MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press
By Ruben Rosario
rrosario@pioneerpress.com
POSTED: 12/19/2013
Little Charles Vincent Lachowitzer believed nuns had no legs and were celestial beings who could fly like angels.
He was sure Sister Mary Timothy would just grab him and float up in the air as the then-second-grader mightily bolted one day toward her for safety to escape a boy chasing him in the playground of St. Pascal Baylon Catholic School on St. Paul’s East Side.
So he was shocked when he ran to her at full tilt and knocked her on her butt, revealing stocking-covered gams under the ground-hugging habit skirt.
“You have legs!” he cried out.
Sister Mary Timothy patiently explained after she got up that priests and nuns are human, like him, except that they dedicated their lives in obedience and servitude to the Lord.
That’s the day he decided that he wanted to become a priest.
That resolute pledge, though, would take a decidedly varied and unconventional detour that would first lead to jobs as an educator and superintendent, logger and fisher of fish before he became a fisher of men.
Now, five decades later and long removed from that playground discovery, Lachowitzer finds himself chief deputy of the embattled Archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis. He is squarely thrust, whether he likes it or not, in the middle of a simmering, publicly embarrassing clergy sex abuse scandal that shows no signs of letup.
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