Father George Welzbacher

Father George Welzbacher’s priestly vocation of 70 years traces back to his childhood in St. Paul. He spent his first six years on Grand Avenue just half a block west of Lexington Avenue.

“My mother was quite a gardener,” said Father Welzbacher, 93, who lives at the Byrne Resident in St. Paul, only about a mile west of his original home. “She had me learn the Latin names of all the flowers in her garden.”

One, in particular, stood out — the bleeding heart. “She had quite a colony of bleeding heart plants,” he said. “I remember her telling me when I was very young that that was nature’s way of weeping at the death of Christ, and that made a great impression on me.”

When he was older, she told him the story of how his birth was an answer to prayer. She had had struggles with infertility, and he ended up being the only child she conceived.

“My mother was praying, she told me, to ‘the Little Flower’ (St. Therese of Lisieux) to have me, for quite a few years,” he said. “She used to drop notes behind the statue of the Little Flower in St. Luke’s church (now St. Thomas More) to keep it in (her) mind so that St. Therese would not forget.”

He recalled one day, when he was 5, a strong fragrance of roses in the family living room where a statue of St. Therese had been placed.

“It was in the late fall, long after flower season (had ended),” Father Welzbacher said. “My mother called one of the priests, one of the associates, at St. Luke’s. … He came over and he smelled it, too. She had great devotion to the Little Flower. (St. Therese) had just been canonized a few years earlier, in the 1920s.”

Father Welzbacher has shared that same devotion throughout his life. He also made one of her short sayings a lifelong motto for how to live out his faith.

“She’s a great saint — the saint of little things,” he said, recalling “her insistence on just doing the little things as well as you can to give glory to God. That ties in very well with the passage in St. Paul’s letter to the Colossians: ‘Whatever you do, work at it from the heart, as for the Lord and not for man, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward.’”

Father Welzbacher summarizes it this way: “doing the ordinary duties each day, with all your heart, for God.”

He has given people these words of wisdom to live by many times, “especially in the confessional.” And, he has put them into practice himself throughout seven decades of ministry, starting after his ordination to the priesthood in 1951. His first parish assignment was at St. Peter in North St. Paul, where his parents, George Sr. and Eileen, were married. When he arrived there a week after being ordained, the pastor who had presided at his parents’ wedding was still there.

After four years, he was assigned to St. John the Baptist in New Brighton, where he served for 11 years. During that time, he became an instructor at St. Thomas Academy, then after a few years began teaching at the College of St. Thomas (now University of St. Thomas), where he served until 1995. At that time, both schools were located on the same grounds. He also did graduate work during that time, starting in 1966. First, he studied medieval history, then ancient Greek and Roman history, but stopped just short of completing his doctoral dissertation.

Even without a doctorate, the knowledge he gained served him well in the classroom, where he taught hundreds of students over the years, including many priests, and even a few bishops, including Bishop Paul Sirba, who died in December 2019, and Bishop Donald DeGrood, who was ordained for the Diocese of South Falls in South Dakota in February 2020. Later in his ministry, he served at St. Agnes and St. John parishes, both in St. Paul.

At St. Thomas Academy, he taught upper level Latin and German, creating a four-year German program shortly after arriving in 1961. To this day, he said, he keeps in touch with former students and is “still very close” to some of them. At St. Thomas, he was primarily a history teacher, with an emphasis on ancient Greece and Rome. Many of his students there were seminarians at St. John Vianney College Seminary on the UST campus.

“It was a wonderful opportunity… to have a hand in forming a lot of the future priests of the Upper Midwest,” Father Welzbacher said. “I was very grateful for that.”

Although he had 21 rewarding years in teaching, he hesitates to rank that above his ministry at parishes, which he also enjoyed.

“Each apostolate is quite different,” he said. “I enjoyed them all. I like dealing with people. So, I’ve always enjoyed parish work.”

One of his favorite things was visiting the sick, either at home or in the hospital, and bringing Communion to them. He visited some as often as once a week, and liked taking time to talk with them after giving Eucharist to them.

Since retiring in 2013, Father Welzbacher has been assisting at Holy Family in St. Louis Park, where Father Joseph Johnson serves as pastor. On June 2, Father Johnson threw a 70th jubilee party for Father Welzbacher, who estimates that about 60 priests came, many of whom were his former students.

For Father Welzbacher, who believes that “everything is of value” in priestly ministry, all he has done in 70 years points him to one simple word: “Gratitude.”