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Irenaeus Frederic Baraga was born on 29 June 1797 at the castle of Mala Vas near Dobrnič in the Duchy of Carniola, then part of the Habsburg Empire and now in Slovenia. He came from a family of the lesser nobility; his parents were Janez Baraga and Marija Katarina Jožefa, née Jenčič. Orphaned while still young, he received a thorough education and studied law at the University of Vienna, completing his degree in 1821. He then turned to theology, entered seminary, and was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Ljubljana on 21 September 1823. After pastoral work in Carniola, including service at Šmartno near Kranj, he volunteered for the North American missions. With support from the Leopoldine Society in Vienna he left Europe in 1830 for the United States.

Assigned by Bishop Edward Fenwick of Cincinnati, Baraga worked among the Ottawa and Ojibwe (Chippewa) peoples of the Great Lakes. From the 1830s he established or served missions at Arbre Croche (Harbor Springs), along the Grand River, at La Pointe on Madeline Island in Lake Superior, at L'Anse, and at other remote stations in what became Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. He learned Ottawa and Ojibwe thoroughly and published grammars, dictionaries, a catechism, and prayer books in those languages, works that remained important linguistic references. He also wrote an account of Ojibwe history, character, and customs. Because he covered great distances on foot and snowshoe in winter to reach scattered Native communities and isolated settlers, he became known as the "Snowshoe Priest." He opposed the liquor trade among Native peoples and combined missionary work with advocacy for their welfare.

In 1853 Pope Pius IX appointed him first bishop of the newly created Vicariate Apostolic of Upper Michigan; he was consecrated on 1 November 1853. When the vicariate was erected as the Diocese of Sault Sainte Marie in 1857, he became its first ordinary; the see was later associated with Marquette. As bishop he continued constant travel across a vast, thinly populated territory, founding parishes, recruiting clergy, ministering to Native converts, and serving growing numbers of European immigrant miners in the copper and iron regions of the Upper Peninsula. The physical strain of this life gradually undermined his health.

Baraga suffered a stroke and died on 19 January 1868 in Marquette, Michigan. He was buried in that city; his remains now rest in the Baraga Chapel of St. Peter Cathedral in Marquette. A cause for canonization was later introduced, and Pope Benedict XVI declared him Venerable in 2012. He has not been beatified or canonized. He is remembered as a founding figure of the Catholic Church in the Upper Great Lakes, a major early linguist of Algonquian languages of the region, and a missionary of unusual endurance on the nineteenth-century American frontier. Baraga County and the village of Baraga in Michigan are named for him.

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