Nicholas Chrysostom Matz (April 6, 1850 – August 9, 1917) was a French-born prelate of the Catholic Church. He served as Bishop of Denver from 1889 until his death in 1917.
Bishop Matz became embroiled in a raging dispute with a priest, Father Carrigan in 1907, after Carrigan began building a new church without consulting the bishop or the Diocesan Building Committee. Inspired by a tour of the Franciscan missions in California, Carrigan began erecting a new mission-style church, St. Patrick's, and rectory, two blocks away from the old Romanesque structure. Bishop Matz ordered construction stopped, but Carrigan proceeded and the new church was ultimately completed. The bishop, who had already been at odds with Carrigan about diocesan financial affairs, retaliated by reassigning him to St. Ignatius parish in Pueblo. Carrigan refused to leave and enlisted the support of his parish board of trustees and the Ancient Order of Hibernians.[4] On June 11, 1909, Bishop Matz suspended Carrigan "from the exercise of all his sacerdotal faculties in the City of Denver, on account of grave disobedience." The case went before Denver district court judge Harry Carson Riddle, who ultimately decided the Church would have to resolve the issue. Carrigan, in July 1907, issued a pamphlet titled Answer to Bishop Matz. The attack reportedly discouraged many who sympathized or would have sympathized with Carrigan, including a prominent layperson, J.K. Mullen, who called the pamphlet "horrid" and a scandal which was damaging to the Catholic community.[1]
Bishop Matz, on November 24, 1909, sent a letter to every parish to be read at Sunday Masses, announcing that the "former pastor of St. Patrick's church in the city of Denver has incurred excommunication". Carrigan read the letter in his own church and then defended himself. The priest's defiance of his bishop attracted national press coverage, leading the apostolic delegate in Washington, Archbishop Diomede Falconio, to investigate. Mullen, who discussed the situation with Carrigan, with Bishop Matz, and with Archbishop Falconio, helped to work out a compromise. Carrigan agreed to be transferred to St. Stephen's parish in Glenwood Springs. Matz's excommunication decree was subsequently rescinded.[1]
The Carrigan-Matz feud exacerbated attacks on Bishop Matz by two priests, Father Culkin and Father Cushing. Both became obsessed with a paranoid conviction that Matz was out to "get the Irish" possibly because, in order to alleviate the shortage of priests, the bishop had introduced Dominicans (1889), Redemptorists (1894), Servites (1898), Theatines (1906), and Vincentians (1907).[1]
Cushing physically confronted Matz in Rome; Culkin threatened to shoot him in Colorado. Both clerics tried to stir up the press and politicians against Matz who, at one point, was forced to request police protection. Both were steered into retreat houses where their mental problems, compounded by alcoholism, could be treated.community.[1]
Catholic Education
During his 28-year-long tenure, he made Catholic education his top priority, establishing dozens of parochial schools and demanding that Catholic parents send their children to Catholic schools under pain of mortal sin. In 1905, he founded St. Thomas Seminary, which was staffed by the Vincentians.[1]
Following a nervous breakdown and a series of strokes, Matz delegated the administration of the diocese to his vicar general and requested his own coadjutor bishop.[1] He later died at St. Anthony's Hospital, Denver, aged 67. He was survived by two sisters, Elizabeth Matz, who had been his housekeeper, and Mrs. Mary Mayers, of Indiana. During his last hours he told a visitor, "Tell the priests that I am the enemy of none."[1]
^Suggs, George G. (3 July 2008). "Religion and labor in the rocky mountain west: Bishop Nicholas C. Matz and the western federation of miners". Labor History. 11 (2): 190–206. doi:10.1080/00236567008584116.
