Monsignor gregory hesse

Fr hesse archive
Fr hesse sspx
Hesse was appointed theologian by the Holy Father, John Paul II. He has his Doctorate from the Pontifical University in Rome in theology and.

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by Joe Bollig
joe.bollig@theleaven.org

TOPEKA — Father Thomas Nicholas Hesse did not consider retirement the end of his priestly ministry but, rather, a different phase.

Despite being tethered to an oxygen tank, he loved to celebrate Mass — especially when filling in for a pastor. While in assisted living, he welcomed visitors for counseling and the sacrament of reconciliation.

During the monthly Marian pro-life Mass in Topeka this past October, he told worshipers, “This is the last time God will ask me to carry my cross. And now is the time, I believe, that I will have to stop.”

“His spirit for ministry was strong, but his health was weak,” said Father Joe Chontos, chaplain at the Juvenile Correctional Facility in Topeka. “By staying active . . . he put the focus not on himself and his health, but what he had given his life for — his priestly ministry.”

Father Hesse, 79, died from cardiopulmonary disease on Nov. 26 at Aldersgate Village retirement community in Topeka.

“He was a gentleman and a peacemaker,” said Father Chontos, who knew him since he was a seminari

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Father Robert Hesse

Father Robert Hesse CSC, passed away on February 3, 2007 in Jinja, Uganda East Africa. Father Hesse was ordained in the Congregation of Holy Cross on June 4, 1958. He went to Uganda on November 4, 1958 with Bishop McCauley. He was born and raised in Grand Rapids, MI, the son of Joseph and Louise Hesse. He was born December 15, 1926. He graduated from St. Thomas Aquinas Elementary School, Grand Rapids Junior College and the University of Michigan. He entered the Congregation of Holy Cross in November 1951. He was preceded in death by his parents, Joseph and Louise Hesse; brothers, Joseph and William Hesse; sisters, Francis De Pauw and Mary Louise Hesse. He is survived by his brother, John (Marie) Hesse; his sister-in-law, Phyllis Hesse; his special nieces, Mary Hesse and Barbara Bennett and special friends, Ernest Mika and Richard Jablonski. Father Hesse served in the U.S. Air Force in WWII and was a missionary in Uganda, East Africa for 49 years, establishing a parish and school in Kitagwenda, Ft. Portal Diocese for 23 years and spent 17 years at Bugembe Paris

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Fr. Gregory Hesse was a character, to be sure. He was something of a caricature of baroque Catholicism, witty, humorous, ultra-Scholastic, and very biting. Initially a worker at the Mercedes-Benz factory, he entered priestly studies in Rome, earned doctorates in Canon Law and Theology from the Angelicum (degrees which he considered worthless), was ordained by Aurelio Cardinal Sabattini in St. Peter's Basilica in 1981, and worked as a secretary to Cardinal Stickler in the Vatican for a few years. After orthodoxy forced him into retirement, he discovered the "TLM," although refusing the vintages from Pius XII onward, and, despite, being canonically on good terms with Rome himself, began a loose affiliation with the Society of St. Pius X.

In his theology, Hesse was a Latin neo-Scholastic: precise and legal, although in non-Roman matters he did defer to the Eastern traditions. With regards to the papacy he balanced Vatican I and the limitations on the papacy's power that exist in the Church tradition, glossing over the fact Pius IX did not want them. Most of his opinions were