Column Stuck in rectory with a curmudgeon and a bishops
ghost
By TIM UNSWORTH
Rocco Facchini practically bleeds
Chianti Classico. He is as rich as the wine and as generous as a plate of
linguini carbonara.
He spent 12 years in seminary preparing for the Chicago
archdiocese, an institution not known for its great love of Italian candidates.
Its likely that there were only 20 Italian-American priests in the entire
archdiocese. Because Rocco was a lovable guy, his passage through the
ecclesiastical lockstep system was relatively painless.
Roccos parents came to Chicago from central Italy near Rome.
His mother was a devout soul who was honored to have a son in the priesthood.
She knew nothing of haunted rectories.
Rocco asked for an Italian posting but ended up in a mixed and
deteriorating parish because the pastor there wanted a curate and knew that he
had a better chance of getting one if he asked for an Italian that others
didnt want.
Before Vatican II, Chicago clergy had to be Irish, Polish or
German. The rest were considered the shakings of the bag. But the shrewd pastor
of St. Charles Borromeo Parish wanted someone to work the Tuesday night bingo
game and figured correctly that hed do better if he told the archbishop
that Italians were moving in. They werent, of course. That is how Rocco
was assigned to work with one of the worst pastors in the vast archdiocese.
As he rode the bus to his first assignment at what was even then
known as the haunted rectory, Rocco wondered what would be tougher:
working with a disgruntled, calcified pastor or living with the gentle ghost of
a previous one. Could he endure a functioning agnostic who padlocked the
refrigerator, allowed one helping to the curate and fed the rest to his dog,
and who had a relationship with his housekeeper that would have given a
canonist the vapors? Or should he somehow befriend one of the early pastors who
had become a bishop, and who had died in 1927, still longing for his old
parish?
Peter J. Muldoon -- a perfect name for an Irish-American
poltergeist -- was that early pastor of St. Charles Borromeo Parish. Almost
from his ordination day, he was in the fast lane -- a talented, pastoral
narrowback (Irish-American) who was rapidly catching up with the FBI
(foreign-born Irish) greenhorn clergy. His archbishop, Patrick A. Feehan, was
FBI, but he insisted on the introduction and development of American-born
clergy.
Muldoon knew how to cultivate a growing complex population at St.
Charles. He worked well with the steam heat Irish (called such because they
lived in rented, steam-heated flats as opposed to homes.) In 1901, Feehan named
Peter Muldoon his auxiliary bishop and moved him into the archbishops
mansion facing Lincoln Park. The appointment didnt sit well with some of
the priests who had come from across the pond and who imagined that they would
run the American church until hell froze over.
An oddball country priest, an FBI named Jeremiah Crowley, took a
particular dislike to Peter Muldoon, in part because Crowley had scarlet
fever and Muldoon had sailed past him. Crowley joined with two city
pastors and vilified Muldoon, dirtying him up with untrue stories that never
went away. Crowley later wrote several books attacking poor Muldoon. Crowley
eventually quit the priesthood and the church and died at a county hospital in
1922, far removed from the church and bishops hat he had sought.
In 1908, Muldoon was appointed the founding bishop of Rockford,
Ill. Its likely that he might have succeeded to Chicago, but the gossip
had weakened his image. He remained in Rockford until his death in 1927. Bishop
Muldoon had always wanted to be buried at St. Charles Borromeo, just behind the
altar in the church he had built. However, most bishops are buried in their
dioceses. So, Muldoon rests in Rockford.
He asked that his episcopal ring be sent to St. Charles Borromeo.
The ring never made it to the parish. It mysteriously disappeared. For decades
people said that Muldoon haunted the parish in search of his ring.
Roccos pastor had raised bingo to the level of a sacrament.
Within his first week, the idealistic young priest discovered that his primary
apostolate was to serve as a pit boss for the Tuesday night bingo. Seminary
ideals had been reduced to peddling bingo cards while his pastor chanted the
letters and numbers like the litany of the saints -- and skimmed a few bucks
from each game.
Rocco had barely settled in his curates quarters when he was
startled by intermittent manifestations. There were noises, slammed doors,
barking dogs, moving furniture, radios suddenly turning on, darkened rooms lit,
walls turning hot and cold. Often, the sweet smell of lilacs permeated the
rectory and the sanctuary. Even the burglar alarm hidden behind a hallway clock
would somehow ring.
Largely because it was a neighborhood defined by crime that had
increased since prohibition times, Rocco kept the door to his quarters locked.
Yet he often returned to his room to find the door open. Rocco found himself
talking to Muldoon. Im your friend, Peter, he would whisper
behind his locked door. Just talk to me. But when he opened the
door of his quarters, he found the corridors quiet and in good order.
One day a priest friend came to visit. While he waited for Rocco,
he noticed a quiet priest at work in the rectory office. When Rocco arrived and
later pointed to Muldoons picture, the priest shouted: Thats
him! Thats the priest I saw! There was, in fact, a portrait of
Muldoon hanging in a heavy frame that was bolted to the wall in the corridor.
One day, Rocco and the pastor found the portrait on the floor. Hes
out to get me! the pastor wailed. A few years later, the pastor wangled
another pastorate and escaped Muldoons spirit.
Curates came and went at Charles Borromeo. One was a brilliant
scholar who worked at the chancery. Another became a bishop. But most were
simply good journeymen priests, one of whom said to Muldoon: Dont
[mess] with me, Muldoon or Ill kill ya!
Rocco survived in this clerical gulag for four years. In 1960, he
persuaded the bishop to assign him to a genuinely Italian parish. Seven years
later, St. Charles Borromeo was closed. Church, convent, school and rectory
were sold and razed to make room for a medical center.
After 15 years, Rocco resigned from active ministry and became a
property manager for a large real estate firm. He married Della, and the couple
raised two sons, both of whom have collaborated on Roccos book
(Muldoon: A True Chicago Ghost Story: The Untold Tales of a Haunted
Rectory), which is to be published next year by Lake Claremont Press,
Chicago. Rocco Facchini waited 40 years to write it all down.
Roccos haunted rectory is one more proof of the divinity of
the church. No other branch of the Christian church could survive such lunacy.
Thirty-five years after the parish was leveled, senior clergy gather in other
rectories and talk about Muldoon. The Scrooge-like pastor left town, and Rocco
became a loving husband and father, still as faithful to his church as a parish
usher. Bingo is no longer a sacrament, and for 14 years the cardinal archbishop
of Chicago was Joseph Bernardin, an Italian-American.
God, its a great church!
Tim Unsworth writes from Chicago where he prays to Peter
Muldoon. Hes at unsworth@megsinet.net
National Catholic Reporter, March 29,
2002
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