Davenport’s new bishop leaves lasting impression in Ohio

By Barb Arland-Fye
The Catholic Messenger

Delphos Dairy Hut in northwestern Ohio bustled with business on a pleasant mid-August evening. Customers filled the picnic tables and lined the drive-up to enjoy ice cream cones, sundaes and shakes. Among them was the parish priest in Delphos, who just six weeks later would become the 10th Bishop of the Diocese of Davenport.

Teens and adults called out to then-Bishop-elect Dennis Walsh. Everyone seemed to know him in Delphos, a town of 7,000 people. Some 2,000 families in the Delphos area belong to St. John the Evangelist Parish there, one of three parishes Bishop-elect Walsh most recently led in the Diocese of Toledo.

“When are you leaving for Davenport?” asked a man in an SUV at the drive-up. His kids attend Delphos St. John’s Catholic School, which Bishop-elect Walsh led as head of school. The bishop-elect answered and the parent responded, “We’ve got you for a couple of more weeks.”

His response echoed the sentiment of Catholics in all three parishes that Bishop-elect Walsh led for nearly a decade — St. John’s in Delphos, St. John the Baptist in Landeck and St. Patrick in Spencerville. The Catholic Messenger spent a day-and-a-half in the Toledo Diocese with Bishop-elect Walsh to witness his ministry to the people who helped shape him as a leader.

The first afternoon, Aug. 14, the Messenger joined Bishop-elect Walsh and five Sisters of Notre Dame at Cabo Mexican Restaurant in Delphos. The sisters live in the convent next door to Delphos St. John’s School and across the street from the church. All of them had ministered with Bishop-elect Walsh in some capacity.

Preaching the Gospel

“I worked with Father Walsh on a boys’ Kairos retreat over 20 years ago,” Sister Deb Giles, SND, said. “When I relocated to Delphos I was happy to know he was pastor. He is deeply spiritual and equally humble. He has quite the sense of humor! He is incisive, prudent, wise, kind and not above hard work!” 

“Something very refreshing about Bishop-elect Walsh is that I have no sense of his political views from the pulpit. In these times, some priests do push one view or the other, but Bishop-elect Walsh sticks to preaching the Gospel. He is a still point of reason in the whirl of opinions! What a sadness to lose him at this time!” 

Sister Joella Marie Ruffing said Bishop-elect Walsh “has been a wonderful pastor to work with here at St. John’s. I look forward to his homilies because there is always a golden nugget in them to inspire my day. He is comfortable talking with students and adults and has a quick sense of humor. He has been very supportive of the faculty of the school and of the Sisters of Notre Dame who have ministered here for more than 100 years.”

Dinner ended in plenty of time for Bishop-elect Walsh to celebrate the Vigil Mass for the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary at the Landeck church, a 10-minute drive south of Delphos. “Are you my servers?” he asked two teens as they headed toward a side door of the church, and they smiled affirmatively. Bishop-elect Walsh walked to the front of the church to pose for a photo when a woman and young girl, wearing her princess dress, approached and the bishop-elect greeted them. The girl, about 6 years old, smiled radiantly as he chatted with her.

The power of ‘yes’

A faint smell of varnish lingered inside the newly restored church, which Bishop Daniel Thomas of the Toledo Diocese dedicated the previous weekend. In the sanctuary, a brilliant blue dome, symbolizing the star-filled sky over Bethlehem at Jesus’ birth, appears above a painting of John the Baptist baptizing Jesus. The Holy Spirit appears as a dove over them.

Bishop-elect Walsh gives much credit for the restoration project’s fruition to Sister Immacolata Scarogni, SCC, the parish manager of the Landeck and Spencerville parishes and pastoral associate

in Delphos. The two first worked together when both were assigned to a parish in the Bronx in the mid-1990s. While parishioners of all three parishes were sad to let go of Bishop-elect Walsh, they would have protested if Sister Immacolata left, he quipped. (She was out of town during the Messenger’s visit.)

His humility is among the attributes that parishioners of all three parishes identified often during interviews with the Messenger. They also appreciate Bishop-elect Walsh’s gift for delivering meaningful, relevant, relatable homilies. “I love his homilies,” said Pamela Brown of the Spencerville parish. “Every homily he has given I have been able to apply to some area of my life.”

During the vigil Mass at Landeck, Bishop-elect Walsh began his homily with a story about the suspense that engaged couples might experience when one partner prepares to pop the question, and the power of the response, “yes.” “What we celebrate today is Mary’s ‘yes.’ It is the ‘yes’ of the Blessed Mother in perfect obedience. ‘Blessed are those who are obedient to God’s will.’ Mary changed everything for us. It is our obedience that saves us, that transforms us. What happens to us, what awaits us … is foreshadowed in Mary’s obedience…,” Bishop-elect Walsh said.

After Mass, he stood in the back of the church to chat with parishioners, including the little girl he greeted before Mass. She showed him a drawing she created during Mass, which he complimented.

The ‘I-75 pastor’

Bishop-elect Walsh got into his car just before 8:30 a.m. Aug. 15 for the 95-minute drive to diocesan headquarters in Toledo. His leadership and participation on diocesan boards and committees required regular trips to Toledo, so much so that his colleagues jokingly said his parish was I-75 (the interstate route to Toledo).

Along the way, he pointed out Sandy Point Lake. “Almost every weekend we camped there,” he recalled of a favorite childhood experience with his parents Daniel and Marilyn, his older sister, Brenda and his younger brother, Craig. It was about a 20-minute drive from their home in Lima, Ohio where Daniel, who died in 2019, worked as a barber and Marilyn worked as a bank teller before moving on to Pepsi Beverages Co.

This trip to Toledo pertained to Delphos St. John’s Catholic School, where Bishop-elect Walsh served as head of school and which was to become a subsidiary of the parish. He was working out the final details at the Chancery. He said he could not have handled the responsibility for three parishes and serving as head of school without Sister Immacolata having taken on the administrative duties at two of the parishes.

Bishop-elect Walsh took the stairs to the bishop’s office, where Bishop Thomas greeted him with a handshake and a smile. Bishop-elect Walsh, a trusted advisor of Bishop Thomas for a decade, chaired the diocesan College of Consultors and previously chaired the Presbyteral Council, among other leadership responsibilities. “I’ve learned a lot in these last 10 years,” Bishop-elect Walsh said on the drive back to Delphos. Through the diocesan responsibilities that Bishop Thomas entrusted him with, Bishop-elect Walsh said, “people were able to see what gifts I bring to the table.”

Asked to specify those gifts, he named three. First, “I don’t have any agenda; I try to understand all aspects of a problem.” Second, “I have a good pastoral response. I take it (an issue) all in. Bishop Thomas always respected that. I would tell him what I think and not what I thought he wanted to hear.” Third, “I get a lot of input from people. Sometimes, people say I’m too slow to make a decision. It’s usually pretty well thought out.”

A passion for the priesthood

After meetings wrapped up, Bishop-elect Walsh headed out for a quick lunch with Father Jacob “Jay” Livecchi, who served his pastoral year as a seminarian under the mentorship of then-Father Walsh. Father Livecchi chose his mentor to vest him at his ordination this past June. Bishop-elect Walsh knew about his appointment to lead the Diocese of Davenport but “we requested the Nuncio that we be allowed to postpone the announcement until after the Toledo ordinations,” the bishop-elect said. While Father Livecchi will miss his mentor, he is grateful that Bishop-elect Walsh is just a text message or phone call away from sharing advice and insights.

The bishop-elect has 32 years of priesthood from which to share his lived experience of his vocation.  “Being a priest has been the greatest joy of my life, and I have cherished every moment of my priesthood. Each day, I thank God for the gift and privilege of this vocation,” Bishop-elect Walsh said during the June 25 press conference in Davenport announcing his appointment.

“I always wanted to be a priest,” he later told the Messenger. “My parents always supported and nurtured it.” They taught him a love for the Eucharist and the Church, to love the Lord above all things, and the importance of prayer. The family always attended Mass and Daniel and Marilyn made sure their kids, who attended public school, made it to religious education classes.  Bishop-elect Walsh recalled with a smile the blizzard of 1978. “Everything was shut down but we went to Mass. We said, ‘Dad, Mass is cancelled.’” His dad persisted. “We were about the only ones in church.”

Redemptorist priests of the Baltimore Province serve his home parish, St. Gerard Church in Lima, and inspired Bishop-elect Walsh to discern his vocation to the priesthood with the Redemptorists. He was ordained in 1992 and treasured his experiences and placements, which were far from his hometown of Lima, Ohio. He served parishes in Puerto Rico and in challenging urban areas in Baltimore and in the Bronx before discerning his vocation to diocesan priesthood in his home diocese, which also allowed him to be closer to his family.

Musings on the road

The commute to and from Toledo on Aug. 15 provided plenty of time for Bishop-elect Walsh to reflect on his priesthood. After his ordination, the Redemptorists sent him to Puerto Rico for Spanish language immersion while serving in parishes there. Five priests served 16 parishes. On a rotation, each parish celebrated Sunday Mass three out of four weeks. The fourth week was a Sunday Celebration in the Absence of a Priest. If parishioners chose to do so, they could attend Mass at one of the other parishes. “It worked well,” he said of the collaborative ministry that allowed parishioners to “maintain their parish identity.”

He contrasted that response to addressing scarcity with the closing of parishes in the U.S., which he believes has been a traumatic experience for many and has led people to drop out of the life of the Church. “We’re a sacramental Church,” he said. “We associate things and places with our encounters with Christ. They are not just buildings. We think about parish planning in terms of efficiency. It’s not about efficiency…. It is a balancing act.”

Bishop-elect Walsh appreciates Pope Francis’ synodal approach to being Church as an invaluable way to discern how to move forward. However, making the effort to listen to one another is challenging in the present era, the bishop-elect said.  “We’re so polarized in our ideologies. We’ve lost the ability to have conversations anymore. … We come down to supporting constituencies at any cost.”

‘You’re taking away my priest’

Returning to the rectory in Delphos in the late afternoon, Bishop-elect Walsh took a break before heading out for Mass at the Spencerville parish, about a 15-minute drive south of Delphos. He was early, and 11 adults were praying the rosary while two young boys attempted to keep themselves occupied. As the bishop-elect waited to process into the church, a woman rushed in, clearly worried about being late. He smiled and asked how she was doing.

His focus on Mary’s “yes” in his homily that night and the night before pointed to his own life. Mary said yes out of obedience to God, in contrast to Eve’s disobedience, he said, even though Mary did not understand fully what her saying “yes” meant.

Before and after Mass, Bishop-elect Walsh stopped by a few pews for a quick chat with individuals and families. Among them were Scott and Pamela Brown and their two young grandchildren, Waylon, 3, and Wrenley, 2, who brought up the offertory gifts during Mass. “I’m really going to miss him,” Scott, a convert to Catholicism, said after Mass while showing his grandkids how to make the sign of the cross after blessing themselves at the holy water font. “You’re taking away my priest,” he said, addressing the Davenport Diocese through the Messenger. “We were so blessed to have him,” Pamela said. “You also are blessed.”

The people of the Davenport Diocese are “receiving a very good shepherd,” said parishioner Bill Wisher, adding, “His love for us as a parish is overwhelming. His homilies are great; he makes them for us.”

Bishop-elect’s mother shares memories

After Mass, Bishop-elect Walsh drove to his mother’s house in Lima, about a 25-minute drive from Spencerville. Marilyn Walsh has lived in this house since 1961, when it was new. She and Daniel bought the house one year after they married. It is an attractive, cozy home with a well-kept lawn, which Marilyn mows herself. She and her son posed for photos outside the house.

Marilyn and Daniel raised their three children, Brenda, Dennis and Craig, in this house. She reminded her older son that Brenda’s birthday was that day. “You better send her a text,” she said, as she paged through family photo albums looking for photos for the Messenger to borrow.

Being a priest “was all he ever wanted to do,” Marilyn recalled. The Redemptorists made a lasting impression on the parents as well as Bishop-elect Walsh. The religious community has a devotion to Mary under the title of Our Mother of Perpetual Help, and a framed icon of that image hangs above the fireplace in the Walsh family’s home.

When he was in ninth grade in public school, Bishop-elect Walsh visited a Redemptorist preparatory high school for boys considering the priesthood. “I came back and asked if I could go and they ‘crushed that desire,’” he joked. “We did not,” his mother said, laughing at his teasing. “I think you’re better for it. That’s awfully young to be leaving home and making that decision,” she said.  However, she and her husband told their son that if he wanted to enter the seminary after high school, he could “go for it,” Marilyn said.

The future bishop led a typical childhood and did well in school, Marilyn said. “He didn’t have a lot of hobbies. He liked to torment his brother and sister,” she said, getting a reaction from him.

Bishop-elect Walsh’s favorite meal was Hamburger Helper, the beef and noodle variety, or mac and cheese. He cannot stand fish and avoids vegetables. Mother and son joked about Fridays during Lent being tough for him. She would occasionally make tuna casserole, which his siblings enjoyed but he did not. She didn’t force her kids to eat what was served but everyone received the same meal, she said.

Bishop-elect Walsh left for the Redemptorist seminary in Connecticut after high school and then spent the next nine years in formation for the priesthood, followed by another five or six years in priest assignments in Puerto Rico, Baltimore and the Bronx. “You get used to it,” Marilyn said of her son being away. When he returned to his home diocese, he would call her on short notice and ask if she wanted to join him at the county fair, which he visited to see the children of the families in his parish showing livestock or 4-H displays. It was one of the ways to be present to the people he served, he said.

“It is the people of the parishes that I have pastored that have taught me to be a pastor,” he told the gathering at the June 25 announcement of his appointment as Bishop of the Davenport Diocese. He expressed confidence that they, “the people of this diocese, will teach me to be a good bishop and shepherd.”

Watch vespers and ordination
Vespers: Sept. 26, 7 p.m., St. John Vianney Parish, Bettendorf
https://www.youtube.com/live/A3zv93_9DlM
Ordination: Sept. 27, 2 p.m. Sacred Heart Cathedral, Davenport
https://www.youtube.com/live/aDNm_Yez8YU