There is a story of a North Country settler who, hearing a human cry one wintry night opened his cabin door to find a mound of snow which hadn't been there before. When he brushed the top, he found a nearly-frozen Father Frederic Baraga, caught in another storm on yet another trip to save souls.

In his book, “So Cold a Sky,” Karl Bohnak recounts Baraga snowshoeing across frozen Keweenaw Bay into the teeth of a fierce blizzard, keeping his face to the wind lest he veer off the path. Settler Petit Francois found Baraga on his doorstep, covered with ice and snow, eyes swollen shut, hands too stiff to move. "Where am I?" he asked the startled Francois.

No wonder an observer marveled that "Baraga is made of iron. Nothing holds him back."

At his 1823 ordination in his native Slovenia, Frederic Baraga had humbly submitted to God's will: "Here I am, Lord." His priesthood brought him to Ohio in 1830, then Michigan, where he thanked God "for calling me to the difficult, but most consoling missionary vocation."

But it was tough. He once spent a cold night lost in deep woods, where a hunter found him soaking wet, sitting on a log. The hunter took him home, dried him out, fed him, and put him to bed. In the Ontonagon region, he often walked the seven miles between Rockland and Greenland. More than 100 years later, I tried to drive his route but had to turn back; even in a car, it was too rough.

Baraga's sister Antonia, on a trip to America, wrote that "I have never seen him so cheerful as when he sat among the Indians and sang… until he would lose his voice and not be able to speak." Rev. Simon Lampe recalled when Baraga preached on the Passion of Christ "and cried through the entire sermon." He could preach in several languages, hear confessions for ten hours, baptize dozens at a time, saving souls across his vast territory.

Among his legacies is the Eagle Harbor Holy Redeemer Church built in 1854 on land he bought – the oldest Baraga church in use. St. Mary Church in Rockland uses an organ he bought 150 years ago. He was ever busy. “Baraga always carried a few tools,” wrote future Marquette bishop Frederic Eis. “I saw him framing the 14 stations for St. Peter’s Cathedral.”

A bishop since 1853, Baraga died January 19, 1868 at age 70 and is interred in Marquette's St. Peter Cathedral crypt near five of his successors. He had walked, sailed, canoed, snowshoed, and sleighed thousands of miles, including a 70-mile canoe ride across moody Lake Superior.

How did he do? During his lifetime, his efforts helped bring salvation to an estimated 25,000 souls.

End.