Kansas pastor believed to be oldest active U.S. priest dies at age 98

By Joe Bollig

Catholic News Service

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (CNS) -- When he died on Christmas Eve at age 98, Msgr. Heliodore N. Mejak, pastor of Holy Family Parish in Kansas City, ended a marathon of priestly ministry that lasted 72 years.

He was believed to be the oldest active Catholic priest in the United States -- and some say the world.

He spent 63 years at Holy Family. He served under seven bishops, and seven popes led the church during his priesthood.

“You never worried with (Msgr.) Mejak around,” said Father Ron Livojevich, who grew up in Holy Family Parish and is pastor of the Church of the Nativity in Leawood. “We always thought that he’d live forever.”

Bernice Anzek, a longtime Holy Family parishioner and parish volunteer, said the monsignor had several explanations for his long-term assignment.

“I think they forgot about me, so I just stayed on,” he once said. He would explain that “the bishop didn’t ask me to move, and I never asked the bishop to move.”

But he also would simply say: “I like it here and I want to stay here.”

The word “retire” was not in his concordance. His last Mass was celebrated on the morning of the day he died.

Msgr. Mejak was born March 17, 1909, a citizen of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which was ruled by the Habsburg dynasty. His hometown was the seaport of Fiume, now Rijeka, Croatia.

“I can understand Slovenian, but I can’t speak a word of it,” he said in a Feb. 7, 2003, interview with The Leaven, newspaper of the Kansas City Archdiocese. “My mother was Bohemian (Czech); my father, Slovenian. But the official language in (Austria-Hungary) was German, so we spoke German in the house.”

His father, John, immigrated to the United States first and found work as a tailor; in 1912, the future monsignor, his mother and older sister joined him. After they arrived in New York, their meager possessions were stolen, so they arrived in Kansas City with just the clothes on their backs.

Heliodore Mejak was only 9 years old when his father died. His mother supported Heliodore and his four sisters as a seamstress.

Frieda Bader, Msgr. Mejak’s younger sister, remembers a local priest asking Heliodore at one point why he attended a public high school and not a Catholic high school. When Heliodore replied that he couldn’t afford it, the priest got him in for free. He was also instrumental in getting Heliodore into St. Benedict’s College in Atchison.

Years later, Msgr. Mejak established a scholarship at Bishop Ward High School for students who struggle financially.

For nearly 10 years after his ordination Msgr. Mejak had a variety of pastoral assignments.

In 1944, he was assigned to Holy Family, a “national” parish serving the local Slovenian community in what was then the Diocese of Leavenworth.

There, said Msgr. Michael Mullen, pastor of St. Patrick Parish in Kansas City and homilist at Msgr. Mejak’s Dec. 31 funeral at Holy Family, “he devoted his many talents -- not only as priest and teacher and counselor, but as carpenter and craftsman, watchmaker and chef and electrician -- to the growth of this parish community.”

“Msgr. Mejak was the parish carpenter and plumber,” Father Livojevich told The Leaven. “He designed the school and parish hall -- actually did the blueprints.”

For many years, in fact, Msgr. Mejak was practically a one-man show. He mowed the lawn, shoveled the snow, maintained the buildings, and fixed whatever needed fixing. He answered his own phone and door. He ordered all supplies. He typed the parish bulletin.

“He was always proud to tell his fellow priests and parishioners that Holy Family did not have a paid staff -- all volunteers,” said Anzek. “We had no debt. We always had money in the bank to take care of problems, and he was always proud of that.”

Msgr. Mejak lived alone and was largely self-reliant to the day he died. As his infirmities grew over the years, he began to rely more on parishioners to be his legs and arms, although he was always in control.

Deteriorating eyesight caused him to rely on lighted magnifying goggles when he celebrated Mass. When these failed to bring the Lectionary and Sacramentary into focus, he enlarged the Gospels and Mass prayers on a photocopying machine.

Msgr. Mejak had the week’s prayers and Gospel readings all photocopied and ready to go for the week leading up to New Year’s Day. As far as he was concerned, he had plenty of race left in him.

The Lord, however, had other plans, and Msgr. Mejak was called home on the vigil of his favorite feast day.