AND HE IS WILLING TO CHANGE HIS NAME TO GEARINGSKI

There was actually supposed to be another post today that did not quite work out yet so I though I would share with you a little of what I did yesterday. One of my best priest friends, Fr. Barry Gearing, was enjoying his second day as administrator of Saint Adelbert in Berea, Ohio. So I went t pay him a call. This a great Romanesque building just off the campus of Baldwin Wallace College. Here is an exterior shot of the building.

The place has been virtually untouched. Over the side altars there used to be white crosses outlined in gold but when they put air conditioning in they blew over and so they took them down.

I used to work at BW and would play this great little tracker action organ for the pastor, Fr. Keller, in the mornings. One day he called me up on intercom and asked me to come to the sacristy after Mass. He wanted to inquire if I ever thought about the priesthood and I said, "Yes, but I want to pay off my student loans first." "Nonsense!" he fired back and immediately set out plans to get me to my interview at Saint Mary Seminary which was then on Ansel Road.Above is the small but serviceable sacristy in which Fr. Keller proposed the idea of the priesthood. Below is their relatively new adoration chapel using the altar from the convent that was torn down. The statue in the middle is St. Padre Pio.

Ahhhh! The beautiful Victorian rectory (not that these things matter - and yet they do) made from true Berea sandstone. Over the top window you will see carved in stone two flags, one is Polish, the other I forget - perhaps American, topped off with the papal tierra. Below, Fr. B with is leg in an immobilizer due to a particularly bad golfing accident (?!) frets over moving while still on crutches. Poor guy!

God bless you Fr. Gearing. I hope you will be as happy there as I am on this end of the diocese!