CHURCHILL, Fathers Mark, Urban & Francis

CHURCHILL

Posted By: Sharon R Becker (email)
Date: 11/11/2014 at 15:53:45

The Globe Gazette
Mason City, Cerro Gordo County, Iowa
Saturday, February 22, 1941, Page 16

THEY STARTED HERE
No. 48 in a Mason City Series of Success Stories

Churchill Brothers in Ministry

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As a general rule the ministry is not considered a particularly exciting or glamerous career, but to those who have entered the service of their Lord and their fellowmen, it is just that.

At first glance it would appear too that a gentleman of the cloth has a rather limited field in which to work. It might seem that th restrictive duties of the pastorate would tend to keep a man in pretty much the same groove.

But the story of Mason City's three Churchill brothers, Mark, Urban and Francis, proves differently, for it show what every pastor knows, that the ministry does have its excitement, stimulation and attraction, and that there is a wide range of interests within its field.

Father Mark Churchill, eldest of the three brother priests, is now a missionary in China, while Father Urban Churchill is a teacher at Loras academy in Dubuque and Father Francis Churchill, the youngest, is chaplain at St. Joseph's Mercy hospital in Mason City.

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Perhaps the most unusual and interesting work to the layman's eye is that done by Father Mark Churchill.

He was born in Mason City Sept. 29, 1895, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Martin F. Churchill. His father is a Milwaukee railroad employe (sic) and has now amassed between 55 and 60 years in the service of the road.

Young Mark Churchill began his education in the old St. Francis academy, predecessor to the present St. Joseph's school. But in 1908 St. Francis burned down and he transferred to Mason City high school, graduating in the class of 1913.

The following fall saw Mark Churchill at the University of Iowa, enrolled in the college of pharmacy. After a short time, however, the young Mason Cityan discovered that the druggists' trade was not for him and he returned home at the end of the semester to take a job as a passenger brakeman on the Milwaukee. For two or three years he shuttled back and forth between Mason City and Marquette, handling his job so well that in later years his conductor used to speak of him as "the best brakeman I ever had."

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Came 1916 and unpleasantness along the Mexican border. The Iowa national guard, of which Mark Churchill was a member, was moblized and went south with other American troops to chase Pancho Villa. Mark was still in the army when unrestricted submarine warfare finally forced the United States into World war I.

Mark won a commission during the 18 months that followed, but never was able to get overseas. It was sometime during this period or shortly afterwards that he decided to emulate his younger brother, Urban, and enter the priesthood.

The Mason City youth studied for a year in a preparatory college at Clark' Summit, Pa., and then entered Mary Knoll seminary. Six years later, on June 19, 1927, Father Mark Churchill was ordained, ready to begin his work for the Catholic Foreign Missionary Society of America.

The following Sunday Father Churchill said his first soleumn mass at St. Joseph's church here. It was the last time the three brothers participated in a service.

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Father Mark left for China that fall, going to the language school at Kong Moon on the southern China coast. He spent a year there and then was an assistant pastor for a year or two before being names pastor for a district of his own.

Kwangtun province, in which Father Churchill is now stationed, is practically a tropical country. Its people, like most of those living in China, are poor in the fullest sense of the word. Father Churchill is charged with ministring not only the spirital wants of his parishioners, but also tending to the material needs of whoever asks [for] help.

In his present station at Loking, he is in charge of the church, an orphanage and a dispensary among other responsibilities. Three or four times a year he travels through the parish, visiting Christians in each of the Chinese villages and towns in the area.

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The story of Father Urban Churchill takes a considerably differnt course from that of his older brother as far as their church work is concerned, but their earlier life was much the same.

Urban, too, was born in Mason City on Dec. 7, 1897. He went to St. Francis academy until it was destroyed, transferring then to a public school for two years. When St. Joseph's was completed, Urban enrolled and later became one of the two members of the first graduating class of St. Joseph's high school.

[portion of article missing] at what was then known as Dubuque college. It was later named Columbia and is now known as Loras college. Graduating from Columbia in 1920, the young Mason Cityan followed up his intentions to enter the priesthood by going to the Grand seminary in Montreal. Four years later, on June 14, 1924, he was ordained a Catholic priest.

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Father Urban Churchill said his first solemn mass at St. Joseph's church in Mason City on June 22, 1924.

Father Churchill's bent was toward teaching and so it was natural that he should go to Columbia as an educator. He spent three years there, and then dropped out for a year to take graduate work at Catholic university in Washington, D.C. in 1928. Since that time he has been back at his college alma mater, teaching religion in the Loras academy. Father Churchill is now head of the department of religion.

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Youngest of the three brothers is Father Francis Churchill. He was born in Mason City June 2, 1902 and began his education at Garfield school when St. Francis academy burned. Turning to St. Joseph's when it was opened, he received the rest of his secondary education there, graduating in 1920.

As a boy, Francis showe a business talent by serving as a carrier boy for the Globe-Gazette.

Like his brother, Urban, Francis decided on Columbia following his high school graduation and began his studies there in the fall of 1920. During his junior and senior years Columbia almost seemed like a Mason City institution, for in addition to several students from here, Eddie Anderson was football coach and Father Maurice Sheehy was the athletic director.

At Columbia, Francis went in for athletics, with no particular amount of success, but he received a lot of fun from the competition and probably learned many of the lessons that athletics has for the mind and character. He was a substitute on Eddie Anderson's football squad and ran the mile in track, getting a fast pace so that another Mason Cityan, Bill Tracy, could turn on the steam in the last few laps to pass the over-exerted opposition.

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Francis Churchill went ot Catholic university for his theological work, studying at the Sulpician seminary there. He was ordained June 2, 192[6?], and said his first solemn mass, also at St. Joseph's, the following Sunday.

That fall Father Francis went to Columbia academy to take his brother's place while Urban was at Catholic university. Then he went to Cedar Rapids as chaplain at Mercy hospital for a time, later taking pastorates at Vinton and Lycurgus, a country parish in Allamakee county.

Father Churchill came to Mason City as Mercy hospital chaplain in 1939. He is also pastor of St. Lawrence's church at Swaledale.

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And thre is the story of the brothers Churchill. One of them is in war-torn, poverty-stricken China, brining the Word of God to those who have never heard it, and the help and the comfort and the mercy of God to all those who need it.

A second is engaged in wroking with the young men of his own country and state, teaching them the meaning and significance of their religion.

The third has still another kind of work, comforting the sick and the dying an dtending to the spiritual needs of all those who are patients in or work in the place where life and death come and go daily.

The work that Father Mark, Father Urban and Father Francis Churchill are doing may not appear spectacular, for it isn't. But it's the bedrock of socity, it is the process of strengthening and building the foundation that makes mankind and his society possible, his relationship with his Maker.

Photographs courtesy of Globe-Gazette

Transcription by Sharon R. Becker, November of 2014

They Started Here ~ Churchill Brothers
 

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