The Miraculous Loretto Staircase

American Catholic History

Noelle & Tom Crowe

History, Christianity, Religion & Spirituality, Education

5 • 724 Ratings

🗓️ 19 March 2025

⏱️ 17 minutes

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Summary

In the 1870s the Sisters of Loretto built a chapel for the school they ran in Santa Fe, New Mexico. But the architect failed to include a staircase to the choir loft 20 feet above the floor. And then he died before he could rectify the situation. The sisters prayed a novena to St. Joseph to find a solution, and on the ninth day of the novena a mysterious carpenter showed up and offered to build them the perfect staircase for free. The accepted his offer. Months later he had completed a spiral staircase, and then he vanished, without leaving a trace of who he was or where he came from. The staircase he built defies explanation: it lacks a central newel post, standing only due to the strength of the two stringers. Those stringers are bent and twisted into helixes, which is a very difficult thing to do to wood. He also built it using no nails or glue, just wooden pegs hold it together. Also, the wood is some variety of spruce, but analysis reveals that it is a species of spruce unknown on earth. Some suggest that the carpenter was St. Joseph himself or an angel whom he sent to help the sisters in their need. Others say it was a highly skilled French carpenter who had moved into the area about that time. Either way, there is little doubt that there was some divine intervention in the construction of this wonderful staircase. The staircase still stands. it was in daily use until the school closed in 1968, and since then the chapel has been a privately held museum. It is among the most-visited tourist attractions in New Mexico, still inspiring awe and wonder in believers and non-believers alike.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to American Catholic History.
0:08.0	If you like our podcast, be sure to rate us and give us a review wherever you get your podcasts.
0:14.0	I'm Newell Hester Crowe.
0:15.0	And I'm Tom Crow.
0:16.0	Today we're talking about the miraculous Loretto staircase.
0:25.4	This story always gets a lot of attention when it pops up on social media.
0:31.7	The more dramatic versions of the story tell us that St. Joseph himself showed up and built the staircase with wood he miraculously brought from hundreds, if not thousands of miles away.
0:44.3	Yeah, but the more mundane version holds that a skilled French carpenter who had dedicated his life to doing things like this, heard of the sister's plight and showed up at the right place at the right time with the right materials.
0:50.3	Well, however it really happened, it's a rather intriguing story of faith,
0:55.5	unexplainable coincidences, and the nature of divine intervention.
0:59.9	Right, because the coincidence is really, you know, they stretch the possibilities of mere chance.
1:04.5	Yeah, and this is also a story that we can tell from firsthand experience.
1:08.6	We've both been to the chapel where the staircase stands,
1:11.6	and we've seen it. I've only been there once when we let a pilgrimage to Santa Fe together,
1:17.0	but, well, you've been there three times. I have. Yeah. Yeah, I visited once back in college when I was
1:21.4	out in New Mexico on a spring break mission work trip, and then I've actually been involved in two
1:25.9	pilgrimages to Santa Fe. The second of them
1:28.3	was the one when you came. But no matter how many times I've seen it, it still is just an awe-inspiring
1:34.4	sight to behold. It sure is. So let's talk about where and why and how this miraculous staircase
1:41.1	came into being. Right. So, we start back in 1850.
1:45.6	The first Bishop of New Mexico, the Frenchman Jean-Baptiste-Lamey, wanted a school for girls in his new diocese.
1:52.6	He had previously been a missionary in Ohio, and so was familiar with the Sisters of Loretto, whose home base is in Kentucky.
	...

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