June 19, 2009
Clergy appointments include first pastorate and ‘missionary coming home’
By PAUL R. LEINGANG (Message editor)
Seven parishes in the Diocese of Evansville will see changes in their pastoral staff within the next few weeks.
Father Gary Kaiser, now an associate pastor at three churches in Gibson County, will become pastor of his first parish, Precious Blood Church in Jasper. His appointment is effective July 8.
Father John Sasse, an Evansville native who has served almost 20 years with the Legionnaires of Christ, has been assigned as an associate pastor with Father Tony Ernst at Sts. Peter and Paul Church in Haubstadt, Holy Cross Church in Fort Branch and St. Bernard Church in Snake Run. Father Sasse will also serve as Sacramental Minister for the Spanish Speaking Ministry in the diocese. His assignment is effective June 24.
Father James Koressel will formally add Sts. Peter and Paul Church in Petersburg to his pastoral responsibilities, continuing as pastor of St. Peter Church in Montgomery and All Saints Church in Cannelburg, effective June 17.
As previously announced, the newly ordained Father Ryan Hilderbrand will be associate pastor of the the parishes in Montgomery, Cannelburg and Petersburg.
Also previously annnounced, Father John Breidenbach, pastor of Precious Blood Church in Jasper since June 2004, has begun health leave.
Father Koressel, 65, recently observed the fortieth anniversary of his ordination, May 17, 1969. He has served at parishes in Jasper, Washington, Vincennes, Linton, Jasonville, Bloomfield, Princeton and Boonville.
He was named pastor of St. Peter in Montgomery and All Saints in Cannelburg in July 2002, and has served as temporary administrator of Sts. Peter and Paul Church in Petersburg since January 2009.
The previous pastor in Petersburg, Father Edward Schneider, died Dec. 29, 2008.
Sts. Peter and Paul has 112 families, according to the 2009 Yearbook and Directory of the Diocese of Evansville.
St. Peter Church was established in Montgomery in 1818; it is the second oldest parish in the diocese (after St. Francis Xavier in Vincennes). There are 244 families in the parish, which also has responsibility for St. Patrick Chapel in Corning and the facilities at the former St. Michael Church in Daviess County.
All Saints Church in Cannelburg has 50 families. All Saints and St. Peter have a combined religious education program.
Father Kaiser, 39, was ordained June 3, 2006, and assigned to Sts. Peter and Paul in Haubstadt, Holy Cross in Fort Branch and St. Bernard in Snake Run.
Precious Blood Church, his first pastorate, has 688 families and a parish school for prekindergarten through fifth grade.
Father Kaiser said he is “certainly excited about the new appointment” but he will miss the people of the parishes he has been serving.
He spent the summer before his ordination at Precious Blood Church, so he has already begun to get to know the people with whom he will be ministering.
He also noted a bit of irony in the fact that he has been active in the Source and Summit movement in the diocese, which focuses on the Eucharist, and now he is being assigned to a parish named in honor of the Precious Blood.
Father Kaiser is currently making final arrangements for a pilgrimage he is leading to Italy in late June and early July, to sites associated with Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati.
Father John Joseph Sasse, 40, an Evansville native and a member of the Legionaries of Christ since 1989, has been appointed as associate pastor with Father Tony Ernst for Sts. Peter and Paul Church in Haubstadt, Holy Cross Church in Fort Branch and St. Bernard Church in Snake Run.
Father Sasse, fluent in five languages including Spanish, will also serve as Sacramental Minister for the Spanish Speaking Ministry in the diocese.
Father Sasse, who has taken vows as a member of the Legion, has an indult from Rome for a threeyear period of discernment, during which his allegience is transferred from his religious community superior to Bishop Gettelfinger. It is possible that the arrangment, with approval from Rome, will become permanent.
Father Sasse is the son of John Joseph “Joe” and Sharon Robuck Sasse of Evansville. After graduation from Memorial High School in Evansville in 1986, and early studies with the Divine Word Society in Epworth, Iowa, and at St. Meinrad Seminary, he entered the Legionaries of Christ in Cheshire, Conn., as a postulant (or candidate) in 1989.
His twoyear novitiate, begun in Connecticut, was completed in Curitiba, Brazil, where he learned Portuguese.
He returned to Connecticut for a year of Humanities studies, including Latin, Greek, homiletics and world history.
From 1992 to 1994, he served as Dean of Discipline at a primary school in Mexico. He went to Rome in 1994 and completed an undergraduate degree in 1995.
He and an Austrian member of the Legion spent the summer of 1995 working in youth camps in Germany, then he returned to Rome to work toward his licentiate. German is another of Father Sasse’s five languages.
During this period in Rome, he was sent to Poland for three months of vocation recruitment and he set up a teleconferencing site for the Legion in Rome.
He completed all requirements for his licentiate in philosophy in February 1998 while also completing his first year of theology by June that same year.
He interrupted his theology studies for various stints, fundraising twice in the United States, serving as Dean of Discipline at a school in Valencia in Spain and at another school in San Luis Potosi in Mexico.
He completed an undergraduate degree in Theology in 2002, and was ordained to the diaconate, June 29, 2002. He returned to Gemany for several months to work with youth groups.
He was ordained a priest, Dec. 24, 2002, in Rome, and began studies for an advance degree in theology.
In 2003, however, he was sent to do vocation recruiting in Brazil, and in 2004, to be chaplain at two schools in Monterey, Mexico.
In March 2007, he was sent to be an associate pastor in the Netherlands. Father Sasse, who had already acquired Portuguese, German, Italian and Spanish, added Dutch to his language skills.
While in the Netherlands, though, the Legionaries learned that their founder, a Mexican priest, Father Marcial Maciel Degollado, had fathered a daughter. Earlier allegations of sexual abuse of young men had not been acknowledged by the priest or the Legion.
Father Sasse left his assignment in the Netherlands in March 2009, visiting cousins in England and New York on his way home to Evansville. He met with Bishop Gettelfinger on April 16, and arrangements were made for him to begin his minstry in the diocese.
While he acknowledges that the revelation about the double life of the Legionaries’ founder is “disheartening,” Father Sasse said that he is happy to be home. And with his education and experience, “I think I can add a lot” to diocesan ministry.