Fairbanks Diocese loses second priest in three weeks

CatholicAnchor.org

The Diocese of Fairbanks has lost a second priest in less than a month.

On Nov. 12, the diocese reported that long-serving Jesuit Father Ted Kestler, 72, died in his rectory.

“It is with a most heavy heart, that I inform you that Father Ted Kestler, S.J., passed away this morning in the village of Chefornak,” said Leigh Scarboro, the diocese’s chancellor in a Nov. 12 statement. “The rectory caught on fire and Father Ted was found later inside the building. Our hearts and prayers go out to all who loved and knew him and especially to his brothers in the Society of Jesus.”

No foul play is suspected in the incident, according to the Alaska State Troopers.

The fire is believed to have started because of burning candles and the state medical examiner reported that Father Kestler died of natural causes, not from the fire.

Father Kestler is the second priest to die in the diocese in the last three weeks. On Sept. 20 Father Nelson Marilag died suddenly and unexpectedly while serving as a priest in Fairbanks.

The loss of two priests is a heavy toll in a diocese that is already short on clergy.

The Diocese of Fairbanks covers 409,049 square miles, about two thirds of Alaska. Geographically it is the largest diocese in the United States and is designated by the Vatican as the only remaining fully missionary Catholic diocese in the country. It is also among the poorest. Only eight of its 46 parishes and missions are self-supporting. The viability of these parishes and missions depends on the support of grant funding and individual donations from around the world.

At the time of his death, Father Kestler was serving in the Yup’ik village of Chefornak with a total population of just over 400. Located on the south bank of the Kinia River in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, it is about 98 air miles southwest of Bethel. Chefornak residents practice a subsistence lifestyle and rely on commercial fishing.

According to the Fairbanks Diocese website, Father Kestler was born in Tacoma, Washington, on Dec. 18, 1943, along with his twin sister, Mary Ann. He entered the Jesuit Novitiate at Sheridan, Oregon, in 1964 and was ordained a priest in 1975. In 1980 he first learned of the need for more priests in Alaska and volunteered with two other priests to go north. His first assignment was in the remote village of Kaltag. There Father Kestler met fellow Jesuit, Alaska church historian Father Louis L. Renner, who had come to Alaska to help lay in a winter’s supply of stove wood. Father Kestler helped saw, split and stack wood.

He enjoyed his time in Alaska and asked to serve there long term. In 1982 the Jesuits officially assigned him to serve in Alaska where he was pastor of the Catholic missions in Kaltag and Nulato for three years, commuting between the two small villages by boat when the Yukon River was open, and by snowmachine when it was paved over with ice and snow.

In his own words he “loved every moment of it.”

In 1985 he was appointed Rector and President of St. Michael’s Institute at Gonzaga University. All the while, however, his desire to return to Alaska continued undiminished.

In 1990 he was appointed to serve as General Superior of Jesuits in Alaska, which he did for nine years. In 1997 he became Superior also of the St. Mary’s Jesuit community. This consisted of around ten priests serving in western Alaska. In addition he worked with the Native Ministry Training Program, which equipped Alaska Natives to better know and share their Catholic faith, while remaining true to their traditional lifestyle.

“I am profoundly convinced,” he wrote, “that ‘seeds of the word,’ as the early Church Fathers and the Second Vatican referred to them, were already present in the life and customs of all indigenous peoples before missionaries actually arrived.”

Father Kestler’s funeral was Oct. 22 in St. Mary’s.