Pittsburgh Catholic Newspaper - News and Features

News & Features

Longtime diocesan mission director dies
archived from: 2013-02-22
by: Patricia Bartos

Msgr. Jules Roos, 82, "was always helping someone else"

His work among the poor of Chimbote, Peru, was “a mission that became a home” for Msgr. H. Jules Roos, Bishop David Zubik has said of the local priest’s 48-year commitment to the people of the South American country.

Msgr. Roos died Feb. 16 in Chimbote at age 82.

“All of the Church of Pittsburgh is honored to have raised up such a good and holy priest,” Bishop Zubik said.

The bishop, who visited Chimbote in 2009 with 10 diocesan seminarians, called Msgr. Roos “a humble man of great faith who proudly served Jesus Christ by answering his call to minister to ‘the least of my sisters and brothers.’”

A native of Assumption Parish in Bellevue, Msgr. Roos was educated at Assumption, North Catholic High School and St. Vincent College and Seminary in Latrobe. He was ordained May 26, 1956, at St. Paul Cathedral by Bishop John Dearden, and served as parochial vicar at St. Joseph the Worker in New Castle, St. Germaine in Bethel Park and St. Jerome in Charleroi before setting out for Chimbote on May 27, 1964.

It was the beginning of his half-century of service to the people of Chimbote, one of the most poverty-stricken areas of Peru, located 250 miles north of Lima.

Bishop John Wright had begun the Chimbote-Pittsburgh connection by asking Father James Shanahan to serve there with the St. James Society. Soon, then-Father Roos followed, along with other area priests.

It was an era of strong missionary zeal, with particular concern for Latin America and its severe shortage of priests, said Dr. Eugene McCarthy, a board member of the local Chimbote Foundation.

As a boy, Msgr. Roos had dreamed of becoming a missionary, he told Mike Clark, a longtime supporter and WTAE-TV anchor. But he was so disturbed by the extent of poverty he encountered in Chimbote that he “could not wait to fulfill his mission and come home.”

The young priest prayed about it and “he said he realized God was calling him to serve the poor there,” Clark said. “He never took a day off. He was always helping someone else,” said Clark, who emceed the annual fund-raising dinner for several years after visiting Chimbote and speaks at area schools about the diocesan mission. “He was open to God’s calling to serve. He is a good role model for vocations.”

With another priest, Msgr. Roos began a Social Works Center. An outpatient clinic existed, but by 1966 Father Roos, dismayed by the many emergency baptisms he was performing for babies dying after being born in unhealthy conditions, opened a maternity hospital.

He was joined by two Dominican sisters from Grand Rapids, Mich., Sisters Margaret Mary Birchmeier and Lillian Bockheim, who continue to serve there.

Today, the Social Works Center, the Pittsburgh Diocese’s mission in Chimbote, operates the 26-bed maternity hospital, a clinic, lab, and programs in education and specialty care, reaching some 17,000 patients and delivering some 300 babies each month.

From the beginning, the people of Pittsburgh have been steadfast supporters, contributing some $240,000 each year, said Dr. Patrick Joyce, director of the diocesan Office for Stewardship. The overall total tops $2.2 million.

The funds come from the annual Peru Mission Dinner, held each October for the past 47 years, from an annual golf outing and projects in Catholic schools, he said. The efforts are overseen by the Chimbote Foundation.

Msgr. John Kozar, a local priest who now heads the Catholic Near East Welfare Association, has been a friend and colleague for 35 years.

“He lived a very humble lifestyle,” Msgr. Kozar said of Msgr. Roos. “He had to borrow a suit when he came to the U.S. for the annual Peru dinner.”

He was a great builder, Msgr. Kozar said of the maternity hospital, secondary school, convent, housing projects for the poor, a sawmill project and lab.

Msgr. Kozar credits the Roos family with personally supporting the work. Ken, an architect, designed several of the buildings for his brother and he served as chief expediter, organizing shipments of medical and construction materials.

“It was a very useful way of life that involved helping people and families,” Ken Roos said of his brother’s work. Ken’s daughter, Gretchen, has visited Chimbote five times and with her family has been a longtime supporter.

“Many of us definitely consider him to be a living saint,” she said. “Nothing was ever about him, despite the extraordinary sacrifices he made. He always disdained any accolades or attention.”

Msgr. Kozar called the family’s dedication through the generations as “a huge, huge gift of love to his brother and the poor.”

Other early supporters have also made a generational commitment.

James Ferry recalls his father, Jim, returning from a visit to Chimbote in the 1960s and approaching Bishop Wright, determined to help. “Dad was shocked by the poverty. It made an everlasting impression on him,” he said.

The elder Ferry suggested funding the work through a dinner. He gathered some 40 businessmen for that first fund-raiser. Soon, supplies of lumber, electrical and building materials began their journey south, with Ken Roos crating and shipping them, he said. Ferry’s son, James Ferry II, now serves on the Chimbote board.

Cardinal Donald Wuerl of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., former bishop of Pittsburgh, first visited Msgr. Roos in Chimbote in 1968.

The monsignor formed a bridge between Pittsburgh and Chimbote and “never ever wavered in his conviction that the church should bring to even the poorest people the spiritual and physical and medical support they need,” he said.

Msgr. Roos was “an example of a priest hard at work who left his country and family and went to serve and found so much joy and so much satisfaction that he just stayed,” the cardinal said. “He is a priest for our day, for the new evangelization.”

Dr. Eugene McCarthy met Msgr. Roos in 1970 when he and his new wife spent their first year of marriage as the first lay volunteers in the maternity hospital. He has returned annually for the past 16 years.

A resident of Fairfax, Va., he said Msgr. Roos “was clearly driven by a tremendous commitment to the poor that clearly marked his life.”

“His apostleship down there is very moving,” McCarthy said. And his efforts were appreciated. “I was quite moved by how well he was being looked after,” he said of his most recent visit in January.

The hospital today has a reputation as “a high-quality medical care center,” McCarthy said. But it is the “witness to the Gospel message that makes it really special. They have a deep commitment to pro-life.”

Father Albin McGinnis, pastor of St. John Neumann in Franklin Park, served in Chimbote and in Bolivia for three years.

“One of his strongest gifts was that he really did love the people there as much as those here,” Father McGinnis said. “Everyone called it an oasis in the desert,” he said of the Social Works Center. “He made it a place of welcome.”

Last year, Father McGinnis’ parishioners raised $14,000 for the Chimbote mission through a benefit concert.

Catholic schools help in the work. Over the past 11 years they raised more than $565,000.

Their efforts are imaginative. Students at Holy Redeemer School in Ellwood City host a walk-a-thon each April, and last year raised more than $1,100. The 88 children also have a mission store, which benefits Chimbote.

“We constantly tell them that the church is larger than just Holy Redeemer and we’re bound to help other people,” said Sister Joanne Kokosinski, principal.

Speaking at the Peru dinner eight years ago, Msgr. Roos told supporters, “there’s not one moment down there that we’re not mindful of the efforts that are taking place in Pittsburgh. Without your help we wouldn’t be able to do anything.”

For many people, he said, the Social Works Center “is the only place they can go where someone cares about them. We’ve been seeing that life has changed radically for these people.”

Chimbote Bishop Angel Francisco Simon Piorno, at the 2011 Peru dinner, told supporters that “Pittsburgh has always been in the hearts of the people of Chimbote.”

Msgr. Roos is survived by four brothers, David, Ken, Ralph and Dan; plus cousins and nieces and nephews and grand-nieces and nephews; and “Sister Maggie and Sister Lillian and the staff and orphans of the center, who truly consider him to be family,” Gretchen Roos said.

His funeral Mass was celebrated Feb. 18 in Chimbote by Bishop Piorno. A memorial Mass is to be held in Pittsburgh at a later time.

Memorial donations to aid the mission may be sent to the Chimbote Foundation, 111 Boulevard of the Allies, Pittsburgh, Pa. 15222.

John Franko and Chuck Moody contributed to this story.

E-mail this story