Religious Vocations Supplement
Priest ministers with joy after 43 years of service
Father James Wilmoth, chaplain of Roncalli High School and pastor of St. Roch Parish, both in Indianapolis, gives the sign of peace to Audrey Meyers, a Roncalli sophomore who is a member of Holy Name of Jesus Parish in Beech Grove, during a Nov. 12 Mass at the school. Waiting to give the sign of peace to Father Wilmoth is Roncalli sophomore Meg Naumovich, a member of Our Lady of the Greenwood Parish in Greenwood. (Photo by Sean Gallagher)
By Sean Gallagher
Father James Wilmoth sat on a bench outside Roncalli High School’s small chapel one day in November as the sound of a buzzer marked the end of a class period in the middle of the day.
Soon the students poured into the hallways of the Indianapolis South Deanery high school, which buzzed with the chatter of hundreds of conversations.
A few dozen students made their way through the crowd to the chapel. Some stopped to chat with their school’s 69-year-old chaplain. Others went in for a few minutes of quiet prayer before the school’s daily Mass.
Father Wilmoth began his second stint as Roncalli’s chaplain in 2006, more than 30 years after he started his first period of ministry there.
When he was asked two years ago to minister at Roncalli again, Father Wilmoth was the pastor of St. Roch Parish, a faith community on Indianapolis’ south side that has seen a healthy amount of growth since he began his ministry there in 1997.
After serving as a priest for more than 40 years, a natural reaction to the request to add Roncalli’s chaplaincy to his ministry portfolio might have been a polite, “No thank you.”
But that is not Father Wilmoth’s way.
“As soon as [the archbishop] asked about it, I said I’d be happy to, that I’d love to do it,” Father Wilmoth said. “It’s because I’m so committed to Catholic schools.”
He also remains committed to St. Roch, where he continues to serve as pastor, and to its school, where he goes early each morning to help students out of their buses and parents’ cars.
“He’s just very selfless,” said Bonnie Schott, a member of St. Roch Parish. “He hardly ever thinks about himself. He’s just always thinking about other people, and how to make their lives happier and better.”
Father Wilmoth’s selfless ministry begins early each day when he spends time in quiet prayer, offering up many intercessions for those to whom he ministers.
Then it is off to the parish school. He celebrates Mass for St. Roch students three days a week, and at Roncalli every day. His ministry then often extends into the evening when he might meet with parishioners, couples preparing to be married or attend a school sporting event.
Father Wilmoth spoke in Roncalli’s chapel about how after four decades of priestly ministry he still gets the energy to give of himself from dawn to well after dusk.
A buzzer sounded again and the school’s halls, which had been silent moments earlier, were buzzing again.
“These kids give you energy,” Father Wilmoth said. “Just listen. How could you not be energized by all that, by hearing them out there laughing, talking to their buddies, just between classes, by walking down the hallway and they say, ‘Hey, Father’ or high five you?”
Charles Weisenbach had been one of those students back in the early 1970s when Father Wilmoth was in his first tenure at Roncalli.
He is now in his 14th year as the school’s principal.
“It doesn’t seem as if anything has changed from my recollection from when he was here 30 years ago,” Weisenbach said. “He’s still very kid-oriented. He still has a high energy level. He’s still passionate about the Church [and] his Catholic faith.”
One thing that Weisenbach is happy that has changed about Father Wilmoth is that he is no longer helping coach the school’s freshman basketball team.
He was a member of that team decades ago when Father Wilmoth walked the sidelines. The team lost far more games than they won.
“I would say that it was probably to everyone’s best benefit that he stayed with the clergy and not continued coaching basketball,” Weisenbach said with a laugh. “We struggled, but I believe that it was probably more due to the talent level of the team and not the coaching.”
Weisenbach’s son, Sam, got to share an experience with his dad when Father Wilmoth was his chaplain during his senior year at Roncalli.
“He’s a great guy. I love him,” said Sam. “He’s a great priest. And he’s just been going at it for so long, I have the utmost respect for him. You can just tell that he loves what he does.”
Father Wilmoth loves who he is and what he does as a priest, in part because he grew up seeing priests loving their vocation as they ministered in the 1940s at St. Philip Neri Parish on Indianapolis’ near-east side.
“They always seemed to be happy in what they were doing,” he said. “They seemed to love what they were doing. They were always guys who were compassionate and service-oriented.”
Their example led young Jimmy Wilmoth to become a seminarian and receive priestly formation at the former St. Mary Seminary in southern Kentucky and later at Saint Meinrad Seminary, where he was a classmate of Archbishop Daniel M. Buechlein.
“Father Wilmoth was well-liked and respected by his classmates,” the archbishop said. “As is the case now, years later, he had a consistently upbeat and cheerful spirit.”
Ordained in 1965, Father Wilmoth has ministered in a wide variety of fields: as a seminary instructor, school chaplain, sheriff and fire department chaplain, Newman Center chaplain and parish priest.
“My life as a priest is my life,” Father Wilmoth said. “It’s not a career. It’s not a job. It’s my life. My life right now is the people of St. Roch Parish and Roncalli High School.
“It’s an extremely happy life. I’ve been in it for 43 years. And I’ve been very happy the whole time.”
(To learn more about archdiocesan priests and seminarians, log on to www.heargodscall.com.) †
