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October 18, 2024With the approach of the 11th annual Celebrate Priesthood! Taste of the Diocese Gala to thank priests and raise money for their retirement needs, we offer this snapshot of the life of a newly “retired” priest.
The gala will take place on October 24 at St. Paul Jr./Sr. High School in Worcester. Tickets can be purchased and donations made at worcesterdiocese.org/celebrate-priesthood. For more information call 508-929-4368.
By Tanya Connor | The Catholic Free Press
WORCESTER – As a seminarian, Msgr. Francis J. Scollen considered being a missionary – to help those in need.
Decades later, officially “retired,” he’s still here for people – the people of Worcester, the city where he was born and brought up and where he has served for his entire priesthood. He credits the Church with helping him do this.
His seminary years and early priesthood were times of struggles for justice and peace. Protests about civil rights and the Vietnam War were happening around the country.
When men at St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore were headed for pastoral assignments, he sought a black parish, and was sent to nearby St. Peter Claver, where he met then-Josephite Father Philip Berrigan, a peace activist who greatly affected his life.
Msgr. Scollen said he was at St. Peter Claver in 1968 when a riot broke out after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
“It was scary,” he said. “We fed everybody – the people in the neighborhood, the soldiers” sent to quell the rioting. “The anger that had been there in the black community came out. It was understandable. ... I just stayed in the rectory. It was a war zone.”
He recalled joining Rev. King in a demonstration where “they didn’t arrest us; they just said, ‘Go home.’”
He attended the trial of the Baltimore Four – Father Berrigan and three other war protestors who poured blood on draft records. He also attended part of the Catonsville Nine trial of Father Berrigan and eight others who burned draft records in Maryland.
“It was a very interesting time,” Msgr. Scollen mused. His desire to “be there with the people began then, and it’s continued on.”
In seminary, he contemplated joining a missionary order, he said. But Bishop Bernard J. Flanagan promised, “If you stay in the Diocese of Worcester, we’ll give you that opportunity to work with the poor” locally.
“I was arrested as a young priest” and jailed for a few hours, for civil disobedience in protesting the Vietnam War, Msgr. Scollen said. “Bishop Flanagan was very supportive. … He was a leader in social ministry.”
In 1972 Bishop Flanagan created the Urban Ministry Commission. Msgr. Scollen, ordained the year before, became director. For several years he directed its work, which included prison reform and supporting the poor, black people, workers, the mentally ill, and civil rights, working with Catholic Charities.
From 1972-1990 Msgr. Scollen was Department of Youth Services chaplain. He recalled two youth he encountered.
He brought one along when about to celebrate a special Mass for a woman with “90 prayer requests.” He asked what the boy’s prayer requests were and received the most fundamental one: “The only thing I want to pray for is that I get religion.”
Another time, a young man told him, “I want to commit suicide.” The priest invited him to a testimonial for the Rev. Thurman Hargrove Sr., pastor of Second Baptist Church.
Rev. Hargrove read the story of the jailor about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped, whom St. Paul dissuaded by saying, “We are all here.” (Acts 16:27-28)
“We all prayed over the kid,” Msgr. Scollen said. Ten years later he encountered the young man, who told him, “That minister saved my life.”
Msgr. Scollen has seen other types of growth too.
He recalled the Vietnamese community getting established at St. John Parish in Worcester, where he was assigned as temporary administrator in 1977. He stayed until 1984, when he became pastor of Our Lady of Fatima Parish.
At St. Peter Parish, which he pastored from 1989 until his retirement this July, he saw the African ministry develop and the Hispanic community growing, he said. On July 1, 2006 he also became pastor of St. Andrew the Apostle, a mission of St. Peter’s.
“He had Heinz 57 varieties of people there and he got them all blending together,” said Robert Ballantine, who worships at St. Peter’s. “Everybody thinks the world of him. … He’ll talk to you about anything.”
“I think the people appreciated what I shared with them,” Msgr. Scollen said. “People do recognize and appreciate … all our retired priests. That’s why they come to” Celebrate Priesthood. “We have really good priests,” bishops, deacons, religious and laity. “You’re not doing it by yourself; you’re in collaboration with people.”
One of those collaborators, Mary Shea, coordinator of St. Peter’s Food Pantry, described Msgr. Scollen as “the biggest heart I ever met.”
He turned 79 on Oct. 11 but continues his involvement with the food pantry (and the medical and youth basketball programs and St. Peter Central Catholic Elementary School), said Amie Neville, whom he hired to be the parish’s administrative assistant at her wedding rehearsal 13 years ago.
“He’s carrying the boxes to the cars” when people come to the food pantry, she said. “Every person who pulls up is going to see the priest. … They’re going to see him working.”
He’s always concerned about how many people are served, wondering, “Could we have done more?” she said. Everyone knows if you ask him for a favor “the answer will be ‘yes.’”
And volunteers “can’t leave” because they are inspired by him.
Mrs. Neville choked up telling how Msgr. Scollen is family to her.
Photo courtesy of Amie Neville
Fitzgerald Neville and his grandfatherly friend Msgr. Francis J. Scollen share a moment on Easter in 2022.
“I thought this would be just a job,” she said. But, mostly because of him, “everything” in her life has changed, including how she raises her son Fitzy, 6, who treats Msgr. Scollen like a grandfather.
Since Msgr. Scollen retired July 1, people have refrained from asking him to do the pastor’s ministries, and the transition seems to be easier because “they still get to see him,” Mrs. Neville said. He wants them to know Father José A. Rodríguez, once his associate at St. Peter’s, is now pastor.
“It’s worked out very well,” Msgr. Scollen said; St. Peter’s has long had retired priests helping there. He said he felt it was time for him to give up administrative duties, but he still has energy and health. So, he celebrates Masses and helps in other ways.
Someone told him, “You should do something you like” in retirement, he said. He responded, “I am doing something I like – I like being a priest.” But now he can do 10 things a day instead of 50.
“He’s only ‘semi-retired,’” said his close friend Father John F. Madden, St. John’s pastor. He keeps working because he has seen God at work in difficult situations, and because “the Church was faithful to him ... he was always faithful to the Church and the Gospel” and God is always faithful to us.
