Fourteen No Longer

Bulletin Letter, Lenten Sunday 1B

One of the tasks assigned to us by Bishop DeGrood as part of Set Ablaze and pastoral planning was to come up with a name for the new pastorate, known until now as Pastorate 14. To be clear, the pastorate is not a replacement for individual parishes. Instead, it is an acknowledgment of the association of our eight parishes under the pastoral guidance and care of the same pastor and parochial vicars, the five priests that currently serve these parishes. As such, we will also be united as a pastorate with common goals and objectives to serve the Bishop’s mission of forming Lifelong Catholic Missionary Disciples through God’s Love.

To help unite us in this common pastoral vision, the name for our pastorate had to be selected from one of the mysteries of the Catholic faith or a Name or title of God or one of His Saints. With this in mind, Bishop DeGrood has approved of naming ours the Saint Martin of Tours Pastorate. Something unique to this area of our diocese is that Yankton was the original capital of the Dakota Territory when Bishop Martin Marty first became its apostolic vicar in 1879. Before that, Bishop Marty was a Benedictine Abbot for Saint Meinrad in Indiana who volunteered to become a missionary at Standing Rock. The Benedictine sisters at Sacred Heart Monastery preserve many relics from the first Bishop of our diocese. It was not until 1889 when South Dakota became a State that Sioux Falls was then named as the episcopal see city for the new diocese.

The namesake of Bishop Marty was most likely Saint Martin of Tours (†397). Saint Martin has the distinction of being one of the first canonized Saints who was not martyred for the faith or directly related to Christ as an Apostle or disciple. The third Bishop of Tours in France, he is probably most famous for a story about him when he was still a soldier in a Roman army. He came across a beggar with rags for clothes barely hanging onto his body. Instinctively, Saint Martin used his sword to cut his own cloak to share with the beggar for warmth. That night in a dream, Martin recognized Jesus clothed in the part of his cloak he had given to the beggar. Saint Martin is also noted for his great charity towards prisoners and for striving to live a monastic life of self-denial and prayer, even as a Bishop.

May Saint Martin’s example and intercession along with the memory of Bishop Marty continue to inspire and strengthen us for the work of spreading the Gospel today, to every soul within this Pastorate and beyond.