Father Michael Bertram, a Milwaukee Priest and an Advocate for Minorities

Father Michael Bertram, a member in the Capuchin Franciscans, for 18 years served as pastor at St. Francis of Assisi in Milwaukee, a historic facility located on North Vel R. Phillips Avenue and West Brown Avenue. There he helped people in need, fed those who are hungry and spoke the Word of God.

St. Francis of Assisi offered mass on Saturday afternoons and three times on Sundays, and the 10:30 a.m. mass on Sunday has historically been delivered in Spanish to accommodate Spanish speakers and immigrants. Moreover, the morning mass catered to the diaspora Puerto Rican community living around Holton Avenue in Milwaukee’s Riverwest neighborhood.

English was Bertram’s first language, and he needed to learn Spanish when he got to St. Francis of Assisi to serve the local Puerto Rican community and any other Spanish speakers. He learned Spanish at an immersion school in Costa Rica during the year 2004 and again in 2005.

“I really enjoy it, I think it’s the language piece, I think it’s the experience of serving a minority population and it’s also the issue of preserving the culture,” Bertram said. “All of that really means something to me.”

Learning Spanish was difficult for Bertram, and he said it seemed like some people had the brain for languages and some people did not. Furthermore, after he spoke English only most of his life, retaining the vocabulary and speaking in Spanish was rewarding.

“I started learning Spanish in my 50’s, so, it wasn’t the best time in my life to start learning a language,” Bertram said. “I am grateful I did, and I would like to better myself with it.”

In Puerto Rico, Spanish was the first language people learned. However, for many years, under the direction of the United States government, English was assigned as the primary language for public schools. Puerto Ricans resisted this stratification and continued to teach and learn Spanish.

In Milwaukee, Puerto Rican youth often did not speak Spanish. Bertram noticed this phenomenon and often encouraged Latino youth to learn Spanish.

“This is your heritage, you should be speaking Spanish,” Bertram said. “Just in general, the job opportunities that will open up because you’re Bilingual.”

The Spanish teachers lived at home with these Latino youth, and Bertram told Latinos to learn Spanish from their parents, grandparents and family friends.

“You talk to some Puerto Ricans and Latinos, and they’ll say that when they were growing up, they were told, you do not speak Spanish, you speak English,” Bertram said. “Spanish was discouraged in many households because you wanted to acculturate yourself and much as possible.”

A lot of Latinos were acculturated to not only speak English, but not to become Catholic as either. The number of people who attended the Spanish mass dwindled, and Bertram attributed that to modern cultural shifts in the United States.

“I think in some parishes, you’d look at a low number and say, I think it’s time we discontinue this mass,” Bertram said. “It obviously is not drawing the numbers we hoped.”

Even though Bertram hoped St. Francis of Assisi’s Spanish mass would be attended by more people, he was hopeful that they would start. Puerto Ricans historically attended St. Francis of Assisi, but Mexican families and other Spanish speakers started showing up for Spanish mass too.

“I certainly am committed to maintaining it,” Bertram said. “I think it’s important for cultural and minority reasons.”

Before becoming a Capuchin, Bertram taught seventh and eighth graders in a rural Catholic school in St. Cloud, Wisconsin. He described teaching and keeping the attention of that age group as a critical life skill.

The seventh and eighth graders in St. Cloud moved Bertram to become a priest. After trying to become a Capuchin and being turned down twice, Bertram said it was the children he was teaching that convinced him to try again.

“They were the ones that would prick my conscience and say, don’t you think you would make a good priest?” Bertram said. “After a while, they started asking in a serious way, and so much so that I thought, I have to go back and see if they’re right.”

When Bertram applied to the Capuchins the third time, he was accepted into the order. Those kids saw more in Bertram than he imagined for himself and helped identify part of his personal call to ministry.

Serving with the Capuchin Franciscans, Bertram said this showed him real happiness, satisfaction, fulfillment and joy, and he also attributed a lot of his faith to his parents.

“My mother and father really modeled a great blend of faith and practice,” Bertram said. “Very different faiths between the two of them, but together a great combination that made faith a really healthy practice.”

Absolute respect and dignity for every human being is how Bertram described his practice, and that mission resonated with him as he has cared deeply for people of the LGBTQ community, who were often cast away from Catholicism.

“I just think that’s the cutting edge that the church needs to display,” Bertram said. “Sadly, in the Catholic church, I don’t find that’s the widespread practice at all.”

The people of the Catholic church talked about everyone being a child of God, and Bertram said if that is true, then we all deserve the respect any child of God deserves.

St Francis of Assisi also had a long-standing relationship with the Black community in Milwaukee. That respect in the church was particularly relevant in the wake of Minneapolis police officer Derick Chauvin’s murder of George Floyd in 2020, when Bertram, and members of the church marched in response.

“We visited sites where the Catholic church has been involved in the lives of African Americans, and it turned out wonderful,” Bertram said. “We had policemen from the Fifth District here, and at the end of it, they came to me and said, Mike, this was a great event.”

Bertram said there were not many police officers that were happy with other marches in the city following the murder of George Floyd, and that churches in general did not make time to recognize what happened.

“There are so many groups of people that I think do not feel that dignity, or that respect,” Bertram said. “And I think that we as church, that’s really uppermost.”

For nearly a decade, Bertram, and St. Francis of Assisi held an annual celebration for St. John the Baptist, the patron saint of Puerto Rico. The celebration is an intentional means to recognize a minority population in Milwaukee, and it gains more support every year.

“We will get a bishop from Puerto Rico, we will get priest from Puerto Rico, and we really tried to make it as authentic as possible,” Bertram said. “It’s a real source of pride for Puerto Ricans.”

Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, Bertram continued to show his devotion to people and made mass available to anyone who wanted or needed to have or continue a connection with him.

“I think it was a real call; how do I continue to reach people when we are purposely separated?” Bertram said. “We started streaming Sunday mass, and we continue to do so today.”