I have had the pleasure of becoming reaquainted with Fr. Chuck Stoetzel, rector of the Cathedral of St. Joseph the Workman in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Fr. Stoetzel was transferred to La Crosse on July 1. I had been assisting as deacon at the 6:30 am Mass there a few times a week before I head to the office for work, and he has graciously allowed me to continue to do so.
Fr. Chuck and I knew each other in 1977-78 over in Rome where we both studied. He was a year ahead of me. Since we re-met a few weeks ago, he has been bringing up names of former classmates and others who lived in Rome during those years who I have not thought of for over 30 years.
One of those names is the now Msgr. William V. Millea.
Bill, as I knew him, was a year ahead of me also in Rome. Even then he was an interested Vatican watcher. The summer Pope Paul VI died, and before John Paul I was elected in August, he rushed back to Rome from the United States to not miss any of the activity surrounding a papal funeral and election. I was spending the entire summer that year in Europe, going to an advanced language school and doing some traveling with friends. I was in Oslo, Norway when I read that Paul VI had died, so I caught the very next train back to Rome. Bill flew to Rome from the States. He was eager to take me out to dinner the first night he arrived to mine me for whatever information I had learned about the funeral plans, etc., etc. I still recall the evening air on the Janiculum hill where we went to a restaurant to eat that night. I told him what I knew and I could tell he wanted a lot more information than I possessed.
I wonder what he thought later when I was picked to bear the cross at John Paul I’s installation. I don’t believe he was selected to participate.
But Bill has more than had his share of direct, first-hand experience since then with papal ceremonies. He has been one of several priests who make up the College of Cleric Prelates of the Apostolic Camera. Go ahead and google his name. You will see him in many photograpshs with the popes. He and the others are present in most of those ceremonies.
I find it amazing to learn how those from my past have fared. Some have done very well, as I hope Bill has done. Of course there are others too: Peter Sartain, now archbishop of Seattle; Tony Taylor, now bishop of Little Rock; Kevin McCoy, former rector of the North American College; Tim Recker, pastor of St. Theodore’s down in Albert Lea; Minnesota; Rick Colletti, rector of the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Winona; Joe Morgan, pastor of Lake Placid, New York; Scott Marczuk, former rector of the cathedral in Little Rock, Arkansas; Bob Kropak and Steve Valenga, both pastors of parishes in Cleveland; Msgr. Mike Curran from the Brooklyn diocese….I could go on.
Good men they were (are). God bless them all and the work they do in the Church.
