He went from ‘playing priest’ to ordination in St. Peter’s

He is: Father Charles Fanelli, former pastor of St. John Vianney, Northlake. Pastor of St. Thomas More Parish in Chicago. Director of the Respect Life Office in the archdiocese from 1978-85 and still chair for the priests board of the Respect Life Office.

Youth: “I was born and raised in St. Rita Parish, not far from Marquette Park. My mother had five children and one miscarriage. My older brother and I are left.

“Dad had a bar and grill at 63rd and State streets where he served all the railroad men who came in to eat all hours of the day and night. He had to be a jack-of-all-trades, cook, serve and tend bar. Somebody shot him in 1958 and he retired.

“My mother is still living. She’ll be 100 in November. She’s never veered away from taking care of her family. She still cooks, and we all love her dinners of involtini or pasta al pesto, made from scratch. Both my parents grew up in the same little town, Pieve di Compito near Lucca, in the Tuscan Hills. We spoke Italian at home. I’ve visited Italy many times and knew my grandparents, and all my aunts and uncles. We’re very close to our Italian relatives. Mom made about 15 trips to Italy when her siblings needed help in their old age. She was always full of good works.”

Vocation: “We probably had a thousand kids jam-packed in our  grammar school in the 1950s. I served Mass in Latin in those days, for the Augustinian priests who ministered at St. Rita. In seventh grade Sister Margaret Mary asked me where I was going to high school. I said in Holland, Mich. [the Augustinian preparatory seminary]. Sister said ‘If you go to Archbishop Quigley you don’t have to leave home.’ That’s all I needed to hear. That’s how I became a diocesan priest instead of an Augustinian.

“I started ‘playing priest’ when I was 7 years old. That was the year our whole family went to Italy. My grandmother and my aunt made all the vestments and things I needed to ‘say Mass.’

When I was in fifth grade I was in charge of training the altar boys, so I had to learn the priest’s part of the Tridentine Mass. I was learning more and more and I was very happy.”

After Quigley he attended the North American College in Rome. He was ordained in December 1970, instead of May like seminarians at St. Mary of the Lake Seminary. “That was the normal time at the North American. I was ordained at St. Peter’s Basilica, at the Altar of the Chair, beneath the picture of the Holy Spirit, and underneath that, are the remains of the Chair of St. Peter. Bishop James Hickey was our ordaining bishop. There were 56 men in our ordination class.” Following that, he earned a licentiate from the Gregorian College in Rome.

Working with the spirit: He began the first adoration chapel in the archdiocese 27 years ago in St. John Vianney Parish. “The amazing thing is it’s still going. We had wonderful changes in the parish after it began – people became more pious coming to daily Mass, we had five or six young men who became priests, a lot of great things. I think Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Chicago was the next one.”

Leisure: “I like to take walks and I’m still collecting Vatican stamps as a hobby. I read a lot. I’m reading Father John F. Harvey’s book ‘Homosexuality and the Catholic Church,’ the New York priest-founder of the Courage programs. My long time favorite book is Donald Miller’s ‘The City of the Century’ -- I enjoy Chicago history.”

He has been chaplain for the Italian Catholic Federation in Chicago since the 1970s, chaplain for the Chicago Blue Army since the 1980s, and confessor for the Scalabrini Sisters in Stone Park for the past 20 years.

Favorite Scripture and saint: “Psalm 130, ‘If you O Lord should mark our guilt, who could stand?’ My favorite saint is St. John Vianney. I’m always trying to encourage more vocations to the priesthood.”