![]() He returned to the Franciscans in 1983 and soon headed to San Antonio to study Spanish. The stresses of that work brought about severe clinical depression for Zawada, and he ultimately took a year-and-a-half leave of absence from the priesthood. In the early 1970s, he lived and worked among the poor and gang members on Chicago's North Side. His first assignment took him to the Philippines. He made his first vows a year later, his solemn vows in August 1963 and was ordained a priest on June 13, 1964. In 1955, Zawada entered the Franciscan community. Later in life, Blessed Archbishop Óscar Romero became another of his heroes. In a 2006 interview conducted by The Nevada Test Site Oral History Project at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, he said he felt called to the priesthood from an early age, drawn to the compassion and values of Jesus, as well as the example of St. Zawada was born Apoutside Gary, Indiana, the second oldest of seven children to his Polish immigrant parents. … He was always there for the underdogs." "And wherever there was somebody in need of somebody to stand by 'em, he was there, even in prison. ![]() "Wherever he heard of a cause, he was there," Vitale said. "He just didn't believe in second-class citizens … so in terms of the Catholic Church, the idea that women would ever be treated as unequal to men was unacceptable to him," Kelly said. Zawada's convictions also led him to believe that women had a right to ordination in the Catholic Church - a belief that resulted in his removal from public ministry by the Vatican after he concelebrated a liturgy with a woman priest during a 2011 protest of the School of the Americas. And that was his faith, that he was following God's will," Gannon said. "He always would say he believed what he did was God's will. James Gannon, provincial minister of the Franciscan Friars of the Assumption BVM Province, in Franklin, Wisconsin, called his fellow friar "a prophet for peace and justice." border, those caught amid war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the poor and gang members of Chicago, the imprisoned and others decades-deep in the peace movement, Zawada was a friend to all.įranciscan Fr. Whether Central American refugees at the U.S. His friends and fellow activists remember Zawada as a humble servant of humanity with a droll sense of humor, a gentle man with a heart large enough for all and incapable of offense, a priest who most identified with the down and dejected. Zawada's belief in nonviolence led him across the globe: Guatemala, Iraq, the West Bank, the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona and Texas, and numerous military bases and facilities across the country. "He greatly loved Jesus and the chance to follow a nonviolent Jesus and exemplify Franciscan values of living simply and sharing resources," said Kathy Kelly, a Chicago peace activist and co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. Louie Vitale told NCR, the two frequent companions during protests against nuclear weapons, drones and wars and conflicts. Francis to the end," his longtime friend Franciscan Fr. To Zawada, it reaffirmed that this was the place he belonged, where his vocation as a priest had called him.Ī quiet but persistent presence in the anti-nuclear and peace movements of the past three decades, Zawada died peacefully July 25 at the Milwaukee Catholic Home continuing care facility. The experience, Zawada later recalled, triggered a sort of muscle-memory event to a quarter century earlier when in making his vows he lay prostrate before the altar. Shortly after he and another activist broke into the silo site - the priest celebrated a liturgy on the hatch - armed soldiers escorted them away and ordered they lay face-first on the ground with their arms outstretched until they were handcuffed. It was August 1988, in the midst the Missouri Peace Planting campaign against nuclear weapons. Jerry Zawada took his solemn vows as a Franciscan friar, he wasn't in a church celebrating the anniversary but instead sitting on top of a nuclear missile silo in northwest Missouri.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |