University honors priest who has served in Appalachia for decades

Published: 2004-12-03

DAYTON, Ohio (CNS) -- "I lost my mind early," Msgr. Ralph Beiting said with a smile as he spoke to a religion class at the University of Dayton. "I had to let God's mind guide me," added the priest, who was at the university to be honored for his pastoral ministry to the people of the Appalachia region. Maintaining that level of faith, however, did not prove easy for then-Father Beiting, a priest of the Diocese of Lexington, Ky., when he was first sent into an unfamiliar Appalachian area in eastern Kentucky in 1950. He was asked by his bishop to become a pastor of a three-county area near Berea. There was, however, a catch or two. When the priest arrived in the area, there was no church and there was no rectory. "I found myself in Appalachia, pastor of a nonexistent church in a parish the size of Rhode Island, with a total Catholic population of eight -- three of them children," Msgr. Beiting recalled. "I thought to myself 'this has got to be a mistake.'" That "mistake" evolved into a lifetime of opportunities. In the five decades that followed, Msgr. Beiting founded or constructed 20 churches and established the Christian Appalachian Project, an interdenominational, nonprofit Christian organization dedicated to providing for the physical, spiritual and emotional needs of the Appalachian people.

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