Three Capuchin priests celebrate jubilees

Three native Wisconsin Capuchin friars of St. Joseph Province will celebrate jubilees Aug. 3 at St. Lawrence Seminary in Mt. Calvary.

The jubilarians are Frs. Timon Costello and Werner Wolf, 50 years, and Fr. Larry Groeschel, 25 years.

• Fr. Costello, who was born Feb. 4, 1932, in Fond du Lac, entered the Capuchin novitiate in Huntington, Ind., in 1950 and made his first vows in 1951. Prior to his ordination, he studied in Garrison N.Y., Huntington and Marathon.

Fr. Costello served two years at St. Elizabeth Parish in Milwaukee before being assigned to St. Joseph Parish in Appleton in 1964. While there, he started the Cavern Coffeehouse for young adults, for which he received the Lane Bryant Award for community service.

He also started the Villa Hope, Villa Phoenix and Klister halfway houses and St. Patrick Bookstore in Appleton and the Villa Hope halfway house in Green Bay.

Fr. Costello also served in Saudi Arabia, Montana, and Guam. He is working in parish ministry in the Milwaukee area.

• Fr. Wolf was born in 1932 in Nenno, where he attended Ss. Peter and Paul School and then St. Lawrence Seminary in Mt. Calvary. He the novitiate in Huntington, and studied there and at Garrison and Marathon before his ordination.

After interning at St. Francis Friary in Milwaukee, he became a teacher, counselor, and administrator at St. Lawrence Seminary.

In the 1980s, he was provincial director of vocations, then served several years as an itinerant preacher. In 1989, Fr. Wolf became director of the St. Anthony Retreat Center in Marathon. Since 1996, he has been director of Monte Alverno Retreat Center in Appleton.

• Fr. Groeschel was born Jan. 9, 1947, in Appleton. After graduating from Appleton High School West, he served in the Army. While with the Army in Thailand, a chaplain asked him if he had ever considered religious life.

After his discharge in 1969, Groeschel worked at the Charmin Paper Mill in Green Bay, until Fr. Costello, then serving at St. Joseph Parish in Appleton, asked him if he had ever considered religious life.

"I figured if two people on two different sides of the world ask me the same question, I should check it out."

He entered the novitiate at Huntington in 1975 and later studied at St. Mary in Detroit and St. Benedict in Milwaukee.

As a Capuchin, he has worked in a soup kitchen in Detroit, at St. Anthony Retreat Center in Marathon and is on staff at St. Lawrence Seminary in Mt. Calvary.