Chicago native, former Green Bay Bishop Wycislo, 97, dies

Green Bay, Wis. (CNS) — Retired Bishop Aloysius J. Wycislo of Green Bay, at age 97 the oldest Catholic bishop in the United States, died Oct. 11. The former priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago was one of a handful of remaining U.S. bishops who attended all sessions of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s.

He was entombed at Allouez Catholic Mausoleum Chapel in Green Bay following an Oct. 15 funeral Mass at St. Francis Xavier Cathedral in Green Bay.

He is remembered fondly in the Archdiocese of Chicago by Father Norbert Zawistanowicz, pastor emeritus of Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish. Zawistanowicz was an associate there when then-Father Wycislo became pastor in 1959. “The first thing he did was let the associates take a two week vacation,” Zawistanowicz recalled. “Wycislo laughed and told us when we returned, ‘Never again.’” When he was made bishop in 1960, Zawistanowicz recalls the two “studied how to become a bishop together,” and he became the bishop’s master of ceremonies.

Bishop Wycislo headed the Green Bay Diocese from 1968 until his retirement in 1983.

Earlier, as field director of Catholic relief efforts during and after World War II, he directed a staff that resettled hundreds of thousands of displaced persons and established 262 welfare centers in 23 countries in Europe and the Near East.

During Vatican II, 1962-65, he and Polish Bishop Karol Wojtyla, later Pope John Paul II, regularly took long walks, talking and praying together, between council meetings. He said the pope recalled first meeting him in Poland in 1945, when then-Father Wycislo visited the country to assess postwar relief needs.

Born in Chicago on June 17, 1908, Bishop Wycislo was ordained a priest in 1934 following studies at Chicago archdiocesan seminaries.

From 1934 to 1940 he was an assistant pastor and youth ministry leader at St. Michael’s Parish in Chicago. He was named assistant director of Chicago archdiocesan Catholic Charities in 1939 and earned a master’s degree in social work from The Catholic University of America in Washington in 1942.

In 1943, when the U.S. bishops established War Relief Services—later renamed Catholic Relief Services—he was named field director for relief operations in the Middle East, India and Africa. When the war ended, he moved his headquarters to Paris.

Over the next decade he and his staff of 125 were responsible for resettling some 600,000 to 700,000 war refugees. He also organized postwar relief and development programs in France, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania. He was made assistant executive director of CRS in 1948 and held that post for the next decade.

For his work in relief and rehabilitation, he was decorated by a number of foreign governments, including Italy, France, Poland, Belgium, Spain and several countries in Latin America.

He initiated the U.S. church’s immigration program for displaced persons from Germany and Austria and was director of the National Catholic Resettlement Council.

Then-Father Wycislo also served as a Vatican observer to the United Nations from 1954 to 1956.

He left CRS in 1959 to return to Chicago as a pastor, and the following year he was made an auxiliary bishop of Chicago.

As head of Chicago’s liturgical commission from 1964 to 1968, he oversaw the first stages of liturgical renewal across the archdiocese after the council.

At a press conference last April 2, when Pope John Paul died, Bishop Wycislo said that during Vatican II he and the future pope often ate, relaxed and hiked together, often .

Ray Siegfried, Review Board member, dies

Tulsa, Okla. (CNS) — Ray H. Siegfried II, a Catholic business leader and philanthropist who was one of the first members of the U.S. bishops’ National Review Board on clergy sexual abuse, died in Tulsa Oct. 6 following a four-year struggle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. He was 62.

His funeral Mass was celebrated Oct. 10 at Holy Family Cathedral in Tulsa. Burial was in the University of Notre Dame’s Cedar Grove Cemetery. Siegfried was the university’s biggest benefactors.

In the church Siegfried was a lay affiliate of the Augustinians and a Knight of Malta.

In July 2002 he was named to the 13-member National Review Board, established by the nation’s bishops to review the progress of U.S. dioceses in dealing with clergy sexual abuse of minors, responding to victims and establishing safe environment programs to prevent future abuse. The board also oversaw major studies into the nature and extent and the causes and context of child abuse by U.S. Catholic clergy.

Although he had been diagnosed 10 months earlier with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Siegfried took an active role in the board’s work, attending meetings and news conferences in a wheelchair.

In a 2004 interview he said he was “mortified” at the molestation of minors by priests, and helping the church correct the problem had become his passion. “I firmly believe this is one of the missions God has for me,” he said.

When Siegfried’s term on the National Review Board ended this June, he was replaced by his wife, Milann H. Siegfried, former chairwoman of the board of St. John Medical Center in Tulsa.