By Karina Fabian

As a member of the Blackfoot Tribe and a deacon, Ronald Running Crane has worked hard to bring his people a true understanding of Catholicism.

During his childhood, Deacon Running Crane’s mother sent him to religious education and saw that he served as an altar boy. In addition, his extended family taught him about American Indian spirits and legends.

“There was a lot I learned (from them) that resembled the Catholic tradition, and a lot I shied away from,” Deacon Running Crane said in an interview.

As a boy he thought about entering the priesthood, but during high school he fell in love—with Shirley. He likes to say he married her four times.

“The first time, my grandfather blessed us in the Native American tradition,” Deacon Running Crane said. “When we were in Canada for the Calgary Stampede, a friend dared us to get married by a Mormon Church elder. When we returned to the U.S., we were married by the justice of the peace.”

Finally, in 1981, the couple married in Browning’s Little Flower Parish, on the Blackfeet Reservation. They have five sons, two by birth and three by adoption.

With his zeal for faith reawakened by the sacrament of marriage, Deacon Running Crane began speaking to others about Catholicism. It was 1988 when he decided he wished to become a deacon.

Father Ed Kohler, the pastor at Little Flower Parish, was enthused.

“He jumped up from behind the desk and said, ‘Welcome! Let’s get the paperwork going,’” Deacon Running Crane recalled.

But becoming a deacon took eight years as the Diocese of Helena saw a change in bishops, and colon cancer struck.

“Around 2000, my Indian aunts started to notice something was wrong” and commented repeatedly that he looked ill, Deacon Running Crane said. In 2003, he underwent the removal of a tumor and prepared for chemotherapy. Receiving Communion from nuns helped to sustain him, he said.

He was one of 10 men who were visited by Deacon Mel Rutherford of Browning while undergoing medical treatment. Deacon Running Crane said he collapsed during a laying on of hands by Deacon Rutherford.

“When I woke up, I didn’t know what had happened, but I felt so good, I wanted to run around,” he said. “I felt this heat move up and down me.”

For six months, he received chemotherapy and attended prayer sessions with Deacon Rutherford. Subsequently, the cancer was gone.

“I was shouting praises so loud, the neighbors came to find out what was happening,” he said. “I went to church to tell everyone, and Father Kohler said, ‘I think you’re going to get ordained.’”

Deacon Running Crane said that when the bishop laid hands on him during ordination in 2006, he felt the same warmth he experienced in the hospital three years earlier.

He works at Little Flower Parish and its missions, and says experiences in his life have taught him to look at life and death with equal joy.

“If I live, I live for God, and if I die, I die for God, but while I live, I’ll do everything I can for my people,” he said.


Published in The Montana Catholic, Vol. 25, No. 12, December 18, 2009.