My brother, the priest: a remembrance

More than a thousand mourners, including his Bishop, an abbot, 50 priests, many elected officials, and family members filled St. Terese Church in Kansas City to bid farewell to Father Pat Tobin. The beloved priest celebrated 60 years as a priest and died at 86. Rev Chuck Tobin gave the homily, saying Father Pat will be remembered for his love of the poor. One of the mourners speculated that when St. Peter asked Father Pat what he had done for the poor, he respectfully responded, “Pull up a chair.”

Father Pat gathered food from restaurants, banquets, and grocery stores that otherwise would be wasted. From the trunk of his own car, he distributed food to the poor.

From this humble beginning, he helped found Harvesters food bank. This organization grew from Father Pat distributing 150,000 pounds of food a year to currently delivering 49 million pounds a year in refrigerated trucks by skilled workers. What a legacy, one that is still expanding.

Getting food to the hungry poor was a driving force in his life. A friend donated thousands of tomato plants, which he distributed to parishes so they could use what they wanted and the surplus could go to the poor. He would always claim that help is there if you know where to find it.

Father Pat’s passion for helping the poor continued in his seven years as a pastor of a parish that Time magazine described as one of the highest crime areas in the country. I was staying with Father Pat when he had to make a late night call to anoint a dying man.

As we were leaving, the car wouldn’t start. Lifting the hood, we found that there was no battery. The following night, on our way to a United Way meeting, we found that the car’s rear wheels were missing. The third night, I left, telling him, “No offense Pat, but when I hear gunshots and I know the TV is off, I am out of here”.

Father Pat stayed at the parish after being held up at gunpoint, continuing to look for help and solutions. At one point, he took no salary for six months to help pay for the church boiler.

He finally found hope in Mother Teresa of Calcutta. She invited Father Pat to give retreats and encouragement to her sisters all over the world during a 30-year relationship. Father Pat gave up annual vacations to go to 34 countries to give retreats and hope to the missionaries working with the poorest of the poor.

Once while in Ethiopia, Mother Teresa scolded Father Pat for stopping a child from eating dirt, explaining there are minerals in dirt that will ease hunger pains. Neither Father Pat nor Mother Teresa seemed to be on a membership drive, but rather were driven by the human need for food and water.

Our family attended Mother Teresa’s beatification, the first step to sainthood and had Father Pat lived, we would have gone back to Rome for her canonization, this September.

His appetite for helping found him in the middle of getting the first settlement of refugees from Cuba in 1962. He brought 120 families to Kansas City, believing they would learn English faster and have a better job opportunity.

Today, these refugees boast of 90 percent graduating from college. One of its leaders who helped translate for the group is one of the region’s leading eye doctors. Dr. Felix Sabades and his son, Dr. Nelson Sabades, keep in touch with the group, and they honored Father Pat recently.

No matter where Father Pat was assigned, there was always a needy project. In Cameron, Missouri, he made a well-run prison a happier place by helping start a wooden block project where prisoners designed, lettered and painted wooden blocks. This, in turn, enabled kids living in poverty to learn their ABC’s and how to count.

Father Pat gave more than 200 speeches for United Way. “Does it matter if a starving child is Methodist, Muslim or Jewish?” he asked.

Father Pat’s ministry had many passions. He fought hard against dirty water, asking:

“Where is the outrage in our human family that allows a child to die every minute-and-a-half from dirty water?” he asked. “How can we allow these water-born diseases to kill innocent children of the world? If you have a pulse, get involved.”

Rev. Chuck Tobin, made a point in his farewell homily of Father Pat’s habit of constantly pulling out a water filter from his briefcase and demonstrating it to anyone that would listen.

That prompted the remark, “Better put one in his casket in case there is a shortage of clean water in heaven”.

He worked hard to give troubled boys another chance by going to juvenile court asking permission to drive the boys to Father Flanigan’s Boys Town where they could get a better life. He made many such trips just to give the boys hope.

He often railed against capital punishment as it means you gave up hope in helping someone in trouble.

The mourners, as they gathered at the church, all had stories of how Father Pat had, in some way, helped them.

It is a fitting farewell for a priest who dedicated his life to helping the poor and hungry.

May he rest in peace.