To serve is to love
Father Thomas, pictured here celebrating Mass at St. Lawrence Basilica in Asheville, was ordained for the Diocese of Raleigh but chose to move to the newly formed Diocese of Charlotte in 1972. He retired in 2018. (File | Catholic News Herald)For nearly 50 years, the servant heart of Father Wilbur Thomas has been inextricably bound with the people of western North Carolina – and his passion for their spiritual welfare has extended well into his retirement from active ministry.
In late 1971 and early 1972 – as the Diocese of Charlotte was being formed – there were three men who had recently been ordained as transitional deacons from Raleigh Bishop Vincent Waters. They were on track to become priests for the Raleigh diocese, but Bishop Waters, a visionary leader who helped set up the new Charlotte diocese, gave each man the choice of where he wanted to serve: Raleigh or Charlotte.
Of the three, Father Thomas, a Lexington native, chose to serve in the Charlotte diocese and wrote to the new Charlotte Bishop Michael Begley and his chancellor, then-Father Joseph Showfety, to request the transfer. Serving in western North Carolina would enable him to be closer to his family in Lexington, Father Thomas explains.
On March 26, 1973, the Feast of the Annunciation, he was ordained for the Raleigh diocese – its third African American priest. The ordination took place at Our Lady of the Annunciation Church in Havelock, near the coast. He was initially assigned to Sacred Heart Cathedral in Raleigh, but the assignment was temporary.
“Bishop Waters called me two weeks after ordination to let me know that I was being transferred as requested. I didn’t have interest in serving in eastern North Carolina, and Bishop Waters was aware of that,” Father Thomas recalls.
It became official on April 26, 1973. Father Thomas began his ministry in western North Carolina. In an interview on the 49th anniversary of his transfer, FatherThomas reflected on what it was like to help build the nascent Diocese of Charlotte and what he hopes for its future:
Getting Started
His first assignment was as a parochial vicar at St. Leo the Great Parish in Winston-Salem.
“I was immediately ensconced in an 800-household parish and growing, with Father William Wellein, the newly assigned pastor,” Father Thomas says.
He began teaching religion at his alma mater, Bishop McGuinness High School. He remembers that it felt strange for him to teach where he had attended as a student, but it brought back fond memories of getting better acquainted with Father Joseph Showfety, who was the school administrator during his high school days. Father Showfety, who would become Monsignor Showfety in 1976, influenced Father Thomas’ priestly vocation, the seed of which was planted when he was an altar server at Our Lady of the Rosary Church in Lexington. There he entered the Catholic Church at age 12. It was then that his ardor for the presence of Christ in the Eucharist began to form.
While he ministered at St. Leo the Great and taught at Bishop McGuinness, Father Thomas also served as the Catholic chaplain at Wake Forest University. Bishop Begley also appointed him director of diocesan Catholic Campus Ministry. Father Thomas assisted the Mission Helpers of the Sacred Heart, who oversaw the diocesan Faith Formation Office.
He was also one of several people who founded the Charismatic Renewal group in Winston-Salem, which met at Bishop McGuinness High School for the remainder of the years he was in Winston-Salem. Father Thomas became the unofficial chaplain of the diocesan Charismatic Renewal team to give direction to the renewal across the diocese. At this time, Father Thomas was also an assistant spiritual director for the Cursillo movement.
Pictured at the 1982 meeting of the Diocesan Pastoral Assembly are (from left) Rudy Triana, Father Wilbur Thomas, Nancy West, Sister Jeanne Marie Kienast and Father George Kloster. (Diocese of Charlotte Archives)“I had great relationships with the people of the parish, Wake Forest Campus Ministry, Charismatic Renewal and the CCD program. I was a brother in Christ and not above them as a priest or pastor. The way I saw it was that we’re all on this journey together. All of us constitute the people of God. I saw myself as a part of the people of God, not apart from them. My concerns were their concerns,” he says. “The Holy Spirit inspired me and grounded me as a priest in the Diocese of Charlotte as the priestly ministry blossomed and grew.”
In 1975, Father Thomas was assigned to St. Patrick Cathedral in Charlotte to serve as assistant rector. While there, the bishop also appointed him the first director of the diocesan Youth Ministry Office. At the time, St. Patrick had a small mission church: Our Lady of Providence on South Tryon Street in Charlotte. Attached to the mission was an early childhood nursery, where Father Thomas had administrative oversight with a lay director.
“I offered Mass at OLP on Sundays. The mostly African American worshiping community was very much affected by poverty,” he recalls. “There was a lot of Section 8 housing in the area. The people I encountered there made it a wonderful experience. Oh my goodness, I began to recognize the opportunities for ministry and service to the African American community in the Charlotte area! It enlivened my spirit for that ministry, and I suggested to the priest’s personnel committee and thus to the bishop that I would like to be assigned to a Black Catholic community when the bishop needed the service of a priest there.”
It wasn’t long before his wish would be granted. He served two years as pastor at Our Lady of the Annunciation Parish in Albemarle from 1977 to 1979, ministering to what was then a small parish of about 90 households, while he continued in his role as director of the diocesan Youth Ministry Office. Then in 1979, he became pastor of Our Lady of Consolation Church, a historically Black Catholic parish in Charlotte.
The parish school was made up primarily of African American students, from preschool to eighth grade. Its faculty included four religious sisters of the Oblate Sisters of Providence in Baltimore, the founding order of the school.
“The school was one of the most effective missions in the southern province of the Oblate Sisters,” Father Thomas recalls.
Joining them on the faculty was a religious sister from the Sisters of Providence in Indiana and an Immaculate Heart of Mary sister from Greensboro. The faculty also included lay teachers and assistants. Joining Father Thomas as pastoral associate was Sister Bessie McCarthy of the Sisters of Mercy in Belmont.
Structuring the Diocese
In 1979 Bishop Begley asked Father Thomas to serve on the organizing committee for the second Diocesan Assembly on Evangelization, which was held at Sacred Heart Convent in Belmont. Father Thomas was the keynote speaker for the event.
“Serving on the organizing committee gave me more and more of a connection with the diocesan structures,” he says. “There was a new movement in the Church in the United States called pastoral planning. Bishop Begley embraced the planning process, and the diocese began to structure itself using pastoral planning as a guide. Bishop Begley was a social worker by his postgraduate education, having served as director of Catholic Social Services in Raleigh before his selection as bishop of the Diocese of Charlotte. His focus was on and with the people. He wanted to make sure that ministry was going on for and with the People of God and from the People of God.”
The pastoral planning effort involved restructuring and dividing the diocese’s territory into 10 vicariates. Vicariate councils were established with a lay chair, a vicar forane (a priest clergy member who was selected by priests in the vicariate), and lay people representing the various parishes and institutions within the vicariate’s boundaries.
A Diocesan Pastoral Council was established at the time and was a mix of clergy, religious and lay people working together to provide vision, mission and direction for the Diocese of Charlotte. The Priest’s Synod, now called a Presbyteral Council, was the primary collaborative organization for priests with the bishop.
Father Thomas’ involvement included organizing the Ministry-to-Priests program. He, with five other priests, started the program in the diocese. They were sent to study with Ministry-to-Priests founder Father Vincent Dwyer. Participation was voluntary, but Bishop Begley expected every priest to participate in some way to encourage priestly fraternity and provide an avenue for priest-to-priest support. Father Thomas gave two years to this effort, successfully establishing it for the priests of the diocese.
Father Thomas also started the diocese’s Committee on Black Catholic Ministry and Evangelization, now called the African American Affairs Ministry. The committee organized the diocese’s first Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day Mass, which was celebrated Jan. 25, 1986, at the cathedral in Charlotte. Father Thomas served as master of ceremonies. Concelebrating the Eucharistic liturgy were Bishop Begley, bishop emeritus; Bishop John Donoghue, the newly ordained Bishop of Charlotte; and Bishop Joseph Lawson Howze of Biloxi, Miss., formerly a priest of the Charlotte diocese.
Devoted Pastor and Brother Priest
All the while, Father Thomas was still ministering as pastor of Our Lady of Consolation Church and Parochial School. Unfortunately, the Sisters of Providence recalled their sisters to Baltimore, and the school suffered a threat of closure, losing a number of its students. A lay parishioner and educator served as interim principal for one year as they searched for a permanent lay principal. By that time, the financial handwriting was on the wall. Ninety percent of the school families were not Catholic, and the parish couldn’t afford to subsidize the school any longer.
“In the final years of operation, we managed through with God’s help and the people’s support, Catholic and non-Catholic,” says Father Thomas, who had experienced significant stress in the effort to maintain the school with all lay faculty and assistants. The school remained open until Father Thomas’ pastorate at Our Lady of Consolation was completed in 1986.
Despite the challenges at the school, the parish community of Our Lady of Consolation was thriving – with a conscious effort to organize around the diocese’s new pastoral planning structures. Enthusiasm for Black Catholic expressions in liturgy and music also brought about a growth in parishioner participation and in the welfare of the parish. The founding of the Perpetual Hope Gospel Choir helped to express Black cultural and religious traditions.
Then Father Thomas took a sabbatical leave and studied in the Holy Land for a year. When he arrived, he went to the Church of All Nations next to the Garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives. There, he had a cathartic moment as he shared in the agony of Jesus. This brought healing, he recalls, and the remainder of his sabbatical was full of enlightenment, peace and rest.
“As I reflected on my experience as a priest of the diocese, I saw people who really loved the Church and what we were fashioning together. There was a lot of enthusiasm, and some clergy and women religious were very involved. It was exciting,” he says. “We could see the vision of the Second Vatican Council. I look back at all those experiences, and it burned me out, but it was a great burn. The fire of the Holy Spirit was moving all over the place throughout the diocese.”
When he returned from the Holy Land, the Code of Canon Law, which had been revised in 1983, had influenced the 1986-1987 Diocesan Synod. The structures that had been put in place to provide the communication within the diocese between the bishop, clergy, religious and lay faithful was less supported by the new laws. “I came back to a ‘revised’ Diocese of Charlotte,” says Father Thomas.
In 1987 Father Thomas was appointed pastor of St. Aloysius Parish in Hickory and as Catholic chaplain of Lenoir-Rhyne University. At St. Aloysius, he oversaw the planning and construction of a new church for the growing parish.
“My involvement with the building process was to listen very well and provide insights as needed as a member of the parish building committee. The people were very involved in the planning and construction. When the building was completed, we were able to dedicate it, and Bishop Michael Begley presided over the dedication in 1993. It was a wonderful time, it really was.”
During his 11 years as pastor in Hickory, Father Thomas and his parishioners developed an ecumenical relationship with two local churches of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). At the time, the Ecumenical Office of the Diocese of Charlotte was in place, and the Lutheran Synod of the ELCA and the Diocese of Charlotte had signed a covenant at the diocesan level. The diocesan Ecumenical Office encouraged every parish to develop this type of relationship with ELCA churches.
From that effort, St. Aloysius parishioners and Father Thomas developed a covenant with members of local ELCA churches. Lutheran Bishop Michael McDaniel, a professor of theology at Lenoir-Rhyne who founded the college’s Center for Theology, became a good friend, Father Thomas recalls. Bishop McDaniel often attended covenant events with Father Thomas and parishioners from the churches.
“We were able to establish the Thomas Aquinas/Luther Conference to discuss various aspects of theology on campus and among the Lutheran and Catholic parishes in the area. The covenant relationship for St. Aloysius was with the campus church of St. Andrew and Mt. Olive Lutheran Church,” he says. “We had a Liturgy of the Word at St. Aloysius, in which we read the covenant statement and added to the document the signatures of everyone present, which included parishioners from the ELCA churches. We pledged to pray, study and worship together as well as provide opportunities for community service.”
They even studied the Catechism of Catholic Church together.
“Because of the covenant, we could do that,” says Father Thomas.
When he completed his service as pastor of St. Aloysius in 1998, the third Bishop of the Diocese of Charlotte, William Curlin, appointed Father Thomas as Vicar for Priests. Because this role included concern for the well-being of diocesan priests, he became an advocate for them with the bishop. He served in this role for three years, while he also served as parochial administrator of St. Francis of Assisi Church in Jefferson and its mission St. Frances of Rome in Sparta.
Then, in 2000, a new assignment: Bishop Curlin appointed him rector and pastor of St. Lawrence Basilica in Asheville.
After his term as Vicar for Priests ended in 2002, he was appointed vicar forane of the Asheville vicariate in 2003. He served in this role for 15 of the 18 years that he was rector and pastor at St. Lawrence. In 2018 – after four decades of active ministry – Father Thomas decided it was time to retire.
He chose to stay in Asheville and had hoped to remain active in retirement, yet challenges to his health coupled with the pandemic have limited his ability for continued ministry. However, this hasn’t diminished his concern for others. His heart for the well-being of brother priests continues as he stays in touch with them, offering his support and care.
“I want to be an encourager like St. Barnabas,” he says.
Father Thomas notes that he too has had the support of brother priests as well as lay people and his family, especially during the past two years of health challenges and the pandemic.
Looking Ahead with Wisdom from the Past
The current Synod on Synodality called by Pope Francis brought to mind Father Thomas’ preparation for the 1979 Diocesan Assembly at St. James Parish in Concord. For this, he called together various Catholic groups, including representatives of the Knights of Columbus, Catholic Daughters of the Americas, Charismatic Renewal, Cursillo and Marriage Encounter.
“It was a vision of the Diocese of Charlotte, working together, all for the same story, the same Person and the same Spirit. It was such an eye-opener for those caught up in their own organizational structures. Before this, they couldn’t identify with one another as brothers and sisters in the faith,” he says.
In this gathering – just as in the recent diocesan Synod – people listened to each other in small groups to determine where in their mission statements they shared in the mission of the Church.
“They could see that they were connected to each other and moving in the same direction, which was evangelization, as Pope St. Paul VI outlined in his encyclical on evangelization at the time. We heard some very good witnesses and testimonies from people who were sometimes looked at ‘sideways’ by people in other groups, but that began to change through this process of listening and sharing.”
Father Thomas says he’s pleased that Pope Francis decided to hold the current synodal process for two years. He urges parishes to seek the opinion of the people not only in the parish but also on the periphery of society – socially, economically and otherwise.
“From that kind of gathering, it is possible that we would regain some of our own sense of being with and for one another,” he explains. “I’m hoping this synodal process will bring people of every walk of life into some conversation, like it did at St. James.”
Through all the joys and sorrows of his priestly vocation, Father Thomas’ personal relationship with Jesus has sustained him. Mature in wisdom and grace, he has found both peace and perspective.
“As I look back through the years, and the relationships that have been forged, it has been a good ride, a really great journey with its ups and downs – literally here in the mountains!” he says with a laugh. “I hope and pray the synodal process will rekindle some of the fervor of the early years of the Diocese of Charlotte’s formation, but all will be determined by the Holy Spirit and God’s will for us as we continue being witnesses to Christ Jesus in western North Carolina.”
— Annie Ferguson, Correspondent