The Founding Fathers

The two people who deserve the most credit for the establishment of the Church of the Ascension were Michael Augustine Corrigan, archbishop of New York from 1885 until 1902, and Father Nicholas M. Reinhart, the pastor of Ascension from its founding in 1895 until his death in 1900. They were as different as chalk from cheese in age, family origins, personality, and the scope of their accomplishments. However, each of them—the aging archbishop from a comfortable middle-class family in Newark, New Jersey, and the dynamic young priest from the Lower East Side of Manhattan—made his own distinctive contribution