Bishop-elect Joseph Williams, left, stands outside The St. Paul Seminary in St. Paul prior to his 2002 ordination to the priesthood. With him are classmates Father Jay Kythe (now a monk at St. Benedict’s Abbey in Atchison, Kansas), center, and Father Daniel Griffith, pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes in Minneapolis.

Bishop-elect Joseph Williams, left, stands outside The St. Paul Seminary in St. Paul prior to his 2002 ordination to the priesthood. With him are classmates Father Jay Kythe (now a monk at St. Benedict’s Abbey in Atchison, Kansas), center, and Father Daniel Griffith, pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes in Minneapolis. DAVE HRBACEK | THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

One thing in particular stands out in Vicki Dibler’s memory about fellow University of Minnesota Morris students Joseph Williams and his brother, Peter, while they discussed the Bible and core Catholic teachings.

In gentle but firm ways, the Williams brothers would not settle for easy answers, she said.

“They were always questioning, but in a very calm fashion. I remember them as being a very peaceful presence. We were gathered in the comfort of learning and asking questions,” Dibler said of meeting about once a week for 90 minutes in the faith-filled home of a family physician who organized the Bible study.

At that time, 1995 and 1996, Dibler’s last name was Pogatchnik. Joseph Williams had plans to become a doctor and would graduate with a bachelor’s degree in biology. Peter Williams would go on to business school at the university’s Twin Cities campus.

Joseph and Peter Williams later responded to calls to the priesthood and were ordained in 2002 and 2004, respectively.

Dibler, who married, has three children and is a math and science instruction specialist for elementary school students in El Paso, Texas, learned of Bishop-elect Williams’ episcopal appointment through her brother, Father Scott Pogatchnik of the Diocese of St. Cloud. She believes that as a bishop, her old friend will continue to gently ask questions that seek to understand and heal the emotional and spiritual wounds many people face.

“I am so excited for what is to come,” Dibler said. “He has not come to take the easy way. He wants the challenge of meeting the needs where they are.”

Dr. George Jay, 64, the Bible study leader in Morris along with his wife, Joan, recalls meeting the Williams brothers at daily Mass and inviting them to join the group, which he had formed along with other Bible study groups in the early 1990s.

“My wife said, ‘There’s popcorn there!’ And they said, ‘We always like free food. We’re college kids after all,’” recalled Jay, a member of Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Morris.

‘CONFLUENCE OF GIFTS’Bishop Joseph Williams attended The St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity in St. Paul in his final years of study for the priesthood. Father Daniel Griffith, pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes in Minneapolis and one of the future bishop’s classmates in the 2002 ordination class, said Bishop Williams has the “heart, head and humanity” to be a great bishop, and a “confluence of gifts that are oriented to generous and compassionate service.”

Bright and studious, he “has a sense of humor that is quick and dry. And a graciousness as well,” Father Griffith said. “I think to have all of those gifts together in one person, and now developed through years as a pastor, walking with the people, the marginalized, poor and the immigrant,” will be a great gift to the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, he said.

While humble, Bishop-elect Williams is “bold when the Spirit is calling him” and a good friend, Father Griffith said. “He’s one of the best priest friends I have, and one of the most affirming.”

As the group of about a dozen college students listened and discussed talks by such figures as Catholic speaker and teacher Scott Hahn on the sacraments, Jesus’ presence in the Eucharist, the nature of God and his works, purgatory and the Trinity, the Williams brothers began to recognize a different calling for their lives.

Growing up in a faith-filled and loving family at St. Michael in Stillwater, Joseph Williams had expected to follow in his father’s footsteps as a doctor. Peter Williams saw a future in business. But at this point, Bishop-elect Williams has said, he turned his prayer life around and sought to listen to the Lord’s voice first.

“For Peter and I, that encounter with God’s word as young adults lit a fire in us and renewed our love for the Church, in a sense,” Bishop Williams told The Catholic Spirit. “I wondered if I had been praying right, to be very honest, up to that point. My prayer for many years, ‘Lord, this is what I would love to do. Please bless me.’ And he did bless me, in fact. But when you meet the Lord, you know that’s not the right prayer. You have to ask, as (the late Archbishop Harry Flynn) always told us, ‘Lord, what would you have me do?’

“And I would say, when my prayer life changed, my life changed. Because very soon after that, he showed me quite clearly that I wasn’t going to be a doctor of bodies. But I was going to be a doctor of hearts.”

As part of his discernment, Bishop-elect Williams took a year off before medical school to explore philosophy and theology at Franciscan University of Steubenville in Steubenville, Ohio. After the first semester, he entered a pre-theology program of discernment, prompted by its director, the late Father David Testa of the Diocese of Albany.

“He caught me in the parking lot and asked me if I would like to join the pre-theology program. I knew that it meant you couldn’t date,” Bishop-elect Williams said, “And I thought, my last semester at Steubenville, I wonder if that’s a good idea.”

But he and a friend encouraged each other to apply for the program, and it “was beautiful,” Bishop-elect Williams said. “That fraternity, the prayer very clearly within that context. I heard the Lord say, ‘Follow me.’ I dropped the nets. I really haven’t looked back since that time. And I’ve just been so blessed.”

Jay said he saw something special in the Williams brothers. He recalls a university science professor telling him that Bishop Williams was the best student he ever had. Jay replied he knew what the professor meant.

“No,” the professor said with emphasis. “I don’t mean one of the best. I mean the best student I’ve ever had.”

Jay said he also called Father Testa at Franciscan University, asking him to keep Bishop Williams on his radar. Several months later, Father Testa called back to report his own experience with the discerning bishop-to-be, saying, “You know the story you told me about the science professor? Every bit of it is true.”

Jay and his wife planned to attend Bishop-elect Williams’ ordination and installation.

“His gifts are just so profound,” he said. “A maturity ahead of his years. Compassion. Yet, uncompromising compassion, in his love for Jesus Christ. It just radiates.”

“He stands out in a group. But you have to get to know him. It’s not boisterous. It’s just a humble excellence.”

BRINGING FAITH TO LIFE

Dr. George Jay and his wife, Joan, founded Bible study groups in the early 1990s in their home four miles outside of Morris — for youth, college students and adults.

Until Jay had to stop hosting the groups in 2002 because of poor health, the gatherings fostered the faith of many people in the community and beyond, and the discernment of at least six young men who later became priests. For Vicki Dibler, now a wife, mother and educator living in El Paso, Texas, the gatherings with fellow students from the University of Minnesota Morris were serious and joyful.

“It was a welcome kind of outlet for me as a college student, to sit and hear the Lord’s word with colleagues, people my age, interested in developing their faith,” she said. “It was a joyful time, but a very serious time, when we would gather. We would listen to (Catholic speaker and teacher) Scott Hahn. We traveled to Steubenville (Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio) for a conference.”

The group’s impact on people came from the Holy Spirit, Jay said. Studying core Catholic beliefs like Jesus’ real presence in the Eucharist introduces people to eternal realities that fill a “truth vacuum” and “self-evangelize,” prompting many to actively seek and proclaim the Lord, he said.

Joseph and Peter Williams later responded to calls to the priesthood and were ordained in 2002 and 2004, respectively. Bishop-elect Joseph Williams was to be ordained a bishop Jan. 25 and installed as auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, where his brother is pastor of St. Ambrose in Woodbury.

The Jays’ five living children (one child died in miscarriage) participated in the youth Bible studies, and the couple have forged lasting friendships from the groups, certainly with Bishop-elect Joseph Williams and his brother, Father Peter Williams, of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. The Williams brothers credit the Jays’ gatherings with igniting their faith and prompting them to consider their lives in a new light.

Bishop-elect Williams was the confirmation sponsor for the Jays’ oldest child, Nick, now 38, and after his ordination to the priesthood, the future bishop presided at Nick’s wedding. As priests, both brothers visited and celebrated Mass at Jay’s bedside when he was laid up for 12 years with a condition called postural orthostatic tachycardia, which causes debilitating dizzy spells relieved only by reclining.

The condition markedly improved in 2014, but it continues to come and go, said Jay, who also is being treated for a type of blood cancer and retired from medicine when he first became ill. Now, he is teaching catechesis to 10th graders and thinking about restarting a men’s group that was suspended by the pandemic.