The Busy Bishop

The new bishop was something of a shock. In 1939, the Roman Catholics of Kansas City, Mo. hardly knew what to make of the intense, quiet-mannered man with reddish-brown hair and big ideas who came to preside over their 23,000-sq.-mi.

diocese. Bishop Edwin Vincent O'Hara began by poking so many irons into the fire (and looking to his flock to keep the blaze going) that when one prosperous Catholic businessman was asked whether he had been around to see the new bishop he replied: "I'd like to, but I can't. I can't afford it." Last week, in the big ballroom of Kansas City's Hotel President, 155 members of Bishop O'Hara's clergy gathered to cele brate his tenth anniversary in the diocese.

The celebration was a great deal more than a mere formality; the 90,000 Roman Catholics under Bishop O'Hara's jurisdiction have good cause to be grateful to him. In the ten years since his arrival, the diocese had built or bought 42 churches, 31 rectories, 24 colleges, high schools and grade schools, 14 convents, eight social centers, six hospitals and 25 other structures.

Important Product. At Father O'Hara's first post in Portland, Ore. it became clear that he liked to plow new ground in the Lordls vineyard. In 1913, when such causes were far from popular, he took the lead in pushing a minimum wage law through the Oregon legislature-- one of the first com pulsory wage laws in the U.S. But perhaps his dearest concern of all, as both priest and bishop, is in developing his church in rural areas.

"I am a farmer by profession," says Bishop O'Hara. He was born 68 years ago in a family of eight children on a farm near Lanesboro, Minn. After a chaplaincy in World War I, he was assigned to Eugene, Ore., where he founded the Na tional Catholic Rural Life Conference to promote Catholicism in rural U.S. Today the conference has 10,000 members and operates on a yearly budget of about $30,000. Explained Bishop O'Hara last week:

"The most important product in rural America is children--not wheat or corn or flax ... The object of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference, among other things, is to make the rural pastor conscious of the importance of his profession and of its dignity ... The Church is the biggest single factor in building up rural communities . . ."

A Church for Hickory. One of the bishop's most successful rural projects in his own diocese has been street preaching. In 36 counties of southwestern Missouri, some 70 of his priests are touring in pairs from town to town in any kind of car they can get, so long as it can be equipped with a loudspeaker. At each stopping place the travelers seek out the local priest and with him go to work on a street corner preaching, answering questions, passing out pamphlets. This project has been especially effective in reclaiming backsliders. As a result of one such mission, says Bishop O'Hara, he last year confirmed 23 members of a single family in the Ozark Mountain country.

In his decade at Kansas City Bishop O'Hara has put up 30 churches in rural counties, 25 of which had never before had a Catholic church. He is now in the process of building a church in Hickory County--the only county in the diocese which is still without one. "There is not a single Catholic family in Hickory County," said Bishop O'Hara last week. "But." he added "there will be."

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