Fr. Nelen: Bishop Gaydos never forgot where he came from
Bishop John R. Gaydos would often end his letters with a request:
“Let’s pray for each other and for vocations.”
“His reasoning was, it doesn’t matter whether you pray for vocations and you get a lot of priests or sisters or brothers or deacons here or somewhere else,” said Father Louis Nelen, pastor of St. Pius X Parish in Moberly.
“He clearly understood that we’re all one Church,” said Fr. Nelen, who served as priest secretary to Bishop Gaydos near the end of his 20-year tenure here. “When the Church is doing well, everybody benefits from that.”
Bishop Gaydos understood that praying for vocations includes people who are actively discerning their calling in the Church and people who have already made a lifelong commitment to God.
“Whether it be Priesthood, marriage, or a religious order — it’s all about praying for the good of the whole Church,” said Fr. Nelen.
The priest marveled at Bishop Gaydos’s knack for bringing people together who otherwise would have had no other way of knowing each other.
“Introducing a person to another person and introducing a person to the Lord — it all fits together,” the priest stated.
From a front-row seat, Fr. Nelen saw Bishop Gaydos govern the diocese with reverence and moxie.
“He loved the Lord and he loved the Church,” said Fr. Nelen. “He did his best to help other people.
“He was very much always willing to try to share a burden with somebody, to offer his advice and help,” Fr. Nelen stated.
That didn’t mean dictating or mandating a course of action, “but just providing the wisdom that might help them find a solution to their struggles.”
The bishop’s view of the Church, its mission and governance was outward-focused: “How does the Church serve YOU? How and where can the Church continue to spread the seeds of faith?”
Fr. Nelen attributes that tendency to Bishop Gaydos’s upbringing in a tight family and in a neighborhood and parish where people looked out and cared for each other.
“Everyone in your family and the people all around you went to Mass together, to the very end,” Fr. Nelen noted.
Bishop Gaydos would talk about how mobile people have become, which takes away some of that bond of familial and neighborhood stability.
“It’s up to us to adjust to that,” the bishop would say.
Fr. Nelen saw how Bishop Gaydos kept his letters to fellow bishops as informal as possible.
“I think that’s something you witness, among the bishops, they really are like family to each other,” Fr. Nelen stated.
Shared wisdom
Fr. Nelen recalled how Bishop Gaydos’s successor, Archbishop Shawn McKnight, would come to the Cathedral rectory for dinner and conversation on Wednesday evenings.
“What a blessing that was,” said Fr. Nelen. “How many times can a bishop say he can go and talk to his predecessor and get his recollection about what’s going on?”
They often talked about things in a broader sense, like where the Church is going.
“Because of course, the late Pope Francis was shaking a lot of things up,” said Fr. Nelen. “So, you try to figure out, how do we best approach this and do what the Lord is asking us to do at this time in history?”
Enough for a book
Bishop Gaydos had a passion for history and a clear view of how the present moment fits into it.
“As a priest and then as a bishop, he was many times an eyewitness to history,” Fr. Nelen recalled.
Bishop Gaydos had a great memory for the people and places he’d visited.
“He had this great mind for history, this great memory,” said Fr. Nelen. “He was always able to share that in appropriate ways at the right time. He could explain it in such great detail that it was like you were there.”
People were always amazed by that and told him he should publish his experiences in a book.
“He never did,” said Fr. Nelen. “He preferred to talk about it, to share it while visiting with you.”
Noble simplicity
Bishop Gaydos brought a hefty resume in diocesan administration to his role as a bishop, but he never forgot what it was like to be a pastor.
“He remembered where he came from,” said Fr. Nelen. “He always remembered his roots. Whenever we’d visit a parish for Confirmation and we’d get there early, he’d just sit there and chat with the pastor about what’s going on in their lives.”
Looking back to his days in St. Louis, it was clear that he loved being a pastor far more than he loved working in the Chancery.
“He made no bones about that,” said Fr. Nelen.
He liked keeping things “nobly simple,” whether it was a meal he was preparing or a Liturgy he was celebrating.
He enjoyed telling stories about the little St. Louis neighborhood he grew up in, within sight of many church steeples.
“He’d say, ‘I think I got my vocation from the bakery down the street,’” Fr. Nelen recalled. “He’d wake up early and get his donuts, then he’d go to church to serve Mass and then have his two donuts and chocolate milk.”
Bishop Gaydos appreciated living long enough to find out that after Archbishop McKnight, whom he respected very much, was assigned to Kansas City in Kansas, another great priest was being sent to take his place.
“I’m over the moon!” Fr. Nelen recalled him saying.
