UPDATE: Bishop offers first Confirmation Mass in church with strong ties to his home diocese

The following is an updated version of the article, “Bishop-elect McKnight’s appointment: a moment long in the making,” from the Dec. 8, 2017, print edition of The Catholic Missourian:

“My brothers and sisters in Christ, this evening is a bit historic.”

Bishop W. Shawn McKnight’s words echoed off of the vividly colored stone walls of 1879-vintage Sacred Heart Church in Rich Fountain.

He explained that “each of these individual confirmandi will be given the sacrament of the Holy Spirit in a special way this evening — a pivotal moment in their lives.”

“It is also historic,” he added, “because your new bishop is celebrating his first Confirmation Mass, with you, at this parish named for the Sacred Heart of Jesus, to which he has a particular devotion.”

That and a few other things helped make the Wichita-native’s first pastoral visit to this 180-year-old parish into a pilgrimage and somewhat of a homecoming.

Bishop McKnight offered Mass in the same sanctuary where a second-grader named Jack had served each day at Mass with Father Christian H. Winkelmann, a future bishop of Wichita.

Years later, when that altar server went to Conception Seminary in northwestern Missouri to discern a call to Priesthood, Bishop Winkelmann invited him to become a priest of the Wichita diocese.

Bishop Mark K. Carroll, who had become bishop of Wichita after Bishop Winkelmann died, came to Sacred Heart in Rich Fountain in 1951 to ordain Father John Reinkemeyer to the Holy Priesthood.

Fr. Reinkemeyer became well known throughout southeastern Kansas for his pastoral insights, church-building skills and unfailing devotion to social justice, mission work, Catholic education, reconciliation with inactive Catholics, care for creation, and the inviolable sanctity of human life.

At a Mass for Fr. Reinkemeyer’s golden jubilee in 2001, Wichita’s Bishop Eugene J. Gerber, now retired, told him: “To the bishops in your life, beginning with Bishop Winkelmann, you were always a study, but always a gem, true to form, straight in your talk and unambiguous in your teaching, and loyal in your witness. ... (You are) such a lowly and true servant, such a priest that finds in my heart and the bishops before — and, I trust, in the heart of the Holy Father — a gratitude so profound that it overflows beyond the words that can express it.”

Fr. Reinkemeyer’s uncle, Monsignor Leonard J. Fick, also grew up in Rich Fountain and was a descendant of George Fick, one of Sacred Heart parish’s original founders.

At age 14, he went to the Pontifical College Josephinum in Worthington, Ohio, to study for the Priesthood. After ordination, he joined the faculty and spent the rest of his life teaching English and helping to form new priests for service throughout the world.

Fick Auditorium at the Josephinum now bears his name.

House of Joseph

At St. Francis parish in Wichita, the late Monsignor Thomas McGread served as a mentor to a young man named Shawn McKnight.

Msgr. McGread was a graduate of All Hallows Seminary in Dublin, Ireland, as was the late Cardinal John J. Glennon of St. Louis, who ordained Bishop Winkelmann to the Priesthood.

One of the co-consecrators at Cardinal Glennon’s ordination to the episcopacy in 1903 was Bishop John Joseph Hennessy, who was bishop of Wichita at that time.

Fr. McKnight earned a master of arts and a master of divinity degrees from the Josephinum, where Msgr. Fick had served for 50 years, and later served as director of liturgy and director of formation.

Fr. McKnight’s family lived in Kingman, Kansas, for a while Fr. Reinkemeyer was pastor of St. Patrick parish there.

After Fr. McKnight was ordained to the Priesthood in 1994, Fr. Reinkemeyer came to admire the young priest as a fellow worker in God’s vineyard. About 15 years ago, he told Doris Brand, his housekeeper and personal assistant of more than 40 years, to “watch that Fr. McKnight. He’s going to be a bishop someday.”

Miss Brand recounted that story in a phone call on Nov. 22, a few hours after the announcement that Pope Francis had appointed the Bishop McKnight to succeed Bishop John R. Gaydos as bishop of Jefferson City.

Not only had Fr. Reinkemeyer’s prediction come true, the Pope had sent the new bishop to the diocese that includes Fr. Reinkemeyer’s home parish.

She smiled, looked up to heaven and said to Fr. Reinkemeyer, who had died in 2012, “You had something to do with this, didn’t you?”

“No coincidences”

There are other connections between the Wichita and Jefferson City dioceses. Here are several:

•The late Father Richard Stuchlik (1942-2010), who served as an associate pastor under Fr. Reinkemeyer in the Wichita diocese, was a classmate of Bishop Gaydos’ at Cardinal Glennon College in St. Louis and the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.

•Sister Anne Boessen SSND, a native of St. Thomas, Missouri, and a current resident of Wardsville, both in the Jefferson City diocese, taught current Wichita Bishop Carl A. Kemme in high school seminary.

•The late Monsignor Jerome Sommer PA of the Jefferson City diocese was the last living classmate of Servant of God Father Emil Kapaun of the Wichita diocese, who ministered to fellow prisoners of war right up to his death in a Korean prison camp.

•The late Bishop Ignatius Strecker, who served in Missouri as second bishop of Springfield-Cape Girardeau (immediately south of the Jefferson City diocese) from 1962-69, was originally a priest of the Wichita diocese.

One of Fr. Reinkemeyer’s friends, a fellow priest, once noted, “There are no coincidences in God’s design.”

Some of the historical information in this article came from Father John Reinkemeyer: God’s Humble Servant, a book by Marcel Normand (2009).