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Three diocesan priests with 146 years of ministry retire in July

Story by LIZ QUIRIN
Messenger editor

Three diocesan priests with 146 years of service will retire this summer.

Msgr. Donald Eichenseer has a full schedule this summer before he retires from St. Bernard in Albers and St. Damian in Damiansville.

“I asked the bishop for retirement Aug. 1,” Msgr. Eichenseer said recently.

That would give him the opportunity, he said, to attend the dedication of a new altar June 26 at St. Damian, the parish picnic July 9 and the celebration of the 150th anniversary July 23-24 of St. Damian’s and Damiansville.

He said he had planned on retiring this year after all of the upcoming festivities, and when he began to have health problems and the oxygen tank became his companion, he knew he was making the right decision.

Msgr. Eichenseer said he has “found such a brotherhood with the priests of Clinton County” after he arrived as pastor of the two parishes in 2003.

He also talked about the “way they work together,” and “their support for Mater Dei (Catholic High School) is outstanding.”

The number of Hispanic parishioners at the two parishes has grown over the years, and Sister Joan Stoverink, ASC, directs religious education at the two parishes and is pastoral associate in Damiansville.

“When I went to the parish, I could tell Sister Joan hoped I would be open to welcoming them,” he said.

After beginning his ministry in the parish, he saw the needs of the Hispanics and broadened his parish ministry.
“I saw their plight, and I saw they needed to be ministered to,” he said. “Jesus didn’t ask why should I help you.”

Msgr. Eichenseer had some experience with people arriving at a parish from another country. At his first pastorate in 1973 at St. Joseph in Olney, in the mid-1970s, the parish helped a family relocate from Vietnam.

“The parish was very welcoming,” he said. While the family “came with meager belongings,” the parishioners made sure they had what they needed.

While Msgr. Eichenseer, a native of Hecker, was ordained May 27, 1961 at St. Peter Cathedral by Bishop Albert R. Zuroweste, his assignments as an associate and pastor gave him a wide view of the diocese.

Beginning at St. Philip in East St. Louis and St. Henry and Blessed Sacrament in Belleville, in 1969 he was assigned as a full-time teacher at Notre Dame Academy in Belleville and part-time associate at St. Clare in O’Fallon.

While in Olney, he also assumed the pastorate of St. Joseph in Stringtown in 1977.

He returned to St. Clare in O’Fallon as pastor and then to St. Teresa in Belleville before beginning his current pastorate at St. Damian in Damiansville and St. Bernard in Albers.

He was a member of the diocesan executive team of Worldwide Marriage Encounter, 1979-1981.

In diocesan ministries he has served as a member of the Presbyteral Council, the Personnel Board, the Board of Education, both Mater Dei and Althoff Catholic High School boards, the Review Board, and the Clergy Aid Board, and an advocate at the diocesan Tribunal.

He was named a monsignor in May 2000.

“Being of service is what most priests are concerned about,” he said.

Offering that service as a member of the Diocesan Review Board is one of his most difficult times, he said.
“It knocked the skids out from under me,” he said of the meetings about priests, some of whom were put on administrative leave because of sexual misconduct with minors.

However, his parish ministry has been truly rewarding. “I learned something in every place I went,” he said. “Serving in parishes stretched me to grow internally, to see how good people are, and their goodness was returned to me” in the way they accepted and responded to me. Msgr. Eichenseer is looking forward to retirement in August to the Hincke-Sense Residence for Priests.

Father Albert Eugene Kreher will retire from active ministry in July and move to the Hincke-Sense Residence for priests.

“I’m scared,” he said recently of his retirement plan. “Since I was in second grade, I wanted to be a priest.”
Father Kreher attended Piopolis School, McLeansboro High School and St. Henry’s Seminary in Belleville. He completed his priesthood education at St. Meinrad Seminary in Indiana.

For Father Kreher, priesthood included “being a pastor with a group of people I can call mine and they can call me theirs.” That’s what it has meant to Father Kreher since he was appointed to his first pastorate.

Now, getting ready to retire makes him uneasy. “I’ve never been retired before,” he said and smiled.

However, congestive heart failure and problems with breathing have forced the issue, and he is in the process of packing at St. Mary Parish in Trenton where he has been the pastor for the last three years.

Father Kreher’s first assignments were as parochial vicar at St. Dominic, Breese, and Holy Family, Cahokia.
He served as pastor in Lively Grove, Coulterville, Lawrenceville and Bridgeport.

While at Lawrenceville, Father Kreher was chaplain for the Buffalo Trace Boy Scout Council.

From 1982-1990, he served as pastor at St. George in New Baden before becoming pastor at St. Agatha, New Athens from 1990-1995.

He served as pastor at St. Joseph’s in Prairie du Rocher from 1995 to 2008 when he went to St. Mary Parish in Trenton.

Father Kreher described his time in Lively Grove and Coulterville: “It’s a super nice place, and they are great people who can teach you what it is to be church.”

He hastened to add that he has enjoyed all of his assignments where each place taught him something about life, about ministry and about spirituality.

At this time in his life as he prepares to retire, he describes with fondness his time at St. Mary’s. “Trenton has been a time of affirmation and deep spiritual growth,” Father Kreher said.

Father Kreher said a child walked up to him at St. Mary’s “grinning” and said he had baptized the youngster’s dad. “That was just the first; it was very affirming. I’m part of the their ‘photo album,’ their family history.

As with his beginning in Trenton, Father Kreher said: “This is a good place to end this part of my ministry.”
With varied interests, Father Kreher said he would be using a “digiscope” to watch and photograph birds after his move to the Hincke-Sense Residence. “I’ve been watching birds all my life.”

After July 1, he expects to be “in the neighborhood” in Belleville. He’s looking forward to gathering with other retired priests for fellowship and spiritual growth. It happens, he said, everyplace he has lived, so he doesn’t expect retirement to be any different.

One thing he will miss, he said, is the camaraderie and genuine caring of the priests of Clinton County.

The group meets regularly to share a meal and talk, and in the process, they offer support to one another.

Again, thinking about his move, he wishes the packing were finished and he had sorted through his belongings. While it’s difficult to let go of things you’ve collected, he said, “if I’m going to grow spiritually I knew I would need to create distance between me and my stuff.”

With that in mind, he has given away some of his books, but he now has a Kindle so he doesn’t need quite so many hardback books.

And he’s not sure how easy it will be to fly kites at the residence, but folks may see him in March giving it a try.

Msgr. Joseph Lawler, 75, was unpacking last week instead of packing in preparation for his retirement.

He was giving a few ASC sisters a tour of the property and buildings at St. John the Baptist in Piopolis, a place where the ASCs have deep roots.

The sisters accompanied Msgr. Lawler to the parish cemetery behind the rectory where they prayed for one of the first ASCs to come to the diocese in the 1800s but he also gave them a tour of the rectory where the sisters later lived and showed them the school building, giving them a detailed history lesson about how and when the first sisters arrived in Piopolis and how they began their ministry there.

After 28 years in Piopolis, Msgr. Lawler has looked into the parish’s history, and for parishioners there, he has become part of their history as well.

The parishioners “are part of my extended family,” Msgr. Lawler said. “I have baptized many of them, witnessed their marriages and baptized their children.”

Looking at the history of his own priesthood this year as he celebrated his 50th anniversary of ordination, Msgr. Lawler said it has been a great journey to this point in his life, beginning on his ordination day May 27, 1961 at St. Peter Cathedral by Bishop Albert R. Zuroweste.

The youngest of the eight being ordained that year, he said he approached that day with thought and prayer.
“When I went to the seminary, I said I would study for the priesthood,” he said. “If it was meaningful and it fit, I would go another year.”

Obviously, the fit was good, and he said, “the yoke was easy.”

In his early years as a priest, first as an associate at Queen of Peace Parish in Belleville, he marveled then at the amount of respect people had for priests.

One older man at the parish engaged then Father Lawler about life and theology. “He was asking me about my life, and I was only 25 years old at the time,” he said.

In the following years, he was an associate at St. Joseph in Murphysboro, where he was also the chaplain at St. Joseph’s Hospital. His final assignment as an associate was at St. Stephen in Caseyville, ending in 1967.

In that year he was named the chaplain at St. Teresa Academy in East St. Louis, and a year later the temporary administrator of Sacred Heart Parish in Dupo, while also serving as a part-time assistant at St. Martin of Tours in Washington Park and deanery Catholic Youth Organization moderator.

Msgr. Lawler received his first pastorate assignment at St. Patrick in Enfield in 1969 and in 1971 was named the pastor of St. Stephen in Flora. In 1977 he was named the pastor of St. Joseph in Ridgway and also served for four years as the pastor of St. Joseph in Equality.

In 1983 he was assigned to the pastorate of St. John the Baptist in Piopolis, and in 1998 also of St. Clement in McLeansboro and St. John Nepomucene in Dahlgren. He was named a monsignor in 2000.

He serves as the Dean of the East Deanery and for many years was the diocesan director of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference.

Raised on a farm near Pond Settlement, Msgr. Lawler knew about building materials and how to work. In February 1976, a devastating 7.5 earthquake hit Guatemala where this diocese has ties. He gathered supplies, loaded a truck and drove to Guatemala to help in the reconstruction at El Progreso.

He stayed for a month constructing homes in a neighborhood he suggested should be called Ascensión Colonia (Ascension neighborhood).

Returning three other times to work, Msgr. Lawler has a special place in his heart for Guatemala.

Whether in Central America or southern Illinois, Msgr. Lawler said he has “always taken things one day at a time, and any day I needed help it was always there.”

While he is looking forward to retirement, he looks back on a rich and full life with his own family and his extended family at the parish.

“I have a tremendous admiration for my father and my mother,” he said, noting his mother Lucille Duffy Lawler lived with him in Piopolis the last eight years of her life.

“She was dancing on a Sunday and died that Wednesday,” he said in describing the way his mother lived.

His parents are buried at St. Patrick in Pond Settlement where he said he already has his tombstone.

Msgr. Lawler will be retiring in July to the family farm where he grew up.

“It’s been a wonderful 50 years,” he said. “The Lord has been there with me when I needed help” every step of the way.