The Most Reverend John Henry Tihen, was the third Bishop of Denver, Colorado, for the Roman Catholic Church. Bishop Tihen was known for his powerful pipe organ voice. He was well liked among Catholics and non Catholics. Bishop Tihen tenure was during the era of the great depression and a rising tide of Ku Klux Klan activity in the Denver area. However, in these difficult times Bishop Tihen continued to be patient, open-minded, with a community oriented approach, that won many Catholic allies for the Church. Bishop Tihen was born in Oldenburg, Indiana, on July 14, 1861. He was ordained on April 26, 1886 by the Most Reverend Peter Richard Kenrick for the Archdiocese of St. Louis. When Bishop Hennessy was named the first bishop of Wichita, he asked Father Tihen, his former assistant in St. Louis, to accompany him to this new See. Father Tihen became rector of St. Aloysius Pro-Cathedral. He was named chancellor in 1905, elevated to the rank of monsignor, and in 1907 was made vicar general of the diocese. In 1911 he was named the bishop of the Diocese of Lincoln in Nebraska. His ordination on July 6, 1911, in the Pro-Cathedral of Wichita was the first episcopal consecration in Kansas. In 1917 he was made the third bishop of Denver where he built St. Thomas Seminary. Bishop Tihen was a staunch supporter of the Catholic press which enabled the Denver Catholic Register to emerge as a national system of newspapers, rivaled in popularity and prominence only by the Our Sunday Visitor magazine. (Colorado Catholicism, Thomas Noel, p. 94) In 1931 Bishop Tihen retired as bishop of Denver and returned to Wichita to live at St. Francis Hospital until his death on Jan. 14, 1940. A Solemn Requiem was celebrated by Rt. Rev. Wm. Farrell, administrator of the Wichita diocese, in St. Mary's Cathedral. His body was transferred to Denver for a Pontifical Mass of Requiem. Bishop Tihen was interred in the Gallagher Memorial Chapel at Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Denver beside his predecessors Bishops Joseph Projectus Machebeuf and Nicholas Chrysostom Matz.