Bishop Malesic Followed ‘servant Leadership Model’ in Greensburg Diocese, Headed to Cleveland

By Shirley McMarlin, Deb Erdley And Paul Peirce
TribLive.com
July 17, 2020

https://triblive.com/local/westmoreland/bishop-malesic-followed-servant-leadership-model-in-greensburg-diocese-headed-to-cleveland/

Jennifer Miele got a glimpse into the heart and soul of Bishop Edward Malesic soon after he assumed his duties in the Diocese of Greensburg in 2015.

“On day one, he gave me his cellphone number and said to use it any time,” said Miele, a former television news reporter who is chief communications officer for the diocese. “My 5-year-old daughter got hold of my phone and FaceTimed him three times. I was mortified, but he told me not to worry about it because when someone called, he had to answer.

“He said, ‘I’m just glad to see someone whose hair looks worse than mine at 5 a.m.,’ ” she said.

Malesic, 59, will serve as the next bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland, a move Pope Francis announced Thursday from the Vatican.

Betty Rua of Greensburg was awakened at 8 a.m. by a text message. After reading it, she knew she was going to have a bad day.

A parishioner at Blessed Sacrament Cathedral in Greensburg for 30 years, Rua said the text alerted her of the pope’s appointment.

“I tried to lie down and go back to sleep but just couldn’t after reading he was leaving,” she said. “I got back up and started reading more and just cried and cried all morning about it.”

Rua composed herself enough to make it to 11:45 a.m. Mass. She said the diocese can only hope its next bishop is “as wonderful as Bishop Malesic has been to us.”

“I really thought he was going to be our bishop forever. He was just such a great person, dearly loved and so humble.” she said. “You could talk to him as a priest and also talk to him as a lay person as well. He was really beloved.”

It was a belief Malesic shared.

“I’ve been very happy (in Greensburg), in fact I thought I would die there,” he said Thursday at an introductory news conference in Cleveland.

While looking forward to the new appointment, Malesic said it also is bittersweet.

He said he looks forward to meeting Cleveland’s clergy and parishioners, “but give me some time to pack and make the transition from Greensburg to Cleveland, from the Steelers to the Browns. And can I at least bring one Terrible Towel?”

Asked his vision of leadership for the Cleveland Diocese, he said, “Jesus has a vision for the church, I’m just here to implement it. The vision I have is simple, to communicate the Gospel to people.”

A major challenge facing the church, he said, is to challenge negative stereotypes of the Catholic Church and a “crisis of credibility” brought on by the clergy sex abuse scandal and instead to communicate “the beauty of what the church teaches.”

Malesic celebrated the noon Mass at Cleveland’s Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist. He will remain in Greensburg until Sept. 14, when he will be installed as Cleveland’s 12th bishop, following Bishop Nelson Perez, who now is the archbishop of Philadelphia.

‘A simple priest’

A native of Harrisburg, Malesic grew up in Enhaut, Dauphin County, and was ordained to the priesthood in 1987.

He served as pastor of Holy Infant Parish in York Haven for 11 years before replacing Bishop Lawrence E. Brandt in Greensburg upon his retirement.

Malesic was ordained and installed as the fifth bishop of the Greensburg diocese in July 2015. at Blessed Sacrament Cathedral in Greensburg

He moved into the rectory at St. Paul Parish in the Carbon section of Hempfield, living with other priests instead of the seven-bedroom, two-story stately home that several of his predecessors had used. The diocese put that mansion, which included a stable and four acres in Hempfield’s Maplewood Terrace neighborhood, on the market in 2016 and sold it for $725,000.

On Thursday in Cleveland, Malesic said he thinks of himself as “a simple priest at heart.”

He brought that view into his duties as bishop, said Monsignor Larry Kulick, vicar general of the Diocese of Greensburg.

Malesic displayed “a beautiful sense of self-humility rooted in a servant leadership model,” Kulick said.

“He knew he was the bishop, and he was honored to be the bishop, but he didn’t use the authority of the office to mandate a way of thinking,” Kulick said. “He was devoted to walking with the people.”

Malesic made it a point of getting around the diocese and meeting people, said Monsignor Michael Begolly, pastor of St. Mary, St. Joseph and Mount St. Peter parishes in New Kensington.

“One of the things Pope Francis said is that bishops should have the smell of the sheep on them, and Bishop Malesic certainly understood that,” Begolly said. “He was always out with the people, socializing after baptisms and confirmations. … He’s a people person.”

Malesic’s down-to-earth nature also shows in another very endearing way, Begolly said.

“The ladies of the parishes learned that he loved cookies, so they’d always have a take-home box for him after receptions,” he said.

Greensburg tenure

When Malesic arrived in Greensburg, he assumed leadership of a diocese that had been rocked by school closings and church consolidations during the 14-year tenure of Brandt.

Soon after his arrival, a grand jury report dropped, detailing extensive allegations of clergy child sexual abuse next door in the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese. That foreshadowed a second report two years later that detailed allegations of abuse in much of the rest of the state, including the Greensburg diocese.

Malesic was left to deal with the fallout from the investigation, including the conviction and imprisonment of one diocesan priest on child abuse charges as well as documents that detailed how a predecessor papered over allegations of abuse in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s.

The diocese subsequently stripped Bishop William Connare’s name from a diocesan retreat center. Malesic also set up a series of listening sessions to hear parishioners’ concerns and established a compensation fund for those who had been subjected to abuse.

“His was not an easy tenure,” Begolly said. “His tenure was anything but normal. There were so many challenges, but (Malesic) rose to the challenges and always tried to be proactive in dealing with them.”

This month, Malesic announced a record $4.1 million in scholarship donations to diocesan schools. Officials said the new fund could boost enrollment in Catholic schools by as much as 250 students this fall.

Malesic visited Pope Francis at the Vatican in November to report on the status of the diocese, which bishops are required to do every five years.

‘Bittersweet time’

After Malesic is installed as Cleveland’s bishop, the Diocese of Greensburg’s College of Consultors will elect a diocesan administrator to serve until a new bishop is appointed, according to diocese spokesman Jerome Zufelt.

“It’s a very bittersweet time for our diocese, and we feel the loss,” Kulick said. “But we recognize that it’s a joyful day for the church, because the Holy Father has called him to be the shepherd of a larger diocese.”

The 78 parishes of the Greensburg diocese serve about 138,000 Catholics in Armstrong, Fayette, Indiana and Westmoreland counties. The Cleveland diocese, the 23rd largest in the United States, is home to nearly 700,000 Catholics in 185 parishes across eight counties.

“There are big shoes to fill, but the Holy Spirit always provides,” Begolly said. “We are grateful that we had the experience of helping him learn to be a bishop.”

Gary Williams, 73, who has been a member at Blessed Sacrament for 47 years, learned from a reporter that Malesic had been appointed bishop in Cleveland. His jaw dropped.

“I’m very sorry to hear about it,” the Greensburg resident said. “Bishop Malesic was just so down to earth and personable. You could tell his enthusiasm was genuine, and it was contagious as well. He will definitely be missed.”

Chris Pardini, the Blessed Sacrament organist for 10 years, also is sorry to see Malesic leave.

“He’s been a wonderful bishop here, and we’ll really miss him,” Pardini said. “Cleveland’s really getting a gem.”