CINCINNATI – Megan Meers summed up the feelings of the parishioners that Bishop Earl Fernandes left behind at St. Ignatius of Loyola Church in Cincinnati with a letter she wrote to the faithful of the Diocese of Columbus after learning their beloved pastor was named a bishop.
While reading to The Catholic Times what she had written, she paused several times, her voice choked with emotion. The letter went like this:
“Congratulations on the appointment of Bishop-elect Earl Fernandes. You’ve just hit the jackpot. In him, you will find him a faithful and fearless father, a strong leader and a devoted friend. He’s a man of his word, but more importantly he’s a man of God’s word. He’s a man with unmatched intelligence and an unstoppable work ethic.
“Many will say he’s too busy, but he will always make time for what is truly important. Some have characterized him as a pinball, quickly bouncing from one task to another, accomplishing efficiently what would take a normal man twice as long to complete, and I can see the resemblance in this metaphor. But it has its faults, namely, it suggests that his movement is erratic or haphazard.
“What comes to mind at least for me is the work of a simple honeybee. The honeybee knows its purpose, its task and sets about each day to diligently complete it. … In other words, the bishop-elect will produce great fruit for God and the church. Yet the faithful will also realize their full potential if they openly receive his instruction, guidance and love.
“To know him is to love him. And to love him is to find greater love for God, Jesus Christ in the Catholic Church. His holiness will challenge you. This presence calls you to rise to greater heights of excellence. In him you will see the face of Christ.
“I’ve witnessed him kneeling with the elderly to hear their confessions. I’ve seen him drop everything to accompany the sick and the dying. I admire his constancy and humbling himself before the altar of our Lord in prayer. He will take good care of those entrusted to him. Please take good care of him,” she concluded in her letter.
Meers, an assistant music director and teacher and director of innovation and design at the parish school and also a parent, marveled at the bishop’s ability to connect with people and to connect them with others.
“He has an amazing ability to befriend others and then to see the best in those people and help them work together,” she said. “A lot of people struggle with the hierarchy of the church because they feel very removed from our experiences just in the world. But he’s not one of those. He takes the time to listen, and to talk to you and to truly get to know you.”
She has witnessed him display those same people skills when interacting with the children in school.
“He’s a father to them, and he takes delight in them,” she said. “I direct the children’s choir here, and often he will just stop by our rehearsals and just enjoy the children as they are – joke with them and also teach them and encourage them and just love them.”
Like many in the parish, Meers and her family are extremely sad to see their pastor leave after less than three years there. Bishop Fernandes was assigned by the Archdiocese of Cincinnati to St. Ignatius in 2019.
“It really has been like a grieving process,” she said. “I consider him a friend. I have a daughter in first grade, and she said to me, ‘Oh, mom, Father Earl remembers everybody. What makes you think he’s going to forget us.’ You know, it’s very, very true.
“A lot of people have commented over his time here that we’ve all known he’s called to greater things than being a pastor here. Even though this is a great job, too, he’s made for more, and this makes sense.”
Bishop Fernandes exhibited the ability to his parishioners not only to engage with people but also be involved in the numerous ministries at the large parish on Cincinnati’s west side.
“He did such a good job of bringing all the ministries together that support the family and organized us a little bit, like where do we overlap and how can we better help each other be more efficient,” said Michelle Wanstrath, a parishioner, ministry leader and school parent.
“He said there are a lot of ministries that support life, support marriage prep, engaged couples or NFP, fathers, mothers, and he along with Brad Macke (director of adult faith formation and outreach) helped gather us together and made us feel more like a parish working for the same common goals.”
When she approached Bishop Fernandes about bringing to the parish Mary Garden Showers, a national ministry that also has several chapters in the Diocese of Columbus offering baby showers for mothers in need, he didn’t hesitate to welcome the initiative.
“We needed his blessing, and he was beyond supportive,” she said. “He thought it was a great idea. He was supportive of us through Walking with Moms in Need (a U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ initiative).
“Of course, we were going to direct moms in need to all the great local resources that already exist, but we asked ourselves how can we as a parish actually help? And when we came to him with Mary Garden Showers, he was like, this is a no-brainer. He attended our first shower in February and gave a blessing to the moms and just encouragement and prayer.”
Wanstrath echoed other parishioners’ past observations that their pastor wouldn’t be with them long.
“We’re so, so happy for him, but we’re also sad to lose him at the same time,” she said. “He’s so active and engaged. He really is kind of like an Energizer Bunny. I don’t know when he sleeps. He would be at ministry events, all of these meetings with the ministry leaders, and just getting out there in the parish on a personal level not related to the ministries.
“He did home blessings, and so he would come to anybody’s home. He was one of the few priests in our area during COVID who continued going out into the hospitals, putting himself at risk, really getting out there and being with the people wherever he was needed to say Mass in nursing homes or going to hospitals. He was just go, go, go through the pandemic and beyond.
“I think everybody you talk to is like, ‘Oh, he’s destined for bigger things.’ So it was only a matter of time until he’s tapped to do something else. So I was not surprised.
“We’re all just so happy for him and supportive of him on his journey. And we’re just so grateful that he’s been at our parish these last two years. It was such a blessing when he came here. He’s just really made a difference.
“He has a way of making people feel the desire to be more engaged in their faith and more active in their faith. And I think that’s a really good quality. Not to mention again, he’s just got a lot of energy, which is so refreshing, because it inspires everybody else around him.”
Kate Rewwer, who was hired last year by Bishop Fernandes as the parish health minister, noted his willingness to allow staff members to do their jobs. Bishop Fernandes had attracted her and her husband to the parish because of his homilies, his engaging style and the frequent availability of confession.
“He’s been a tremendous role model and support system for what I do and, from what I’ve observed, all of the other staff members and what they do with the parish,” she said.
Bishop Fernandes has shown a particular affinity for health care and ministering to the sick and dying, largely because he was once a medical school student and through the example provided by his father, Sydney, a longtime physician in Toledo.
“That’s the thing I noticed about Father Earl is that anytime there’s been somebody in the hospital that’s needed a sacrament, he’s there,” she said. “A couple of weeks ago, someone called and said, ‘I have a friend who has a family member that’s very, very sick and has refused to see a priest and now is agreeing to see one.’”
The sick man was not at a hospital the parish frequents for sick calls, but “Father had actually come from a Holy Hour for the Ukraine, and he emailed me back within minutes,” Rewwer said. “This was somebody who had been away from the Church for so long, was very, very sick, and he left everything and went over there. That was always so important to him, to make sure that the sick and the dying receive the sacraments, anointing of the sick, reconciliation.
“That was amazing that he did that with as busy as he is, and it was not a parishioner, … but he made himself available.”
Macke, another staff member the future bishop hired after he arrived at St. Ignatius, appreciated the pastoral vision after working closely with him on parish faith formation programs and outreach.
“Evangelization happens through a lot of different avenues, and, like Father has said to me, I think it happens one person at a time,” Macke said, “which is really related to missionary discipleship, because programs will not make disciples. Jesus works through each one of us.”
Some of those missionary efforts included revitalization of the St. Vincent de Paul Society to help those in need, RCIA, a book conversation group to take a deeper dive into Catholicism and a welcome booth at the parish festival to reach out to people who might not normally come to church.
The parish planned an evangelization workshop training for the festival booth volunteers to answer faith-related questions, “not pressuring people, but just opening up that door to have a faith conversation, having materials but not overwhelming people who may not be religious or churched, and also share their own faith stories,” Macke said.
“The other thing about Father Fernandes is, he’s not a micromanager, which I appreciate,” Macke said. “Sometimes I’m waiting for him to tell us what to do here, and he throws the question back into our lap a lot as a staff.”
Kevin Vance is the principal at Cincinnati St. Ignatius of Loyola School. Photos courtesy Abigail Pitones
School principal Kevin Vance witnessed a similar level of engagement with a staff of 130 and the more than 1,110 students in pre-K through eighth grade.
“He came in during a difficult year (COVID-19 outbreak), and I think one of the best things he did just overall was bring some calmness and stability,” Vance said. “He took time to get to know all of us. I think the best thing he did was just to listen at first and see where are we and where do you want to go.
“He’s always been super supportive of education. If you talk to him for five or 10 minutes, you’ll hear the story about how his dad went to their parish priest (in Toledo) and begged that he and his brothers could go to school there. He’s been in Catholic education for quite a few years, either as a high school teacher, as a seminary teacher, and now here at the largest Catholic elementary school in the state of Ohio.”
Students go to Mass once a week, often celebrated by the future bishop, and he frequented the classrooms to engage the students. And he often could be found standing outside in the before- or after-school drop-off or pickup lines to chat with families.
“He has a certain presence with the children that they really look up to him or warm up to him,” Vance said. “He makes people feel welcome. So I think people approach him naturally and just talk. He’s concerned about what they’re doing and where they’ve been and how they’re doing and what they’ve learned. He takes that personal time or that time to get to know them.
“The kids aren’t threatened or afraid of him or anything like that. They really kind of embrace him because he’s warm and personable, and he shares some of his life stories. He’s come into the classroom fairly often.”
