March 5, 2010
Family, Cursillo community to celebrate 50th with Father Endress
By PAUL R. LEINGANG (Message editor)
A low-key celebration is planned by family members of Father Jim Endress on the occasion of his fiftieth anniversary as a priest. He was ordained April 3, 1960. Nieces and nephews, great nieces and nephews willhave a family dinner on April 3 this year — Holy Saturday — then join with him for Mass on Easter Sunday.
A reception is being planned by the Cursillo community at St. John the Baptist Church in Newburgh, on Sunday, April 18.
In the 50 years since Father Jim Endress was ordained, a lot of things have changed — in the Church and in his life. What hasn’t changed is the joy he finds in his ministry.
“I’ve enjoyed my priesthood very much” — said Father En-dress in a recent telephone interview — including early years as an associate pastor and high school teacher, his 16 years as a military chaplain, and the years that followed a bicycle accident that left him paralyzed and in a wheelchair.
Among the influences in his life were Benedictine Father Gabriel Verkamp, pastor of St. Benedict Church in Evansville. Jim and many students from the parish grade school went to St. Meinrad; Jim pursued his studies in high school and college at St. Meinrad, and then went to study theology in Inns-bruck.
Times have changed. St. Meinrad’s high school and college programs have closed, and the Innsbruck theologate now is a place for post-graduate work, not seminarians.
In 1960, “there were so many priests that there would be clergy assignments in January and June,” he recalled. After returning from Austria after the June appointments had been made, he was temporarily assigned to what was then the Pro-Cathedral of the Most Holy Trinity in Evansville. (Nowadays, he noted, some priests are assigned even before ordination.)
In January 1961 he was sent to the parish and the high school at St. John Church in Loogootee. Despite the awkwardness of starting to teach in the middle of the school year, and not having had any teaching experience before, he en-joyed his ministry in parish and school.
Some of his students went into military service after high school, and they told him about their experiences when they came home on leave.
“There was no priest shortage in the diocese then, and there was in the military,” he said. Father Endress was released for military service in 1965.
He enjoyed the ministry, pleased that the Church could provide a welcome ear to people serving in the military, including assignments in Korea, Vietnam and Germany. The chaplain received a bronze star for meritorious service in Vietnam, where he served during the height of the military build-up in 1669-1970.
In 1980, he returned to the United States with the rank of lieutenant colonel. While stationed at Fort Campbell, Ky., he had a bicycle accident as he swerved to avoid a car. His neck was broken, and his injuries left him paralyzed.
After a week at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C., he was sent to a veterans’ rehabilitiation center near Boston for his spinal cord injuries.
“I was a paratrooper and jumped out of airplanes about 80 times and never had a scratch,” he told the Message in 1982.
He recalls being kind of “stunned” at this turn of events, and wondering where he would be able to go with his priestly ministry.
In the years since his return to the diocese, Father Endress has continued his minstry, working for many years in the diocesan tribunal, helping out at parishes on weekends, and active in the Cursillo movement.
He recalls talking with priests of the diocese — Fathers James Brune, Sy Loehrlein, Ralph Schipp and Eugene Heerdink — who knew that he had made a Cursillo while in the military and urged him “to give it a shot.”
He found the ministry — as might be expected — enjoyable. “It was something I could do. I enjoyed it.” Other priests in active minstry have trouble finding time for Cursillo, he noted.
Father Endress continues to help out at parishes, enjoying the ability to meet people, celebrate the liturgy and the sacraments, and not have any administrative worries.
He also keeps in touch with some of his friends from military days.
What’s next? “I have never been able to plan much,” he responded to the question. “You kind-of react to whatever presents itself.”