The following is an article from the May 25, 2005,
issue of the Des Moines Register by columnist
Rob Borsellino.
For Bognanno, the priesthood is hardly
a solitary life
In a week it'll be 40 years since the day Frank
Bognanno became a priest, and he's quick to mention it was a different
world.
That was back when the church was telling nuns and priests not to mingle
with regular folks “because they'll lose respect for you.”
Monsignor Bognanno never got with the program. He didn’t become a priest to
distance himself from people or remove himself from everything that's going
on.
He doesn’t have a 16th-century mind-set.
He's one of those guys who live in the moment. He’s blunt, plain-spoken
—
but soft-spoken — and doesn't try to gloss over his own missteps.
Ask about the child sex scandals, and he says he’d been hearing about this
for years but didn’t do anything about it. He regrets that.
“I had this sense that it was the bishop’s problem to deal with.”
He says that and shakes his head. It’s as if he can’t believe he was that
passive. It’s embarrassing.
“Now, if I heard about a priest doing something like that, I’d call him up
and confront him. I wouldn’t back off.”
Get him talking about politics, and he'll make the case for why he opposes
abortion rights and the death penalty.
“The born, the unborn, the Iraqis. You don’t solve problems by killing
people. The death penalty is a step backwards. Why don’t we recognize that?”
He’s not all that pleased with the way the world is turning
— “The worst
part is that kids are a mess.”
But Bognanno’s also one of those guys who think it’s up to folks like them
to make things better.
Spend time with him, and you see that.
We met the other night at Skip’s restaurant on the south side, and when he
walked in the door, he was on his cell phone. He was running late because he
had been golfing out at Echo Valley — “Bing Crosby played golf in ‘Going My
Way.’ ”
He settled in, ordered a coffee, and it was like hanging with a celebrity.
Folks kept coming by to say hello, to schmooze, have a few laughs, to
connect with the guy. There were hugs, handshakes, slaps on the back.
Bognanno was in his element.
“I became a priest so I could influence people, so I could do something
positive with my life.”
Bognanno, 65, was born in Des Moines, lived out in California as a child,
and says his first sense of a calling was in fifth grade at St. Joseph’s in
Bakersfield.
“The priest was speaking to us about the church, about being a priest, and I
felt like he was talking to me.”
He moved back to Des Moines in time to go to high school at Dowling. He
looked up to the priests who were his teachers. That sealed it for him.
“I dated in high school, the girls looked good. But there was a sense that I
just had to be a priest. It didn’t look very exciting. It looked boring. But
it was something I needed to do. I had this spiritual experience. I can't
explain it.”
In the early days - between 1965 and ’69 — Bognanno was an activist, a “free
spirit.”
He took part in several civil rights protests around the Midwest, marching
beside Dick Gregory in Milwaukee.
This was during the Vatican II period, a time of upheaval in the church. A
lot of Bognanno’s friends quit.
Bognanno struggled — “I stopped praying for a while.”
But leaving the church was never an option for him.
He made this agreement, this commitment, and he's not the type who would
back down.
Instead, he got even more involved.
He was in charge of the pope’s visit to Iowa in 1979 - “a high point in my
life ” — and he had a cable TV show for 12 years.
He developed a spirituality program for priests, something that got him
national attention. It was taught in 105 of this country’s 180 dioceses. It
was also making the rounds in parts of Europe.
He’s served at churches in Council Bluffs, Glenwood, Osceola and a bunch of
places around Des Moines.
These days, he’s pastor at Christ the King Church on Southwest Ninth.
Sunday, there will be a Mass and open house in honor of Bognanno’s 40th
anniversary.
It’ll be a good chance for Bognanno to connect with his people and remind
himself why he’s a priest.
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