Caspar Henry Borgess

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Caspar Henry Borgess

Caspar Henry Borges , maiden name Caspar Heinrich Borges (Borchers) , (* 1. August 1826 in Addrup , district of Cloppenburg , † 3. May 1890 in Kalamazoo , Michigan ) was an out of the Oldenburg Münsterland originating American Roman Catholic priest. He was the second and third Bishop of Detroit, respectively .

Life

Career

Borgess was the second of eight children of Gerhard Heinrich Waschefort called Borchers (Borges) and Maria Anna geb. Dinkgreve. The father worked as a small farmer leased land before he decided to emigrate with the family in 1839. Already in 1832 the brother of his father Otto Borges emigrated, who was a priest (consecrated in 1831) and who lived with the nephew after his ordination and with the niece Maria Anna later in the same household. They settled first in Philadelphia , then in Cincinnati . There Caspar Henry attended St. Xavier's College and Mount St. Mary's Seminary . On 8 December 1848 he received from Bishop John Baptist Purcell , the ordination . After a decade of pastoral ministry, Bishop Purcell appointed him Chancellor (Administrator of Files and Archives) of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati in 1860 .

In 1869, Peter Paul Lefevere died in Detroit , who had headed the Diocese of Detroit as coadjutor bishop for the sick Friedrich Reese since 1841 . The following year, Borgess was named Lefevere's successor. On April 24, 1870 he received the episcopal ordination by the Bishop of Columbus Sylvester Horton Rosecrans . When Reese died in Hildesheim in December 1871 , Borgess became Diocesan Bishop of Detroit.

Bishop of Detroit

As a bishop, Borgess gained recognition for his personal spirituality and for the credibility of his adherence to high standards of priestly conduct. At the same time he was seen as personally reserved and without any sense of the social upheavals in his diocese. He hardly reached the Polish Catholics who immigrated in large numbers . His demands to renounce worldly pleasures of all kinds, even for lay people, and his tendency to overemphasize episcopal authority and discipline brought him into numerous conflicts and damaged the trust placed in him.

In the 16 years of his episcopate Borges called almost every two-year cycle diocesan synods one. Topics were u. a. the establishment of a Catholic school system and the financing of charitable institutions, plus liturgical and administrative regulations. Borgess achieved the organizational consolidation of his diocese, the establishment of numerous new parishes and educational institutions. He received relief from the establishment of the Grand Rapids diocese in 1882, which greatly reduced the size of his diocese.

In 1879, after a conflict about a parish priest, which was humiliating for him, Borgess asked the Holy See for the first time for his release, but this was not granted, also because a majority of the diocesan priests supported the Pope for the retention of their bishop. After further disputes that made him very stressful, he resigned from his office in 1887. At the same time he was appointed titular bishop of Phacusa . He died in 1890 after suffering a stroke while visiting Kalamazoo.

literature

  • Leslie Woodcock Tentler: Seasons of Grace. A History of the Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit . Detroit 1990; especially part 1: Three Bishops ( partial digitization without page numbers)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 1826 according to GND, Leslie Woodcock Tentler (see lit.), Archdiocese of Detroit and Emigrants Oldenburg ; on the other hand Catholic Hierarchy and Catholic Encyclopedia : 1824.
  2. ↑ when counting long-time coadjutor bishop Peter Paul Lefevere
  3. ↑ Emigrants from Oldenburg
  4. ^ Otto , Maria Anna (entsanderer-oldenburg.de)
  5. ↑ so Tentler; different from catholic-hierarchy.org
  6. ↑ John Baptist Purcell, the Archbishop of Cincinnati, was at the First Vatican Council in Rome at the time.
  7. ↑ all assessments according to Tentler
  8. ^ The New York Times , May 1, 1890
personal data
SURNAME Borgess, Caspar Henry
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Borges, Caspar Heinrich; Borchers, Caspar Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-born Catholic bishop in the USA
DATE OF BIRTH August 1, 1826
PLACE OF BIRTH Addrup
DATE OF DEATH May 3, 1890
Place of death Kalamazoo