Photo: Mandic2406, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Frederic Baraga was born in 1797 in Carniola, in present-day Slovenia. He studied law in Vienna before becoming a priest. In 1830 he came to North America as a missionary.
The missions
Baraga worked among the Odawa and Ojibwe in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. He founded missions at La Pointe and L’Anse. He was famous for traveling long distances in winter on snowshoes, which earned him the name the Snowshoe Priest.
He wrote a grammar and a dictionary of the Ojibwe language, along with prayer books, and his dictionary is still consulted.
Bishop
In 1853 he became the first bishop of a new diocese covering the Upper Peninsula, based at Sault Ste. Marie. In 1865 he moved the seat to Marquette, where the diocese is still based.
He died in Marquette in 1868 and is buried in St. Peter Cathedral.
Sainthood cause
The Diocese of Marquette has pushed for his canonization. In 2012 Pope Benedict XVI declared him “venerable,” a step toward sainthood. A large statue of him holding snowshoes stands on a bluff near L’Anse, and Baraga County is named for him.
