Stephen Enzweiler

Cathedral Historian

This is the first of a four-part series celebrating the Quasquicentennial (125^th) anniversary of the Dedication of St. Mary’s Cathedral (Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption) on January 27, 1901.

On a hot June afternoon in 1885, a reporter from the Detroit Free Press called on the new Bishop of Covington at his episcopal residence on Eighth Street in Covington. It had been six months since the Most Rev. Camillus Paul Maes was consecrated and installed as Covington’s third prelate, and the people back home in his old diocese wanted to know how he was getting along in his new post. The reporter was fortunate to find him at home. For the past six months, the bishop had been on the road traveling extensively, visiting the parishes, missions and institutions of his new See.

“How do you like your new field of labor?” the reported asked, pulling out his notepad and settling himself into one of the comfortable chairs in the bishop’s study. Maes, with his customary cheerfulness laughingly replied, “I have to like it! When I was summoned by the Holy Father to assume the great responsibilities of my office, I obediently did so and I will strive to do my best for my people.”

But accepting the Pope’s appointment hadn’t been his first inclination. Writing to a friend just after receiving the appointment, he admitted that as a priest he “had been taught to fear the episcopal state.” But little by little, he came to reconsider his position. “I am fully conscious of my own unworthiness,” he wrote. “But I may at least lay claim to a sincere determination to work for the greater glory of God and for the salvation of souls.”

Privately, he was forced to face his own fears and conclude that it was God’s will that he accept. On Jan. 9, 1885, he put pen to paper and wrote his letter of acceptance to Cardinal Simeoni, prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith “accepting the letters which in your kindness you have sent from His Holiness appointing me to the Episcopal See of Covington.” Fourteen days later, he was on a train headed south to his new life.

Unlike many newly minted American bishops of his day, Camillus Paul had a head start when it came to how the episcopacy worked. When the reporter from the Detroit Free Press asked him of his expectations, the bishop spoke of having “one great advantage.”

“As secretary of the Diocese of Detroit under Bishop Borgess,” he explained, “I had opportunities to become thoroughly acquainted with a bishop’s duties.” Indeed, Father Maes’ proximity to the high affairs of the prelature and his charge over the business affairs of the Detroit Diocese gave him ample experience and sufficient confidence in knowing not only how bishops govern, but also in how to manage the ever-present financial challenges, a skill at which he quickly excelled.

“I soon had everything reduced to business principles,” he told the reporter. As Covington’s new shepherd, he explained that he was determined to conduct diocesan affairs just as a man would look after his business. “This is the only way to succeed.”

But as the bishop settled into his new post in the spring of 1885, it became quickly apparent he was facing some very serious problems. Two obstacles stood in the way of his plans to grow and modernize the Covington diocese. The first and most pressing matter was the crushing debt that had been hanging like a Sword of Damocles over the Diocese since the days of Bishops Carrell and Toebbe. The other problem was that the people focused their interests on their individual parishes without thinking of themselves as belonging to the Diocese at all.

If there was a symbol of all the problems he was facing, the bishop could find it represented in the edifice of St. Mary’s Cathedral. From the moment he first arrived, he was shocked to find it in such a dilapidated condition, which moved him to lament to a friend: “The old Catholic Church is falling in ruin!”

At one time, St. Mary’s Cathedral had been a handsome edifice … practical and efficient to its purpose, sacred in its interior appointments, and considered for years by the community as one of the more beautiful ornaments of the city. It served the diocese and its people as the mother church for 21 years; but by the time Bishop Maes came, many felt its appearance had fallen beneath the dignity of the diocese, prompting calls from most quarters of the city for a new cathedral.

In 1852, Rev. Thomas R. Butler, the pastor of St. Mary’s Parish Church on Fifth Street, purchased five lots on the north side of Eighth Street for the purpose of using them as the location for a new and larger parish church. His old church had served a rapidly growing English-speaking Catholic community since 1834. But by 1850, the increase in the volume of parishioners and overuse of the church had caused it to fall into what Father Butler called “a very ruined state.”

As he prepared to begin construction on his new church, word arrived that on July 29, 1853, Pope Pius IX, in his Papal Bull Apostolici ministerii, had erected a new diocese with its Episcopal See located in the City of Covington. Father Butler and a newly arrived Bishop-Elect Carrell realized there were no more funds available to purchase more property or materials to construct the required Cathedral. This resulted in the decision by both men to use the Eighth Street lots purchased by Butler for that purpose, and they would call the new edifice St. Mary’s Cathedral.

According to Rev. Paul Ryan in “History of the Diocese of Covington,” it was Bishop-Elect Carrell who drew up the plans for this new house of God, “being as conservative as possible in view of the poverty of the Diocese.” The structure was Tudor in its overall design, a brick-and-mortar edifice with tall, stained-glass windows and a bell tower that would call the people each Sunday to what the Catholic Telegraph called a “temple to the living God.”

Construction began in August 1853, and on Sunday, Oct. 2, Bishop Carrell laid the cornerstone amid great crowds and fanfare. Four to five thousand people poured onto Eighth Street that day. All of the Catholic societies from Covington, Cincinnati and Newport came with their banners, processing through the streets of the city behind bands playing religious hymns. By December the roof was on, and on June 11, 1854, Covington’s first cathedral was dedicated at last.

St. Mary’s Cathedral was 126 feet long and 66 feet wide and constructed of brick in the English Tudor style. The exterior brickwork had panels, dentils and buttresses framing rows of double stained-glass windows, each opened by pull-chains for ventilation during the hot summer months. The façade held the customary three door entrance and a single central window and included a 150-foot steeple that held a 2,000-pound bell. Inside the front doors was an open vestibule with sturdy columns supporting an ample choir loft above. One could stand inside the front doors and see the entire Cathedral interior at a glance. Three aisles trisected the nave. In the center was a wide central pew section with added rows along each outer wall. Gas lamps mounted every seventh pew provided lighting for parishioners if needed.

Cincinnati church artist Ulrich Christian Tandrop (1819-1899) decorated the walls and ceilings of the nave and painted the large canvas Stations of the Cross that hung on the walls. Beyond a wide gothic communion rail was the sanctuary, adorned with fret work, columns and niches and richly painted. Beneath the high altar was a crypt in which Bishops Carrell and Toebbe’s remains were eventually entombed.

It was a handsome structure and became the pride of the city. The Covington Journal proclaimed the new Cathedral as “creditable to the Church and an ornament to the city.” The Catholic Telegraph noted the Cathedral Church “will for a time supply every want. But it warned, “the daily increase of our population and the prosperous impetus given to our city … must soon render it necessary to again build for the accommodation of the English-speaking Catholics.”

By the time of his death in1868, Bishop Carrell began to realize the necessity of building an even larger edifice to serve the ever-growing Catholic population. Within two years, the growing population wasn’t the only problem the new Bishop Toebbe faced: in the cathedral edifice itself, irregularities began to appear. Structural issues and instability in the church steeple forced its removal. The roof leaked, staining Tandrop’s ornately painted ceiling. On the exterior, water incursion from overflowing and leaky gutters and downspouts began eating away at the brickwork.

The death of Bishop Carrell in 1868 and the tremendous diocesan debt he left to Bishop Toebbe postponed any plans of building a new Cathedral. A year later, the Covington Journal reported that “the congregation have abandoned the project of building a new house of worship, and will immediately commence the work of repairing and renovating the building now used by them.” In 1872, the newspaper criticized it as a “Cathedral building which ought to be the best, but is probably the least imposing.”

As he studied the problems set before him, Bishop Maes realized he would never be able to build a new cathedral until he first dealt with the substantial diocesan debt accrued by his predecessors. “The Diocese is poor and burdened with debt,” he wrote Cincinnati’s Archbishop William Elder. “My debts weigh heavily on my young shoulders, they being little short of $100,000 in a poor southern diocese!”

He also had to contend with the Cathedral’s debt, since parishes were responsible for maintaining their own buildings. Repairs had begun on the structure in 1875, and by 1879, the parish debt had grown to more than $35,000. From the pulpit each Sunday the bishop pleaded for contributions to both causes. He held fundraising coffees at his residence and petitioned prominent businessmen for assistance. Nothing was enough.

Then in 1886, Bishop Maes convoked a Diocesan Synod, whose purpose was primarily to address the enactments of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, but he also brought up the pressing organizational and financial issues facing the diocese and especially the problems of the cathedral. Drawing on his experience of reducing everything to business principles, the Synod set into motion a plan that led to the liquidation of the diocesan debt over a five-year period. At another meeting with cathedral parishioners, at the bishop’s encouragement, parishioners resolved to form a debt-paying Society at which over 80 members enrolled. In March, the Ladies’ Altar Society and Cathedral Church Debt Association was also organized.

It was a good first step. The bishop knew these efforts would work and pay off the debt over time. But that didn’t solve the problem of where to find the funds for a new cathedral. This issue would continue to preoccupy the pragmatic and business-oriented Maes for the rest of his episcopacy. He worried constantly over burdening his people with further debt and resolved to build a new house of worship for Christ and “the salvation of souls,” one that would last the centuries.

A new cathedral had become his dearest wish, but when would his people ever see it?