Catholic Priest becomes a General in the Air Force

 

Serving Church, Country ‘An Honor,’ Says Priest Promoted To General In Air Force Chaplain Corps

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (OSV News) — At Blessed Sacrament Parish in Tallahassee, Father Peter Zalewski is a busy and beloved pastor, tending to the activities of his church community and the local Catholic school, the largest primary school in the Pensacola-Tallahassee Diocese.

But the pastor also serves in the Air Force Chaplain Corps, and with his Dec. 14 promotion to a one-star, or brigadier, general, he now holds the highest rank in the military of any Catholic priest.

On his one day off a week, he’ll be tending to meetings at the Pentagon or elsewhere in Washington, because he now serves as the primary adviser to the chief of the National Guard Bureau on religious, ethical and morale issues.

As a general, Father Zalewski will provide guidance and programs directing National Guard chaplain personnel and supporting Army and Air Guardsmen.

The Dec. 14 promotion ceremony at the Florida National Guard Headquarters in St. Augustine was the culmination of Father Zalewski’s nearly 40-year life in the military, which began in 1984 as a cadet at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

In the early 1990s, he deployed in major military operations, including serving as an intelligence officer in Operation Desert Storm in the first Gulf War. He was following in the footsteps of his father, who served two tours in Vietnam, but he also pursued a military career with encouragement of his mother, who helped him appreciate the meaning of serving the Armed Forces.

The Florida native eventually heard the call to pursue the priesthood instead of Air Force pilot training, so in 1992 he became a seminarian for the Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee. He also became an Air Force chaplain candidate.

At his promotion ceremony, Father Zalewski thanked his parishioners at Blessed Sacrament, as well as St. Dominic in Panama City, Florida, where he was previously pastor, for always supporting his dual responsibilities.

“Thank you for your support,” he said. “We have to protect those who protect us. So, thank you for allowing me to do that. That means a lot to me.”

Father Zalewski’s remarks were reported by Catholic Extension in an article on its website, www.catholicextension.org.

The priest’s connection to the Chicago-based organization is twofold. He serves on its mission committee, which helps Catholic Extension increase its impact and awareness around the country. He also has involved his parish in raising financial support for various Extension initiatives over the years.

But the priest also was a beneficiary of Extension’s funding of seminary education when he was in formation to be ordained for the Pensacola-Tallahassee Diocese.

Each year, Catholic Extension supports 400 seminarians on their path to the priesthood by providing scholarships that help struggling dioceses pay for seminarian tuition as well as room and board.

After his ordination in 1997, Father Zalewski began serving as a parish priest in his diocese and as a military reserve chaplain at bases in the Florida Panhandle. He would eventually be deployed again in 2008 as a “wing chaplain” to Al-Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates, serving military personnel supporting U.S. operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“He knows that the many sacrifices of our service members have created a toll — physical, mental and spiritual,” Catholic Extension said. “Father Zalewski recalls his visits to military bases over these past years where he would encounter young soldiers wearing prosthetics, reminding him of what they gave on the battlefield.

“More troublesome, still, are the wounds that are not visible. Father Zalewski laments that despite many efforts within the services, suicides among military personnel are not decreasing and more needs to be done to stem this tide.”

Father Zalewski said, “It’s been an honor to serve my country in the military, and an honor to serve the Catholic Church in America through Catholic Extension’s mission committee. I see that many of our service members come from rural communities — so Extension is a direct contributor to their spiritual well-being and strength.”

Roughly a quarter of all active-duty military personnel are Catholic, Extension noted, but “as a general, he will serve people regardless of their religious affiliation. … His job will be to ensure that these young, self-sacrificing men and women, who have given so much to our country, have the spiritual care they need.”

Arson at an American Cathedral; horrible

A view of the inside of the Co-Cathedral of St. Thomas More in Tallahassee after the fire. (COURTESY | DIOCESE OF PENSACOLA/TALLAHASSEE)

Tallahassee cathedral set ablaze, arson likely

By Maurice Beaulieu of the Florida Catholic staff | June 6, 2019

Tallahassee  |  Catholic parishioners expected to attend their evening Mass at the Co-Cathedral of St. Thomas More in Tallahassee, but instead were subjected to news of a probable arson attack to their beloved church.

Officers arrived on the scene Wednesday around 4:30 p.m. to witness Darha Nixon, the church’s business manager, inform them of the news. Nixon had already fought the fire with a chemical fire extinguisher that scorched much of the wall. According to Nixon, when custodians of the church prepared for the afternoon Mass, they opened the side doors, which is where the suspect likely entered the church.

Tallahassee police reports noted the innards of the church was full of smoke and that three chairs — including the bishop’s cathedra — were burned. Resting atop one of the chairs was a burned Bible.

Luckily, the fire was caught in time and didn’t spread to other parts of the cathedral. No injuries were reported.

Bishop William A. Wack, of the Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee, who has endured 2018’s Hurricane Michael that devastated much of the rural and coastal portions of area, released a statement about the June 5 fire:

“Today, there was a fire inside the Co-Cathedral church in Tallahassee. The cathedra and presiders’ chairs were set on fire and are destroyed. The walls of the sanctuary are charred, and there is smoke damage. Thankfully, no one was hurt, and it went out before igniting the whole building. An investigation is underway. Thank you for your prayers.”

Mass will continue at St. Thomas More despite the fire. Daily and night Mass will continue now in the chapel nearby with expectations to return to regular Mass again by Sunday.

Officials are calling the St. Thomas More fire arson and investigations are ongoing.

On May 23, Bishop Wack released a video message as a “State of Diocese” address marking his 18-month tenure of the diocese during which he has visited all of the parishes and missions of the 18-county diocese within Florida’s Panhandle  — save two chapels, which he said he hoped to visit soon. In the video, he spoke about the challenges of the local church, specifically the impact of Hurricane Michael, which he described as the “four-hour storm” that created an enormous amount of devastation that will take more than just a few months or a year from which to recover.

“We’re rebuilding thanks be to God and insurance, but it will take time, so we need patience,” he said. “I know we will fully recover in the months and years ahead.”

He also spoke about the sexual abuse crisis that rocked the Church on both the national and international level. The bishop remarked how the Pensacola-Tallahassee Diocese has “worked hard for the last few decades to make safe welcoming place for children and all people.”

“We need to be transparent and show the world what we have been doing and what we are doing, and continue to provide a loving, warm and caring place for all of God’s children,” he said.

The Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee Diocese is a “dual see” diocese that has two centers from which the bishop governs: Pensacola and Tallahassee. Each see city has a cathedral — the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Pensacola and the Co-Cathedral of St. Thomas More in Tallahassee. The diocese spans 14,044 square miles and has a total Catholic population of 63,256.

A new Bishop for Pensacola-Tallahassee Diocese

From A Soup Kitchen to The Panhandle – For Summer Kickoff, Pope Plays Wack-The-Noles

Over recent weeks, the growing community at St Ignatius Martyr parish in Austin has been planning a “bash” for their pastor’s 50th birthday.

However, the Pope now sends word that their late June event for Father Bill will now double as a farewell... to Bishop-elect Wack.

In an unheard-of act on a US civil holiday, this Memorial Day indeed brings an appointment – at Roman Noon, Francis named the South Bend-born priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross (a onetime vocation director at Notre Dame) as sixth bishop of Pensacola-Tallahassee, tapped to lead a minority fold of 70,000 across the broad swath of the heavily-Evangelical Florida Panhandle: a charge spanning two time zones and some 14,000 square miles. (In a shot circulated this past March, the bishop-elect is seen test-piloting the new parking lot on his parish plant.)

Even as Papa Bergoglio has long taken any notion of holiday weekends for the Stateside press to the shredder, today's move is simply on a different plane, and in more ways than one at that.

His ordination reportedly set for late August, Wack succeeds Bishop Gregory Parkes, the Florida State alum sent on a fittingly giant leap across the Sunshine State late last year with his transfer to St Petersburg, the province’s second-largest post. Yet where Parkes was already quite familiar with and devoted to Noles Country from his college days, his successor arrives sight unseen... so in this instance, any expectation that a lifelong son of the Fighting Irish will lead The Chop on Day One might be a bit much to ask.

Described by Whispers ops as “a simply joyful priest” and “the kind of guy you’d want for everything [in ministry],” the bishop-elect’s road since his 1994 ordination has been unusually varied, and features an especially potent example of the identikit Francis has repeatedly demanded for those to whom he entrusts the mitre and crozier.

Before his stint until today at the Austin parish, Wack served for seven years as director of Andre House, a homeless shelter and soup kitchen in a Phoenix drug corridor where, according to a recent interview, he and his team would serve more than 500 plates every night on top of caring for the daily laundry and lodging of anyone who came.

Already a veteran of social media – a trait which will serve him well given the spread he inherits – Wack posts audio of his homilies online... his reasons for being “really keyed up” about yesterday’s preach now in the open:

Said by an associate to “not be given to administration” – a common (but not universal) lack among Francis' recent Stateside appointees – that hasn’t stopped the Panhandle pick from making his goal in pledges for a $2.5 million capital campaign for his Texas parish. Still, Wack nonetheless has the good fortune of inheriting a charge where the locals report no major pressing issues. Meantime, with the diocese’s Hispanic population steadily ticking up due to an influx for its service industries, the elect brings ample proficiency in Spanish, a first for the bishop there.

As local media were quietly alerted on Friday – and, Florida being Florida, was then brazenly announced in Pensacola Cathedral at yesterday’s Masses – a 10am Central presser has already been called at the western hub’s Chancery. One of the US church’s few twin-seat dioceses, the joint see cities are some 200 miles apart, a roughly three-hour drive.

Among other aspects, it is of note that Wack’s appointment marks but the latest instance of Francis choosing an American bishop from a remarkably large family. The seventh of ten kids born to a doctor and a nurse, Bill was eventually followed into the CSCs by his brother, Neil, who was ordained a decade later and now holds his brother’s onetime vocations post at Notre Dame. Yet as the brothers' social feeds are each unusually sparse, it's even more salient how both follow the son of another Midwestern "tribe" who ostensibly shepherded this appointment across the finish line from his seat on the Congregation for Bishops – namely, Blase.

All that said, just a few weeks ago, an Austin pastor was but a face in the crowd among the 5,000-odd faithful who converged from across Texas for the church’s annual Advocacy Day at the Lone Star Capitol (above) – an event highlighted by the bishops' breakfast with the turf's first governor from the fold since Mexican rule.

And with today’s move, Bill Wack suddenly becomes Catholicism’s principal voice in the capital of what's now the third-largest state