Jesuit priest and historian, Father Louis Renner, died March 24 at the Gonzaga University Infirmary, in Spokane, Wash. He was 88. A funeral Mass was celebrated at the Gonzaga Jesuit Residence Chapel on March 27 and Father Renner was buried at the nearby Mt. St. Michael’s Cemetery.
The second oldest of eight children, Father Renner was born in 1926, in Bismarck, North Dakota. He was ordained a priest on June 15, 1957.
During the summer of 1958, Father Renner learned he was assigned to teach at Monroe Catholic High School in Fairbanks. This was the start of a decades-long connection with Alaska.
In 1961 his superiors directed him to pursue doctoral studies in philosophy at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany. Four years later, with doctorate in hand, he returned Alaska.
In the fall of 1965, Father Renner began a 15-year career teaching at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. He taught mostly German, but also a course in the humanities and he started the university’s Latin program.
Over the years, he traveled extensively across Alaska gathering material for a series of books. The first was “Pioneer Missionary to the Bering Strait Eskimos: Bellarmine Lafortune, S.J.” It was written in collaboration with Dorothy Jean Ray and published in 1979. Next he wrote about the life Jesuit Father Thomas P. Cunningham. “Father Tom of the Arctic,” was published in 1985. Others followed, including “Alaskana Catholica,” an encyclopedic look at Catholicism in the state. He began the encyclopedia in 2002 after receiving an assignment to move to Gonzaga University and write a history of the Catholic Church in Alaska.
In 2005, in his preface to “Alaskana Catholica” Father Renner wrote: “One of the main intents of this volume is to keep alive for posterity the memory of many major Catholic Alaskan figures —clerical and lay, Native and non-Native, living and deceased — by the recording of their lives and deeds.”
Fairbanks Bishop Chad Zielinski, who never met Father Renner, spoke highly of the priest’s well known contribution to the Catholic Church in Alaska, praising the priest’s “gentle spirit, scholarship and passion for Alaska.”
“He exemplified the best of the Jesuit tradition and missionary spirit,” Bishop Zielinski stated.
A memorial service for Father Renner will be held in Fairbanks at Sacred Heart Cathedral on April 12 at 11:30 a.m. For more information, contact Robert Hannon at the Diocese of Juneau at (907) 374-9510 or robert@cbna.org
'Alaska priest historian captured stories for future generations'
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