News

Retired Franciscans stay active
sorting postage stamps

By Tony Staley
Compass Correspondent

	About the Pulaski Franciscans Assumption BVM Province - the Pulaski Franciscans - moved its provincial headquarters to Franklin a few years ago. They continue to staff parishes in the Green Bay Diocese, including Assumption BVM Parish in Pulaski. Pulaski also is the home of a retirement house. Nineteen friars, including Br. Andy Giba and Fr. Sebastian Kus, live there under the care of Br. Michael May, the guardian, who described his job as "making sure the men are happy." Br. Michael, who also looks after eight friars at St. Mary Nursing Home in Manitowoc, has been at Pulaski for two years. Before that, he spent 18 years as director of pastoral care at the Oak Park hospital in suburban Chicago. As guardian, he is in charge of building maintenance, paying bills, providing for the friars' spiritual needs and getting them to doctor and dental appointments. While many of the friars, most of whom are in their 70s and 80s, are limited to praying daily for those who ask them to, others perform a variety of tasks, including filing bird watching reports with the University of Wisconsin, making sandals, outdoor and kitchen work, the archives and keeping track of Mass stipends. The province also has a retirement home in Burlington with a nurse and full staff for about 18 other friars who need more assistance than those at Pulaski. The province has about 150 active and retired members.
	Collection for retired religious is Dec. 8 and 9 The 20th annual Retirement Fund for Religious collection will be taken Dec. 8-9. Here are some facts: • The Green Bay Diocese is sponsoring a locally-produced commercial on the collection, airing this week during the 6 and 10 p.m. newscasts on channels 2 and 5; during the 9 p.m. newscast and Wheel of Fortune on channel 11. The commercial was written by Sr. Mary Jo Kirt, representative for religious, and features eight sisters from the diocese. • The collection has raised $529,343,392 since it began in 1988 and is the most successful fund-raising appeal in U.S. church history. • Out of each dollar raised, 94 cents goes to help retired religious. • More than $27 million was given last year in some 550 grants to various communities. • Nationally, it costs $977 million annually to care for all religious past age 70. • Traditionally, religious communities had used the money they earned to pay for their ministries and educate young members, who helped care for the aged. The dramatic decline in new members has meant little money is coming in to care for aged religious.

PULASKI -- Br. Andy Giba is 77 and legally blind. Fr. Sebastian Kus, who will turn 80 on Feb. 29, can't stand for long.

Yet these two Pulaski Franciscans plan to continue serving the church in whatever way they can for as long as possible.

Br. Andy helps by sorting postage stamps. Sales of stamps donated to the order go to the province's missions, primarily in Greenwood, Miss., and in Almaty, Kazakstan, which is under the direction of Bishop Henry Howaniec, a member of their province.

Fr. Sebastian, who retired in September as chaplain to a community of women religious, hopes to assist at a parish by hearing confessions, which won't require extensive standing.

Their ability to help the church depends on Catholics' willingness to help them and thousands of other elderly priests, sisters and brothers this weekend through the 20th annual Retirement Fund for Religious collection.

Last year, Catholics nationwide gave more than $30 million to the collection. Of that, $513,063 came from the Green Bay Diocese, making it the largest contributing diocese in the state and among the 16 highest nationally.

"Our diocese has been one of the most generous in the country in support of the retired religious collection," said Franciscan Sr. Mary Jo Kirt, representative for religious. "That's because most people here have had good experiences with religious and show their respect and love for the religious by being very generous. Every group of religious prays for our benefactors every single day."

Last year, Assumption BVM Province - the Pulaski Franciscans - received $80,162 from the collection to help meet the unfunded retirement needs of its members. The Sisters of St. Francis of the Holy Cross - Bay Settlement Franciscans - received $40,088.

Br. Andy's and Fr. Sebastian's service to the church has taken them far from their native Poland.

Br. Andy spent part of World War II in Germany. He came to the United States in 1950 and settled in Chicago, working in a factory. He had been thinking about religious life before the war and joined the Franciscans at Pulaski in 1953 after reading about them in a Polish magazine.

He first worked in their printery for three years, then entered the novitiate in Lake Geneva. After that, he worked two years in the kitchen and maintenance at the province's high school in Lake Sturtevant. In 1959, he returned to the printery in Pulaski, working in the bindery, as a bookkeeper and proofreader until 1986 when failing eyesight - he's legally blind - made that impossible.

So he volunteered to work in the bakery. A one-day crash course led to a six-year career as a baker. In 1993, he was assigned to the provincial infirmary in Burlington, where he helped ailing friars until returning to Pulaski in 1999.

While working in the printery he decided to help needy people in the villages of communist Poland by sending clothing, medicine and food.

To pay the shipping costs, Br. Andy started saving, sorting and selling postage stamps. Thirty-five years later, he continues to save the stamps, but now the money goes to the missions.

Compass readers and others have sent millions of stamps, which he and Br. Anthony Gancarz sort and sell to collectors. Regular stamps bring $1.50 a pound; commemoratives and some foreign stamps are worth more, he said.

"It also gives us something to do in wintertime. Whenever we don't have anything else to do Br. Anthony and I go sort the stamps," he said. "It's enjoyable. It's very interesting also because there are so many different countries and islands I've never heard of."

When he finds stamps from unfamiliar countries - usually in Africa or Oceania - he looks them up on a map.

During warm weather, Br. Andy tends to flowers and vegetables in the gardens, or whatever else the superior asks.

Br. Anthony said he enjoyed Franciscan life "very much. I felt I was called to this kind of life and I think if I refused to accept this vocation I would have been very unhappy because I felt very strongly that God was calling me to this kind of life."

Does he have any regrets?

"The only regrets probably were when I didn't answer 100 percent as I should, because of the human condition, in showing gratitude to God for giving me this vocation," Br. Andy said.

Fr. Sebastian's journey from Poland to Pulaski was longer. In 1938, when he was 10, the family moved from southern to eastern Poland. The following year, Germany and the Soviet Union attacked and divided Poland. His entire family was deported with other Poles to Siberia on Feb. 10, 1940, arriving a month later in a railroad cattle car.

For the next one and one-half years they worked at an encampment in a forest. The main task was felling trees and sending the logs down river. Everyone was required to work as they were able and Fr. Sebastian cut wood into small pieces for tractor fuel.

By the time Stalin let the Poles leave Siberia - provided they paid their own way - three members of Fr. Sebastian's family had died. After going through the southern USSR, they stayed a couple months on a collective farm in Uzbekistan.

Meanwhile, his father and brother had joined the Polish army in Palestine. Eventually, Fr. Sebastian and his family went by cargo ship across the Caspian Sea to Persia (now Iran) where Polish refugees were given refuge in the shah's palaces and provided an education.

In 1942, they went to Karachi (now in Pakistan, then in India), where he started high school. When the Polish-American bishops wrote asking if any young men were interested in studying for the priesthood at Orchard Lake, Mich., Fr. Sebastian signed up.

He was one of 44 young Poles who arrived in late November 1945 at Orchard Lake to attend high school, college or the seminary. They started classes in 1946 after studying English.

As a high school senior in 1949, he was so impressed by the Pulaski Franciscan who conducted their retreat that he asked if he could join them. He was accepted and got off the train just in time on Aug. 14, 1949, for the opening of the novitiate.

He was ordained to the priesthood on June 1, 1957, after three years of theology training, and celebrated first Masses in Detroit and England, where his father, sister and brother were living.

On April 1, 1959, early in his fifth year of theology, the provincial assigned him to Pulaski as temporary editor of the province's monthly magazine while the editor recovered from a heart attack. That temporary assignment lasted 34 years.

In addition to editing the magazine, he assisted on weekends in parishes, including 18 years at the three parishes in Antigo. After that, he helped at Krakow, Sobieski, Freedom, Peshtigo, Crivitz, Suamico and Flintville.

Finally, in 1993, the provincial board notified him that they were going to close the magazine because of declining circulation. He was reassigned to Lodi, N.J., as chaplain to a community of Felician sisters, whose ministries include a provincial house, high school, college, infirmary and school for exceptional children.

He stayed there until this past Sept. 25, when increasing difficulties with walking forced him to resign and move to Pulaski.

Despite a boyhood that included deportation to Siberia and living as a refugee in Persia and India, Fr. Sebastian called his years as a Franciscan "exciting, very exciting because you never knew what to expect in community life because the provincial decided what you were supposed to do. So sometimes they gave you the unexpected."

"The only thing I can say is that I am grateful to the Good Lord that I could live so long," Fr. Sebastian said, "and to continue to serve the Lord as well as I can by praying, by celebrating the Eucharist and if there is the possibility to do additional work in some parishes."