Fame and Father Baker
THE QUEST TO MAKE NELSON BAKER A SAINT IS REACHING BEYOND RELIGION AND INTO THE POP CULTURE CONSCIOUSNESS IN WESTERN NEW YORK –AND AROUND THE WORLD
It’s been 73 years since he died. But in some ways, Nelson H. Baker is more popular than ever. If you visit Baker’s former parish, Our Lady of Victory in Lackawanna, you’ll mingle with some of the 20,000 tourists who tour the towering, ornate basilica each year, many seeking a glimpse of the granite crypt where Baker’s body lies entombed.
If you stop by the gravesite in Holy Cross Cemetery where Baker’s body used to be buried, you’ll notice the earth disturbed at the spot – it’s been scooped up and carried away by believers who consider the soil a sacred relic.
If you wander into a bookshop this summer, you’ll see “The Father Baker Code,” a new book by Buffalo writer John Koerner, who has investigated many of the alleged miracles worked by Baker both before and after his death in 1936.
And, if you’re tired out from all this Baker mania, and pop into a neighborhood tavern for a drink, you just might hear the local band Rick James’ Dealer cranking out their popular bar anthem, “Make Father Baker a Saint.”
Basilicas to books? Relics to rock songs? It’s true. In 2009, Father Baker is far more than a man and a legend. He’s turned into something of a pop culture phenomenon – one with a good shot at sainthood in the Catholic Church.
Here’s more proof of how hot Baker’s story has become: A new museum devoted solely to Baker and his works – costing $600,000 – will open this October in Lackawanna, in the massive marble basilica Baker built in the 1920s.
“This has been kept alive,” said Kenneth L. Woodward, a Newsweek contributing editor and one of the country’s foremost writers on religion, of Father Baker’s legacy. “His story keeps getting told. Persistence over time is really key.”
Here in Buffalo, Koerner, the author, puts it more simply: “There are a lot of dark times out there,” he said. “This is a reason for hope.”
Steps to sainthood
Father Baker has advanced part of the way down the path to Catholic sainthood. But it’s a long, winding process, and he still has miles to go.
Baker has been declared a “Servant of God” by the Catholic Church. That’s the first step toward becoming a saint.
Next, the Vatican must review Baker’s case, accept one of the miracles presented on his behalf as a true occurrence, and then declare him “Blessed.” That step, called beatification, is the final step before sainthood.
But, in order to become a full-fledged saint, there must be a second miracle accepted by the Vatican as having been worked solely by the intercession of the holy man or woman in question. That miracle must be a new one, one happening after the beatification is declared.
“Saints are made by others and for others,” said Woodward, author of the book “Making Saints,” about the multistaged canonization procedure. “It’s a very democratic process. The reason it’s democratic is it relies on a popular reputation for holiness.”
That means that the potential saint must have a whole lot of people who believe that he or she was outstandingly holy – and, beyond that, a miracle worker.
That’s where Nelson Baker is lucky. Because lots of people in Western New York think that about him.
A different life
Baker, a Buffalo native, was ordained a Catholic priest in 1876. In his young adulthood, he served in the Civil War and built a successful business career. But, after a mental and emotional struggle in the late 1860s, he decided he wanted more, and that’s when he realized his calling to the Catholic priesthood.
Those struggles in Baker’s life story actually help, rather than hurt, his cause, experts on sainthood said.
“You can’t learn from perfect people. There aren’t any,” said Woodward. “People tend to think that saints are not human and don’t have flaws. But what you want to look for is the transformation of a life.”
Baker’s story certainly illustrates that sort of transformation.
After his ordination, “Father Baker” – a slight, almost elfin figure in dark priest’s robes and, later on, the distinctive cap of a monsignor –served the next 60 years as a priest, most of it in Lackawanna at the parish that grew, under his leadership, into Our Lady of Victory.
Besides the massive basilica, for which he raised money from donors locally and across the nation, Baker became known for his charitable works. Most were centered on babies, children and women. He opened an Infant Home for foundlings, cared for unwed mothers, housed orphans and abandoned children in his children’s homes, and provided health care for those who turned to him for help.
“Before the year 1000, all this would have gotten him canonized overnight,” said Monsignor Paul J. E. Burkard, the current OLV pastor and the person charged with advancing Baker’s cause in Rome. “We consider him our local saint. In Western New York and beyond – I meet people who know him all over the world. I’ve said to the people in Rome: We know he’s a saint. We just need you to say it.”
Baker’s works live on today, in the form of the flourishing parish and Baker Victory Services, the umbrella organization which oversees the continuing work of Baker’s efforts with children and families.
Local wonders
Many miracles have been ascribed to Father Baker’s intercession, in Western New York and elsewhere.
In “The Father Baker Code,” released this spring by Koerner, a local community college instructor, explores some of them.
“I tried to go in as a journalist and historian. I wanted to present facts for the reader to judge,” said Koerner, who graduated from St. Francis High School in 1995 and earned a master’s degree in American history at Brockport State College. “I think religious books, they tend to preach at you. I don’t have an agenda. I just want to lay out the facts that are out there.”
Koerner began working on “The Father Baker Code” after he wrote a first volume, “The Mysteries of Father Baker,” which sold well and generated lots of response from readers. So many stories poured in that he felt a second volume was justified.
In the new book, Koerner recounts stories about Father Baker’s alleged wonder-working, including that of Mary Timm, a former employee in the basilica gift shop who told many people about her experience in which an apparition of Father Baker scared off a robber who was holding up the store; he also tells of healing stories involving Baker, including that of a woman healed of a serious ear condition in 1999 in the basilica.
Koerner said it was stories like that one – in which a person prayed to Baker, and believed himself or herself healed of a serious illness through Baker’s intervention – that led him to the title of his book.
“It’s a theory of mine,” he said. “The code I’ve come across with Baker is, if you combine piety with suffering, it leads to miracles. It’s almost like a rule. It’s the key to his whole life – he can empathize with suffering, because he has been through it himself.”
Popularity paradox
But when it comes to canonization, do books like Koerner’s help, or harm, the cause of the potential saint?
At OLV, Burkard said he is somewhat concerned about the various unauthorized stories about Baker that circulate, without proof or authorization, in the midst of the canonization process.
“There’s a lot of unverifiable stories about Father Baker that float around out there. You can’t know about them, whether they have any truth to them or not,” the pastor said. “It turns him into sort of a local magician – instead of a man of great holiness. It kind of muddies the waters a bit.”
But Woodward, the expert on saint-making, said that books like Koerner’s – which seem to show Baker turning into a pop culture figure of cultlike popularity – don’t detract from the candidate’s cause.
They may in fact actually help, he said, by showing how popular Baker has become – and remains.
“Saints exist through their stories,” said Woodward. “How do you know about Nelson Baker? You didn’t know him. You only know him through his stories.”
Significance growing
If Baker is canonized, he has a chance at becoming a notable first in the Catholic Church: the first American-born male saint. He also could become the first American-born diocesan priest to achieve sainthood.
There have been men from America canonized before, Koerner noted, but they were born abroad.
About 2,000 people, both men and women, are currently being considered for sainthood around the world, said Burkard at OLV.
In recognition of the growing importance of Baker’s life and legacy, Our Lady of Victory is spending $600,000 this summer to create a comprehensive new museum about Baker in Lackawanna.
The museum, which will open in October in the renovated basement level of the basilica, will feature “state-of-the-art” exhibits to tell Baker’s story, said Burkard. The parish has hired Hadley Exhibits of Buffalo to oversee the project, he said.
“It will be a chronological exhibit telling the story of his life,” Burkard said. “It will end up with a section of the museum dedicated to explaining the case for sainthood, and how that works.”
The goal, Burkard said, is to enhance the visitors’ experience for the 20,000 people that annually tour the basilica – and the hundreds of thousands more expected to pour in, if Baker is canonized.
“We’ve really kept Father Baker’s works alive,” said Burkard, “and really moved them into a new era.”
Cracking the code
Information about “The Father Baker Code” is available at the Western New York Wares Web site, www.buffalobooks.com.
Author John Koerner will speak about Father Baker at 2 p. m. Sept. 13 at SS. Peter and Paul Church in Hamburg.
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