Quests
A work of mercy this community takes up together, and carries to the end
About
What a quest is
A quest is a work of mercy that this community takes up together and sees through. Some are close to home. Some reach back more than a hundred years, to people who can no longer ask for help themselves. Zoseco is a Catholic-believing community, and it holds that mercy is not bound by time: the dead can still be remembered, defended, and prayed for, and a wrong that was never set right can still be answered with love. The first quest is one of those.
The first quest: the parishioners of Saint Joseph's in Denver
Saint Joseph's Roman Catholic Church stands on Galapago Street in Denver, built in 1888. In the years that followed, the parish became the site of one of the largest mass excommunications in the history of the American West. More than one hundred parishioners were cut off from the sacraments at once. This quest is to seek mercy, honest remembrance, and reconciliation for them.
What is known
The parish priest, Father Malone, was found to have taken a large sum of parish money, the figure recorded as twelve thousand dollars. Across the street from the church, a house was built for that same amount, twelve thousand dollars, in the name of Father Malone's mother. The house was sold the day before an archbishop was brought in from New Mexico to look into the matter. When parishioners pressed the question of the missing money and turned to the civil courts to have it answered, more than a hundred of them were excommunicated. The first bishop of Denver in that era was Joseph Projectus Machebeuf, a tireless missionary who had himself come to Colorado by way of New Mexico.
Why good people ended up in a courtroom
It is worth saying plainly, and charitably, what happened. The parishioners were not enemies of the Church. They were faithful people who had given their own money to build up their parish, and who wanted a fair accounting of where it had gone. In their time, bringing a churchman before a civil court was itself treated as a grave offense, and so the very act of asking for accountability became the reason they were punished. Two goods were in collision: the Church's care to guard itself from scandal and outside interference, and ordinary believers' hunger for honesty and justice. That collision cost more than a hundred families their place at the altar.
What is not yet known
Much of this story has thinned with time. The parishioners' names are not gathered in one place. The exact year, the court records, the parish and diocesan documents, and whether these censures were ever formally revisited: none of that is settled in the sources easily at hand. Establishing that record, carefully and truthfully, is part of the quest itself. Where the history is uncertain, this page will say so rather than invent it.
What the Church teaches, and why there is real hope
In Catholic understanding, an excommunication is medicine, not a sentence of damnation. It is meant to call a living person back, and it ends at death. So this quest makes no claim about where any soul stands before God, which is His to know and not ours. What it does hold is that these parishioners can still be remembered by name, prayed for, spoken well of, and no longer left under the shadow of a punishment that history has largely forgotten to lift. Mercy for the dead is a work the living are free to do.
What this quest sets out to do
The work is patient, and it is carried in charity toward everyone involved: the parishioners, Father Malone, Bishop Machebeuf, and the Church they all loved. First, to research and establish the honest record, and to recover the parishioners' names. Second, to remember them and to pray for them as the faithful departed. Third, to approach the Archdiocese of Denver with respect and ask for an act of remembrance and reconciliation for those who were cut off. And fourth, to learn and to teach the method: how a community can work within a large and ancient hierarchy, not against it, to bring more mercy into the world.
Why Zoseco carries this one
Spirch, the spiritual-not-religious community that Zoseco is helping to build, calls Denver one of its two homes, and it exists in large part for people who were hurt inside a church and never found their way back. A quest like this is that same care pointed at the past instead of the present. It is a chance to show, in a real case, that a community can face a hard chapter of church history honestly and still act with love rather than resentment. What is learned here belongs to any community willing to do the same work somewhere else.
Who is welcome to help
Historians, archivists, and genealogists who can help recover names and records. Descendants of Denver's early Catholic families, and anyone who carries a piece of this story. Priests, parishioners, and people of the Archdiocese of Denver who would rather see this remembered well than forgotten. And anyone of good will who believes the dead are still worth defending.
How to reach us about this quest
Write to us using the form below, and say which part of this you would want to help carry. If you have something concrete, name it: a family line that ran through Saint Joseph's, a parish or court record you know how to find, an archive you already have access to, or simply a willingness to pray for these families by name once the names are recovered. If you are a priest, a parishioner, or on staff with the Archdiocese of Denver or the parish itself, you are especially welcome to write, and you will be met with respect rather than accusation. The address and phone number listed below are the Zoseco office in Valparaiso, Indiana. This quest is carried from there and in Denver both, and email reaches us either way.
Get in Touch
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