter Cathedral. It may not be as large as the others and perhaps not as grand, but to Upper Peninsula Catholics, it is a cherished place of prayer that has basilica stature.

St. Peter is in the classic Romanesque Revival style with its solid, rough cut, sandstone walls and a steeply pitched roof. St. Peter is more muscular than lyrical. Deeply recessed windows, framed by rounded arches, reinforce its massiveness. Truncated buttresses dominate the exterior walls and give the cathedral a classy toughness. The facade is typical Romanesque with symmetrical, arched-topped stained glass windows, a cavernous entryway, and square towers. Romanesque churches are solid; they look like they have always been there.

The cathedral is located on the corner of Fourth Street and Baraga Avenue in Marquette; it is the fourth church to exist on that site. Bishop Frederic Baraga visited Marquette on October 1853, confirmed 30 people and selected the present site as the location for the village’s first Catholic Church.

The beginning of St. Peter was inauspicious. The first church in 1856 was a two-story frame building located just behind the present cathedral. In 1864, a larger and more substantial church replaced the old wooden structure. The new Gothic church had a stone foundation and was an imposing church for its time. Built for only $12,000, it was a bargain even then. But it was glacially cold, and worshiping in the church during the winter would have been a nightmare if the furnace was not fired up for three days prior to a church service.

Calamity, however, disturbed the peaceful church in 1879 when Bishop Vertin removed Father Kenny as church pastor. This firing angered many of the parishioners, and it was presumed they sought retribution by burning the church down. Vertin then reinstated Kenny as pastor of the church that was now a pile of blackened ruins. Vertin and Kenny, apparently with some spiritual guidance, patched up their discord and a new church era began.

The cornerstone for a new sandstone church was laid in 1881 but was not completed until 1890. During construction, the basement of the church served the parishioners. When it was completed, the church nourished the Catholic community for the next 53 years. Then catastrophe struck again in November 1935 when another fire demolished the cathedral. No foul play was evident this time. The sandstone walls were all that was left after the devastating ’35 fire.

Father Francis Scheringer and custodian, Rock Beauchamp, masked against the smoke and linked with a rope, fought the flames and smoke to the main altar to bring out the sacred vessels. Seconds after they exited the burning building, the roof caved in and the floor collapsed.

Marquette resident Mary Belmore (now deceased) was 17 years old at the time of the fire that started in

the early morning hours on Saturday night. When she went to attend mass on Sunday morning the church ruins were still smoldering from the fire. The auditorium in Bishop Baraga High School, across the street from the church, served as a temporary sanctuary for the Sunday service. Smoke drifting from the cathedral permeated the school auditorium. She lucidly recalled that day and said, “It was a very sad day, Monsignor Bucholtz was visibly upset when saying Mass. I remember the smell of the smoke, and the noise from the fire trucks.”

Parish donations and fire insurance funded over a halfmillion dollars to construct a new church from the remnants of the old. Belmore also noted that the day after the fire, “My father gave $1,000 to the parish for the building of a new church.”

Mass continued to be celebrated in the auditorium of Bishop Baraga School until the new cathedral was completed in September 1938. The new St. Peter Cathedral was imposing, and parishioners took extreme pleasure in their new house of worship.

In the winter, teasing snowflakes were spiritually greeted by new and higher spires with blue and red domes capped with gold-leafed crosses. The nave is longer and boasts a vaulted ceiling that is supported by sequoia-like Corinthian pillars that “stretch to heaven.” A marble altar and a marble bishop’s throne (cathedra) were added.

Brilliantly colored stained-glass windows were installed that depict the mysteries of the Lord’s life. Stained glass windows were more than a thing of beauty in the middle ages; they illustrated significant events in church history at a time when many parishioners were unable to read. Also, lining the walls of the St. Peter nave are intricate mosaics outlined in marble and framing the Stations of the Cross—a series of scenes that depict the crucifixion of Christ— that Catholics use for devotions.

Belmore said, “The soaring spires on the new church belfry attracted bats, and the girls at the school shrieked and covered their heads when the bats swooped down from the belfry, terrorizing the frightened lasses on their way to church. It gives credibility to the phrase, “ bats in the belfry.”

In 1947, the cathedral was completely refurbished at a cost of $25,000, and in the 1960s changes were made to accommodate the dictums of the Vatican II Council. The cathedral was again given a major face-lift and updated in the 1980s at a cost of $300,000. The beauty of St. Peter Cathedral has justly been recognized: In 1996, the Chicago Tribune praised it as “the most beautiful sandstone structure in the world.”

Bishop Frederic Baraga, the church’s first bishop, is entombed, along with other bishops in a crypt below the church’s chapel, but he now has a new resting place in a newly built chapel on the west side of the cathedral. Baraga received venerated status by the Vatican in 2012. Bestowed with this extraordinary status, Rome asserted that Baraga must have a special place of entombment.

As a result, a new chapel was built in 2014; it houses Baraga’s Italian marble sarcophagus. The chapel has two entrances, one from inside the church near the sacristy and the other in a courtyard. The courtyard entrance enables visitors to visit the chapel without disturbing mass. Two impressive stained-glass windows honor Baraga’s Slovenian roots and his incredible ministry to Native Americans. The larger of the two windows is more than 13 feet high and close to five feet wide.

The two windows were not cheap:

the total cost was $86,000. The windows gently illuminate the sarcophagus in the center of the chapel. The Bishop Baraga Association is hopeful that beatification, another major step toward sainthood, will follow the Venerable status, though it may take years. One of the most vexing problems with building the chapel was where to get the sandstone for the exterior wall. In order to preserve the building’s historic integrity, it was essential that sandstone be used. Monsignor Michael Steber said, “The sandstone was very difficult to come by. We attempted to get some ““It was a very sad day, Monsignor Bucholtz was visibly upset when saying Mass. I remember the smell of the smoke, and the noise from the fire trucks.” from the old orphanage and then from Northern Michigan University, but were turned down by both.” He continued, “Eventually the contractor (Gundlach Champion Inc.) found enough sandstone in Sault Ste. Marie to complete the exterior.” The new chapel/crypt cost $600,000. Dr. John and Mary Jane Beaumier of Duluth contributed $100,000 to the project. Parishioners are hopeful that Baraga will make the final step to sainthood, In August 2012 St. Peter was listed on the National Register of Historic Places by the National Park Service. As a result, it may qualify for federal or state assistance for historic preservation. Bishop Frederic Baraga would be pleased to know that from the church’s nascency in 1853, when he confirmed 30 Catholics, that a celebrated cathedral would spring forth in the Upper Peninsula’s wilderness. About the Author: Sonny Longtine is a Marquette resident who has published eight books on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. For more than three decades he taught American history and government in Michigan schools.

MM In 2012, Frederic Baraga, the first bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Marquette, was declared “venerable,” a significant step toward sainthood in the church. In 2014 a new chapel was added to the cathedral that houses the bishop’s sarcophagus.