Bishop Baraga Association

06/03/2026

The crosier that is part of Bishop Baraga's Coat of Arms was displayed as a symbol of pastoral jurisdiction by bishops.

06/01/2026

Prayer intentions for the month of June are out now! Find inspiration from our beloved Snowshoe Priest here: https://bishopbaraga.org/prayer/

05/27/2026

In the Catholic Church, displays of a cross behind the shield is restricted to bishops as a mark of their dignity. The cross of an ordinary bishop has a single horizontal bar or
traverse, also known as a Latin cross.

05/25/2026

05/24/2026

Happy Sunday, Friends of Bishop Baraga!

05/21/2026

Sault Ste. Marie, the oldest city in Michigan, as well as the third oldest in the United States, stand as one of the earliest French Catholic outposts founded by missionaries on the Great Lakes. Generations before, this ground had already become hallowed as a meeting place by Native Americans of the great northern waters.

This city became the seat of the Catholic diocese of the Upper Peninsula when Bishop Baraga made St. Mary’s Church his first cathedral. Bishop Baraga continued to live here from 1853 to 1856.

The current Holy Name of Mary Pro-Cathedral, popularly known as St. Mary’s, is the fifth structure since 1668. It is known as the “Mother Church” of the diocese. St. Mary’s was the first cathedral parish of what is now the Diocese of Marquette. It's currently the third oldest Catholic parish in the United States.

The fourth structure, built of logs in 1837, became the cathedral church when the Upper Peninsula was designated as the Diocese of Sault Ste. Marie by the Vatican in 1857. Bishop Frederic Baraga, had his church extended and remodeled and it stood until 1880 when it was raised to make room for the present church, a gothic revival-style church designed by Joseph Connolly of Toronto. The present church is a wood structure with brick veneer. It was lighted by kerosene lamps and heated by coal stoves. Construction begun in June 1881 and the first mass was offered on Christmas Day in 1891. Bishop Vertin, then Bishop of Marquette and Sault Ste. Marie, dedicated the church to the Holy Name of Mary in September 1882. St. Mary’s was renovated and restored in 1987 and rededicated by Bishop Schmitt on September 6, 1987. Extensive structural repairs including a complete esthetic facelift were made to the inside of the church in 1996.

05/20/2026

What a Bishop's Coat of Arms would have looked like before the rules were changed in 1969 could have been drastically different. In the western churches, the mitre was placed above the shield of all persons who were entitled to wear the mitre, mostly specific to Bishops. The mitre may be shown in all sorts of colors. It may be represented in either gold or jeweled, the former more common in English heraldry.

05/13/2026

The ecclesiastical hat is a distinctive part of the achievement of arms of a Roman Catholic cleric. This hat, called a galero, was originally a pilgrim's hat like a sombrero. The galero is seen in various colors and forms and was used in heraldic achievements starting with its adoption in the arms of bishops in the 16th century. The gallery is ornamented with tassels (also called houppes or fiocchi) indicating the cleric's current place in the hierarchy; the number became significant beginning in the 16th century, and the meaning was fixed, for Catholic clergy, in 1832. A bishop's galero is green with six tassels on each side; the color originated in Spain, where formerly a green hat was actually worn by bishops.