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Prayers and praise offered for late bishop, ‘a true teacher’
archived from: 2010-03-15
by: Pittsburgh Catholic Staff

As Bishop John McDowell’s casket arrived at Epiphany Church in Pittsburgh’s Uptown neighborhood for viewing March 2, Bishop David Zubik presided over the reception of the body and offered mid-day prayers from the Office of the Dead.

He noted that Bishop McDowell had headed the parish for 27 years. “Only God knows how many people Bishop McDowell greeted here over the years. Only God knows how many sins were forgiven here, how many were welcomed into the faith here.”

Bishop Zubik added that, “for all the times he lifted us up by the magnificence of his preaching,” Bishop McDowell’s real teaching was “the example of his holy life.”

In his homily, Bishop Edward Burns of Juneau, Alaska, noted that, as an eighth-grader at St. Agatha in Ellwood City, he had been among those more than 100,000 children confirmed by Bishop McDowell through the years.

The bishop, he said, “exercised his role of bishop as a true church man, a true follower of Jesus. He was a true catechist, a true teacher, who realized the role of bishop — to teach, lead and sanctify — with such zeal, such fervor.”

In his homily March 3 at Epiphany during morning prayer from the Office of the Dead, Father Ron Lengwin, diocesan spokesman, asked, “to whom can we compare him?”

Bishop McDowell, he said, was like St. Thomas Aquinas — “he had a great intellect, but never tried to impress you.”

He likened the bishop to Archbishop Fulton Sheen, a friend of Bishop McDowell since their days many decades earlier as classmates at Catholic University of America — a “wonderful speaker and great preacher.”

“Anyone who ever heard him at his best knows there was no one better,” Father Lengwin said. “He could touch your heart and soul.”

Bishop McDowell was like St. John Vianney, “a simple, humble man of prayer” who “loved priests and the priesthood so much he would do anything for the church, for any priest,” he said. “He was always available.”

He was similar to St. Augustine, who asked, “What is the first thing in religion, the second and third?” And answered, “humility.”

“Bishop John McDowell humbled himself and is now exalted among the saints in heaven,” Father Lengwin said.

And he compared him to Jesus. “I believe the highest compliment is that he was for all of us a Christ-like man and a Christ-like bishop.

“He was a pastor of souls, a friend of the poor, a great teacher of the faith, successor of the apostles.”

“You used your gifts as God wanted you to use them,” Father Lengwin concluded. “You lived your life as God wanted. May you now rest in peace.”

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