Cd. Szoka
a life of service to the Church
By Robert Delaney of The Michigan Catholic
Published June 4, 2004
Perhaps it was the enforced frugality of a Depression childhood in western Michigan that instilled in the young Edmund Casimir Szoka the appreciation for fiscal responsibility that was to become a hallmark of his later ministry as a bishop, archbishop and cardinal.
Born Sept. 14, 1927, in Grand Rapids to Casimir and Mary Szoka, the boy who would one day become one of the princes of the Catholic Church moved with his family which included an older sister, Irene to Muskegon in the 1930s.
He has recalled the struggle of his father, an immigrant from Poland, to find sufficient work to support the family. "For a while he had a job unloading coal from railroad cars using a shovel and a wheelbarrow. Can you imagine unloading a whole railroad car that way? But that's the kind of work he had to do," Cardinal Szoka said years ago.
His mother also had to work to help support the family, he said.
Growing up in a family whose life revolved around the parish church as both a center of their faith life and ethnic heritage, young Eddie Szoka was attracted to the life of the parish priest at an early age. Like many another boy who would grow up to be a priest, Eddie could occasionally be found in the backyard playing at saying Mass.
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| Szoka's St. Michael Grade School yearbook photo. | As soon as he was old enough, he became an altar boy. When he and other students from St. Michael Grade School in Muskegon visited St. Joseph Seminary High School in Grand Rapids, it made a big impression on him.
"I had thought of the seminary as a very solemn place where the seminarians spent the whole day praying and studying. In fact, I guess I thought mostly praying. How pleasantly surprised I was to find this large group of healthy boys engaged in track events, running around, competing and having a lot of fun, just like any normal group of people," Cardinal Szoka wrote years after that pivotal experience.
He entered the high school seminary in September 1942, working summers to help pay the $250 a year tuition, which was a burden for the family even though it included room and board.
Eddie Szoka went on to study at St. Joseph Seminary College in Grand Rapids for his freshman and sophomore years, then transferred to Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit for his junior and senior years.
The late Msgr. F. Gerald Martin, former editor in chief of The Michigan Catholic and a classmate of Cardinal Szoka at Sacred Heart, once said, "Eddie was a brilliant mind. His mind was very capable of dealing with abstract philosophical thoughts."
He recalled his classmate as reed-thin, but able to spend hours arguing a point of Church law or teaching.
The young seminarian went on to study theology at St. John's Provincial Seminary in Plymouth Township. As a provincial seminary, St. John's was supported by all the bishops of Michigan. Bishop Thomas Noa of Marquette, whom Eddie had known from St. Joseph Seminary where he had been rector, became the seminarian's mentor.
Fr. Edmund Szoka was ordained by Bishop Noa on June 5, 1954, to serve the Marquette Diocese. His first assignment was as associate pastor of St. Francis Parish in the Upper Peninsula town of Manistique, but after 15 months Bishop Noa brought him to Marquette to serve as his secretary and as chaplain to St. Mary Hospital.
Later, he was also named chaplain to K.I. Sawyer Air Force Base, and he had to apportion his time among all three jobs.
In 1957 Bishop Noa sent Fr. Szoka off to Rome to study canon law at the Pontifical Lateran University. He returned to Marquette in 1959, and resumed his hospital and chancery duties.
He became Bishop Noa's full-time secretary in 1961, though with additional duties on the diocesan Tribunal, an experience that would lead him to streamline and improve the annulment consideration process both in Gaylord and Detroit. Besides computerizing the archdiocesan Metropolitan Tribunal in Detroit, then-Archbishop Szoka also abolished all fees for its services.
Named assistant chancellor of the Marquette Diocese in 1962, he also was appointed pastor of St. Pius X Parish in Ishpeming.
In October 1962, Fr. Szoka accompanied Bishop Noa to Rome for the first session of the Second Vatican Council.
The following year he became pastor of St. Christopher Parish in Marquette, where he continued to serve until being named diocesan chancellor on July 20, 1970.
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| Szoka as the newly appointed bishop of Gaylord. | Precisely one year later, he was ordained and installed as the first bishop of the new Diocese of Gaylord, created by Pope Paul VI from 21 northern Michigan counties that had been part of the Saginaw or Grand Rapids dioceses.
Because it was brand new, there was no cathedral or chancery, so Bishop Szoka had to share an office in St. Mary High School, Gaylord, with the school's athletic director as he put together the campaign to raise $1.5 million to build St. Mary Cathedral and its rectory and parish hall. An abandoned dance hall was renovated to house chancery offices.
To fund diocesan operations, he launched the Catholic Services Appeal, forerunner of the campaign he would later introduce in the Archdiocese of Detroit.
Summoned to Rome in March 1981 to meet Pope John Paul II, he learned he would succeed Cardinal John Dearden as archbishop of Detroit. He was installed as archbishop on May 17 of that year.
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| Gaylord Bishop Szoka shows his letter of appointment as archbishop of Detroit to the media. | On taking the helm of the Detroit Archdiocese, he faced financial difficulties to which he was able to apply his past experience, but also faced challenges of enforcing Church discipline in two controversial cases. In both cases one involving a woman religious who had become head of a state agencies that paid for abortions among its activities, and the other involving a priest-theologian who had co-authored a controversial book on sexuality he showed himself willing to put principle above popularity.
In 1987 Archbishop Szoka welcomed Pope John Paul II to Detroit, as the Holy Father made his historic visit that included events in Hamtramck, at the Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament, and at the Pontiac Silverdome.
The following year, he was elevated to the College of Cardinals and oversaw the virtual re-inventing of Sacred Heart Seminary through the addition of a graduate school of theology, or "theologate," plus a revamping of its undergraduate program and the addition of lay ministry programs.
Cardinal Szoka left Detroit in 1990 to take up a new ministry to the worldwide Church when the pope called him to the Vatican to serve as president of the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See. He helped lead the Vatican back to financial health.
His current ministry is as president of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State informally as "governor" of Vatican City State.
In 2002, Cardinal Szoka submitted his resignation to the Holy Father, as all bishops must do on their 75th birthday, but was asked to continue working. During 2003, multiple health problems hitting at the same time prompted an outpouring of concern and prayers from his many friends back in Michigan. The cardinal has since returned to health.
From parish priest to high-ranking member of the Roman Curia, Cardinal Szoka's life story is one of dedicated and innovative service to the Church here in Michigan and throughout the world.
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