Parish Calendar
The Beginning of a Community
It was in the year 1907 that several members of St. Stephens Church on 22nd and Clinton approached Archbishop John Ireland, head of the Archdiocese of St. Paul, regarding the establishment of a new church south of Lake Street. The area was then considered the southern outskirts of Minneapolis. The Archbishop was reluctant to do so, however, because he felt the area, which was primarily open prairie with a scattering of homes, had too few Catholic families. Finally, after many meetings and several conferences with his Minneapolis priests, Archbishop Ireland appointed Father James M. Cleary as the founder and pastor of the new parish. This was in the summer of 1909.
Father Cleary was born in
Dudham, Massachusetts
on September 8, 1849, the son of Thomas and Julia Cleary who had come to this country from
County Galway, Ireland. There were five other boys besides James in the family, and his
father, a farmer, found it difficult to make a living from the stony soil. The family
moved to Walworth County, Wisconsin where the future priest spend the greater part of his
childhood attending public schools and caring for daily tasks around the farm. At the age
of 15 years, young James was sent to St. Lawrence College near Fond du Lac and then to St.
Francis College at Milwaukee. He finished his seminary course in 1871. Priesthood was
conferred on the young man when he was but 22 years old. The ordination took place in the
chapel of St. Francis Seminary on July 9, 1872. He celebrated his first mass the following
Sunday in St. Peter's Church, East Troy, Wisconsin. The young priest's first charge took
in the missions along the Milwaukee railroad on the Prairie du Chen division. It was here
that Father Cleary's strong leadership in temperance matters first asserted itself.
Finding the abuse of liquor prevalent in that region, Father Cleary joined forces with the
local inhabitants and opened unrelenting warfare on the liquor traffic. The result was
that the locality was changed from a wide open town to a dry community. In 1873 Father
Cleary took charge of the congregation at Sinsinawa Mound, and then in 1880 was appointed
pastor of St. Mark's Church at Kenosha. For 12 years he served this parish and under his
direction the beautiful church of St. James was erected, a school built and a convent and
rectory established. These early years would be important to Father Cleary in later years
when he was called upon to start Incarnation, for not only was this a blueprint of what he
would achieve, but it was during this period that he came in close contact with the
Dominican Sisters.
Father Cleary's reputation as a temperance leader was spreading, and in 1884 he was elected president of the Catholic Total Abstinence Union of America, a position he held for 15 years. He would eventually travel throughout the entire country and many parts of Europe building up the Catholic Total Abstinence cause.