At 96, priest continues to show youthful vitality after 70 years of ministry

Father Paul Landwerlen preaches a homily during a May 4 Mass at St. Joseph Church in Shelbyville that celebrated the 70th anniversary of his ordination as an archdiocesan priest. (Photo by Sean Gallagher)

By Sean Gallagher

SHELBYVILLE—On May 3, 1954, Father Paul Landwerlen lay prostrate in prayer on the floor of the Archabbey Church of Our Lady of Einsiedeln in St. Meinrad during a Mass in which he was ordained an archdiocesan priest.

During a May 4 Mass at St. Joseph Church in Shelbyville to celebrate the 70th anniversary of his ordination, Father Landwerlen shared with the worshippers what was going through his mind at that moment 70 years earlier.

“I thought, ‘How many years can I do this? At least 25? Maybe 50? Maybe I’ll go for 50,’ ” recalled the 96-year-old priest with a laugh. “Today, it’s 70.”

Since Father Landwerlen is only the third priest in the history of the archdiocese to reach 70 years of priestly life and ministry, it’s understandable that Catholics of Shelby County where Father Landwerlen lives in retirement wanted to celebrate his anniversary.

Although Father Landwerlen didn’t want an anniversary celebration, he explained why he ultimately agreed to it.

“It isn’t about me,” said Father Landwerlen during his homily at the May 4 Mass. “It’s about God. That’s what this is all about. You’re not celebrating me. I really didn’t do anything. God did it all.

“It’s about his blessings and his love for us—the Eucharist, the Mass. Without the priest, there would be no Mass, no Eucharist. This is our heavenly liturgy. It’s something that was ordained in heaven. This is from God.”

A Holy Spirit-inspired priest

In a later interview with The Criterion, Father Landwerlen explained that his vocation to the priesthood emerged when he was an eighth-grade student at St. Joan

of Arc School in Indianapolis in the early 1940s. A member of the Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods who taught him then suggested that he might make a good priest.

Father Landwerlen became an archdiocesan seminarian after his sophomore year at Cathedral High School in Indianapolis. He then received 10 years of priestly formation at Saint Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology in St. Meinrad.

Close to his ordination, he received a letter from the Providence sister who had planted the seed of his vocation 12 years earlier, a sister whose name Father Landwerlen has now forgotten.

“She said she had been praying all those years that I would be a priest,” Father Landwerlen recalled. “I had forgotten about her.”

He added, “People don’t realize that God hears your prayers when you pray for seminarians and pray for priests.”

During his 70 years of ministry, Father Landwerlen has always been a parish priest, never serving in schools or in archdiocesan administration.

After his ordination in 1954, he was assigned as an assistant pastor of then-St. Andrew Parish in Richmond (now a campus of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Parish). It was a fellow assistant pastor there at the time, Father Anthony Spicuzza, who showed him the ropes of parish ministry.

“He took me under his wing, and he really showed me what to do,” Father Landwerlen said. “He showed me everything. He was really great.”

After serving for five years in Richmond, Father Landwerlen ministered for another five years at another St. Andrew Parish—this one in Indianapolis. He went on to be assistant pastor at St. Ambrose Parish in Seymour.

He first became a pastor in 1968, being assigned to St. Mary Parish in Mitchell and Our Lord Jesus Christ the King Parish in Paoli. This was followed by stints as pastor in Indianapolis at the former Holy Trinity Parish and St. Gabriel the Archangel Parish, and at St. Thomas More Parish in Mooresville.

In 1997, Father Landwerlen became pastor of St. Vincent de Paul Parish in Shelby County, where a great-grandfather of his had been a parishioner after emigrating to the U.S. from Germany. He led St. Vincent for 16 years until he retired from active ministry in 2013 at the age of 85.

Since then, Father Landwerlen has continued offering sacramental assistance across the archdiocese as his health allows.

He smiles when sharing how people think he’s a lot younger than 96.

“I don’t feel young physically,” he said with a laugh. “But, you know, every time I preach it seems like you can almost feel the Holy Spirit speaking through you.”

‘He is my hero’

Father Paul Landwerlen, administrator at the time of St. Vincent de Paul Parish in Shelby County, reads a proclamation about the faith community’s 175-year history after riding a horse onto its grounds on June 24, 2012. St. Vincent’s founding pastor Father Vincent Bacquelin rode on horseback to minister to Catholics throughout central and eastern Indiana. (Criterion file photo)

Father Landwerlen opened his heart to the power of the Holy Spirit in the 1970s. He started to be involved in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal when he attended summer conferences for priests at the Franciscan University of Steubenville in Steubenville, Ohio.

That experience came at a crucial time for him in his priestly life and ministry.

“I was kind of shaky on my vocation at that time,” Father Landwerlen remembered. “I wasn’t seeing that I was doing a whole lot of good as a priest. You know, you do the same thing over and over. Do you really touch people? Are you really moving them? Are you changing their lives? You don’t see that.

“Going to Steubenville for a couple of summer conferences really helped me see how important the priesthood really is.”

This understanding helped him gain a new perspective on ministry as a parish priest that has stuck with him ever since.

“I just feel that the Mass, preaching to the people and hearing confessions are the things that really touch people’s hearts,” Father Landwerlen said. “They go away with something.

“When a priest preaches, if he does his best, God will touch souls. Sometimes, they’ll hear things that the priests really doesn’t realize he’s saying or maybe he hadn’t even planned.”

Margaret Haehl, a member of St. Vincent de Paul Parish in Shelby County, is grateful for the time she had Father Landwerlen as her pastor.

“He taught us that we were family,” she said. “We needed to get along and love one another. And in his actions, he showed that. It was quite easy to follow him.”

Haehl has been amazed at how her former pastor shows such youthful vitality at his age, riding a horse when he was 84 in a celebration of the 175th anniversary of St. Vincent’s founding as he portrayed the Batesville Deanery faith community’s founding circuit riding pastor, Father Vincent Bacquelin.

He’s even done skydiving in retirement.

“His age is no problem whatsoever,” she said. “Why, he was 90 when he jumped out of an airplane.”

That ageless love for life—and the faith—teaches Haehl and other Catholics in Shelby County a lesson.

“We can do it,” Haehl said. “Don’t ever give up. Just keep giving to the Lord.”

That’s a lesson from Father Landwerlen that Father Michael Keucher takes to heart.

The pastor of St. Vincent de Paul and of St. Joseph Parish in Shelbyville who, at 39, is young enough to be a grandson of Father Landwerlen, spoke glowingly of the elder priest at the May 4 anniversary Mass.

“Father Paul is my confessor,” Father Keucher said. “He is my example in all things priestly. He is my advisor. … He is my brother and friend. He is my hero. And I truly mean it. He is my hero because, for 70 years, he has celebrated Mass faithfully every day.”

Father Keucher, who also serves as archdiocesan vocations director, went on to estimate the number of Masses that Father Landwerlen has likely celebrated in 70 years of priestly ministry: more than 50,000, adding, “I cannot begin to fathom how many souls owe part or even all of their salvation, their eternal salvation, to this priest who, today, celebrates 70 years as a priest.”

While Father Landwerlen is modest in assessing his 70 years of priestly life and ministry in the archdiocese, he is certainly thankful for it.

“My greatest feeling is great gratitude to God,” he said. “Thanksgiving to God. He’s given me a chance to live this long and to do this much. I look at myself and I’m not anybody important, but yet God has used me.” †