'It has really been something'
ASHEBORO — For a man who once thought he wanted to be doctor, the past 35 years serving as a priest have given Father Michael Klepacki an opportunity to bring healing of a spiritual kind to men and women around the globe.
It has been quite an adventure for this Asheboro native and former parishioner at St. Joseph Church who was ordained to the priesthood in the Diocese of Charlotte at St. Joseph Church on Holy Thursday in 1978 by then Bishop Michael F. Begley.
Father Klepacki began his priestly ministry at Our Lady of Grace Church in Greensboro, then served as pastor in Spruce Pine, Burnsville and Linville before moving to St. Joan of Arc Church in Asheville, where he spent another six years. Then his vocation took him out of the diocese: he became a chaplain with the U.S. Navy.
For 22 years he traveled the world with the Navy and the Marines – going to Japan, the Black Sea, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Spain, Turkey, Greece, the Persian Gulf and Guam – as well as serving at Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, on the USS George Washington aircraft carrier, on the USS Bataan aircraft carrier in the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina and at the Naval Base in Norfolk, Va.
"We'd get on the helicopters (from the USS Baton after Hurricane Katrina) and fly all day and all evening into New Orleans the first six weeks after the hurricane," he recalls. "That was terrible ... I'm a critical instant stress debriefer, and I would fly on the missions and at night I would debrief all the flight crews and the rescue squads."
During his military career Father Klepacki also took helicopters to go from ship to ship to celebrate Mass for the men and women in uniform. And he often slept on the ground just like the troops serving both at home and overseas.
"Sleeping on the ground on a rock at Camp Lejuene is the same as sleeping on the ground in Romania," Father Klepacki jokes as he fondly remembers his military service.
He also headed up a new office at the Navy, serving as the commanding officer of a fleet ministry program, training and assigning 22 chaplains to ships and battle groups for the deployed and enlisted religious programs.
His last overseas appointment took him to Guam, where he was the force chaplain for the Naval region there.
Father Klepacki is back in the Charlotte diocese now, filling in at parishes all over the western half of North Carolina and doing something he says he's always wanted to do: helping out his brother priests.
"It's so good to be back home! I've always had a desire to be a priest for priests somehow. So what I do is cover parishes when the priests need to get away, when they're sick, so every weekend I am usually somewhere different."
He says he enjoys meeting parishioners at the diverse parishes he visits.
"I get to see so many people, which is great! It's neat – it's like having multiple parishes."
Father Klepacki likes remaining active and being a help to other priests.
He also offers a bit of advice for the laity and also for men discerning a call to the priesthood:
"If you see someone who you think might have a vocation, bring it up with them," he says. That's what happened to him, when he switched from eyeing a medical career to a priestly vocation after a Baptist preacher once encouraged him to pursue the priesthood if he was feeling called to it.
He adds, "And if you are a man who feels you may have a vocation, seek out a priest you feel comfortable with. See what they do. Take a trip to a seminary. Find someone you can talk to. Don't keep it inside."
— SueAnn Howell, senior reporter
NEW YORK — The Redemptorists offer prayers of thanks to God for their confreres who are celebrating jubilee anniversaries of ordination to the priesthood this year, including Redemptorist Father Michael Hopkins, who served as pastor of St. James the Greater Church in Concord from 1981 to 1987. Father Hopkins is marking his 50th anniversary as a priest.
He was born on April 6, 1937, in Brooklyn, N.Y., and first professed vows as a Redemptorist on Aug. 2, 1958. He was ordained to the priesthood on June 23, 1963. His first assignments after ordination were to Sacred Heart of Jesus in Baltimore from 1965 to 1968; St. Boniface in Philadelphia from 1968 to 1969; St. Gregory in North East, Pa., from 1969 to 1973; and Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Bradford, Vt., from 1973 to 1976. In 1976 he was assigned as a mission preacher for two years, spending most of his time in the Redemptorists' Vice Province of Richmond, which covers the Southeast. In 1978 he was assigned to St. Joseph in Hampton, Va., and in 1979 he was appointed pastor of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Salem, Va.
He also served as pastor of Holy Rosary in Jacksonville, Fla., from 1987 to 1993. He returned to the Baltimore Province in 1993 with an assignment to the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Boston. In 1996 he began a three-year assignment to St. Patrick in Frederiksted, St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. He returned to the U.S. in July 1999 and was assigned to St. Peter the Apostle in Philadelphia. In 2005, he relocated to Brooklyn, where he served as province secretary until 2008. He has been in residence at the Redemptorists' residence in New York City since 2008.
The Redemptorists were founded by St. Alphonsus Liguori in 1732 in Naples, Italy. The priests and brothers minister to the spiritual and material needs of the faithful, especially the poor and most spiritually abandoned. Their primary ministry is preaching. There are approximately 300 Redemptorists serving in the U.S., and approximately 5,300 worldwide.
The Baltimore Province of the Redemptorists maintains its headquarters in Brooklyn. The province was created in 1850 and took its name from its home city of Baltimore. The name was retained when the headquarters relocated to New York. For details about the Redemptorists of the Baltimore Province, visit redemptorists.net.
— Stephanie K. Tracy