SHEEHAN, LUKE FRANCIS

Capuchin missionary, pioneer of the Church in Oregon; b. Feb. 28, 1873, Cork City, Ireland; d. Feb. 11, 1937, Hood River, Oregon. After his ordination in 1896 and teaching philosophy for six years in the Capuchin house of formation in Kilkenny, Sheehan volunteered to work in Aden, the British colony on the Southwestern coast of the Arabian peninsula. Illness forced him to return to Ireland. In 1910 he went to Hermiston, Oregon after Bishop Joseph O'Reilly of the Diocese of Baker City asked the Irish Capuchins to come to the United States. Leaving a confrere to care for Hermiston, Sheehan moved to reconnoiter Crook County, Oregon, and the barely developed town of Bend where there were only one hundred and fifty Catholics scattered over an area of eight thousand square miles. When the railroad came to Bend in 1916, Sheehan began building a new church and, shortly thereafter, a clinic that became what is today St. Charles Medical Center. Twenty years later he succeeded in opening a parish school. In addition to suffering innumerable physical hardships, he endured the bigotry of many of Crook County's residents, especially members of the Ku Klux Klan. In 1935 he courageously challenged the Klan at one of their meetings and was instrumental in their decline in Oregon. Sheehan died twenty-seven years after his arrival in Bend. His Capuchin confreres praised him as "the greatest missionary of them all whose life bore great fruit, for he was a man of single purpose."

Bibliography: c. donovan, "The Irish Capuchins in the United States of America," Capuchin Annual (1973), 249–289.

[r. j. armstrong]