Chicago native Bishop Callahan is a Packer fan?

CHIPPEWA FALLS – Bishop William P. Callahan – by birth a Chicagoan – might have claimed allegiance to the Chicago Bears in an exclusive interview published in the June 24 issue of the The Catholic Times, but Father Justin Kizewski knows for a fact that the bishop has cheered for the Packers.

“I’ll swear by it,” said Father Kizewski, chaplain at McDonell High School and associate pastor at Holy Ghost Parish in Chippewa Falls and St. Bridget in Springfield. “I saw it with my own two eyes.”

The occasion was Thanksgiving 2007 at the Pontifical North American College in Rome. Father Kizewski, a die-hard Packers fan and a seminarian studying there, had worked assiduously to get a television in the refectory, so that the seminarians and their guests could watch a replay of the Packers-Lions game during the college’s traditional Thanksgiving dinner.

Then-Father Callahan was a spiritual director at the North American College at the time, but a few days earlier news had reached the college that Pope Benedict XVI had appointed the priest to be an auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. The bishop-designate was, of course, back in Wisconsin for the announcement. Nobody expected him in Rome for Thanksgiving dinner.

Father Kizewski remembers how everybody in the refectory rose to applaud the newly appointed bishop when he unexpectedly walked into the room. The talk at dinner might have been about the guest-of-honor’s new assignment, Father Kizewski admitted, but he remembers clearly that Bishop Callahan’s eyes were on the television from time to time, and that he cheered when the Packers – not the Lions – were playing well.

The Catholic Times
Truly scandalous indeed!!!

The Catholic Times has their special edition online as well.

Photo: CT/Milwaukee Catholic Herald file photo
Ellen Callahan helps her son, William, with his vestments on the day he was ordained a priest, April 30, 1977. He was ordained by Archbishop William E. Cousins at the Basilica of St. Josaphat in Milwaukee.


Also I should confess, I know this next culprit:

His[Callahan] very meaningful homily was 25 minutes long on Aug. 11, but it was later on – during the new bishop’s words of thanks at the end of the Installation Mass – that one particularly outspoken member of the faithful in attendance finally cut him off.

This infant’s cry distinctly pealed through the packed cathedral at the end of the two-and-a-half hour liturgy. The new bishop looked up with a smile and concluded his remarks – to chuckles from those in attendance – with these words: “Yeah, that’s right. Let’s go!” 

 Yes, the screamer has as big of a mouth like his father...