Background
Heffron, Patrick Richard was born on June 1, 1860 in New York, United States. Son of Patrick and Margaret (O’Brien) Heffron.
Heffron, Patrick Richard was born on June 1, 1860 in New York, United States. Son of Patrick and Margaret (O’Brien) Heffron.
High school, Mantorville, Minnesota. Business college and law school, Rochester, Minnesota. Saint John's College, Minnesota, Master of Accounts, 1878.
Grand Seminary, Montreal, Canada, 6 years, Licentiate of Sacred Theology, 1883.
Licentiate of Sacred Theology, Doctor of Divinity, Minerva University, 1889. Doctor of Civil Law, Appollinare University, Rome, 1889.
He was ordained a Roman Catholic priest for what is now the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis. On March 4, 1910, Pope Pius X appointed him Bishop of the Winona Diocese. He died in 1927 while still bishop.
On the morning of 27 August 1915, he was shot twice while celebrating private mass by a disgruntled priest named Laurence M. Lesches, who after many reassignments had demanded a parish of his own and had been turned down because of his arrogant behavior and emotional instability.
Heffron survived, but the paranoid Lesches was committed to an insane asylum where he remained until his death in 1943. This incident, which was followed by accidental deaths among some of Heffron"s acquaintances, is the explanation given for the supposed haunting of Heffron Hall by Lesches.