Bernard (Barney) Francis Casey...
was born on November 25, 1870...
on a farm in the town of Oak Grove, Pierce County, Wisconsin.
The sixth of sixteen children born to Irish immigrants.
He contracted diphtheria in 1878, which permanently damaged his voice, leaving it wispy and slightly impaired. Two of his siblings died from the disease during that year.
The family later moved to Hudson, Wisconsin. In 1878, he began school at Saint Mary's, but this was cut short in October 1882, when the family relocated again, to Burkhardt in Saint Croix County.
In 1887, he left the farm for a series of jobs in his home state and in nearby Minnesota, working as a lumberjack [houthakker], a hospital orderly [verpleger], a guard [bewaker] in the Minnesota state prison, and a street car operator [trambestuurder] in Superior. His time as a prison guard saw him befriend a couple of Jesse James' cohorts.
At first, he desired married life, but the mother of a girl to whom he had proposed suddenly sent her off to a boarding school.
While working at his last job, he witnessed a brutal murder that caused him to evaluate his life and future. Driving his car in a rowdy section of Superior, he saw a drunken sailor stab a woman to death. He then acted on a call to the priesthood.
Due to his limited formal education, he enrolled at Saint Francis High School Seminary, the minor seminary of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, in January 1891, hoping to become a diocesan priest.
Classes there were taught in either German or Latin, neither of which he knew. In due course, he was advised that he should consider joining a religious order if he wanted to become a priest due to his academic limitations. There, he could be ordained as a 'simplex priest', who could preside at a Mass but would not have the faculties for public preaching or hearing confessions.
He returned home before deciding to make his application. While reflecting before a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary, he heard her spiritual voice telling him: 'Go to Detroit.'
He then applied to the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin in that city, and was received into it on January 14, 1897. He was given the religious name of Solanus, after Saint Francis Solanus - both men shared a love of the violin.
He made his vows on July 21, 1898. He struggled through his studies, but received ordination to the priesthood on July 24, 1904, from Archbishop Sebastian Messmer at Saint Francis of Assisi Church in Milwaukee. Because he had not performed well enough in his studies, he was indeed ordained as a 'simplex priest'.
He celebrated his first Mass on July 31, 1904.
In Appleton, with his family present.
[wikipedia]
