Bishop James D. Niedergeses, 90, ninth bishop of Nashville
Hoodude
Bishop Niedergeses, 'a model person,' dies at 90
Theresa Laurence, Tennessee Register
http://www.dioceseofnashville.com/article_nied-obit.htm
http://www.dioceseofnashville.com/images/nied1.jpg
Bishop James D. Niedergeses, ninth bishop of Nashville, pastor and
teacher, prison and hospital chaplain, friend and mentor, died Friday,
Nov. 16, at Saint Thomas Hospital in Nashville.
Bishop Niedergeses, 90, suffered from various illnesses in recent years
and had been hospitalized several times for treatment for conditions
related to those illnesses. He was hospitalized Wednesday for treatment
of a blood clot in his leg when his condition worsened and he began
bleeding internally.
Father Pat Connor performed the anointing of the sick for Bishop
Niedergeses, the man he considers “a model person,” on Nov. 15.
Father Connor said it was a “very moving” experience to be with Bishop
Niedergeses and his family in the last hours of his life. “He was
a hard worker; he never eased up on himself,” said Father Connor, who
served as Vicar General under Bishop Niedergeses. Performing the late
night anointing, “I felt a certain sense of relief that he would finally
have some peace. The Lord would see to it.”
“We give thanks for Bishop Niedergeses’ many years of faithful,
dedicated service to God’s people in the Diocese of Nashville,” said
Bishop David Choby. “In his kindness, faithfulness, dedication and
energetic service, he was an inspiration to me personally as well as the
other priests of the diocese.”
Bishops Choby and Niedergeses, both natives of Middle Tennessee, are the
only priests of the Diocese of Nashville to be named its bishop. “Bishop
Niedergeses spent his entire life loving and serving the people of the
Diocese of Nashville, and they loved him in return,” Bishop Choby said.
“Though we mourn his passing, we rejoice that he has joined his heavenly
father in everlasting life.”
Dedicated bishop
Father Jim Mallett, who recently retired as pastor of Christ the King
Parish, served as chancellor under Bishop Niedergeses and remembers how
dedicated he was to the people of the diocese. “He relied on laypeople
and listened carefully to their judgment,” Father Mallett said.
“He was probably the kindest man I’ve ever known. He was totally without
guile or pretense,” Father Mallett added.
Those who worked closely with Bishop Niedergeses and knew him well say
he rarely had any free time. As bishop, he maintained a heavy travel
schedule to minister to the entire middle and eastern part of the state,
before the Diocese of Knoxville was created. “One of the joys of my many
years as bishop was administering ordinations, confirmations and
dedicating new churches in both rural and city areas,” Bishop
Niedergeses said in a 2004 interview with the Tennessee Register,
reflecting on his 60th anniversary of priestly ordination.
A native of Lawrenceburg, Tenn., Bishop Niedergeses had a special
interest in establishing a Catholic presence in outlying areas of the
diocese. He started the Catholic Foundation of Tennessee, a still-vital
organization which works to purchase land for new parishes in rural
areas of the state. While serving as bishop from 1975-1992, he dedicated
many new parishes in rural Tennessee.
More than a savvy fundraiser or an ambitious project manager, Bishop
Niedergeses is remembered as an extremely spiritual man, a humble and
dedicated priest. But during his 17 years as bishop, he did initiate
several lasting “bricks and mortar” changes for the diocese.
He set up an official and professional archiving system at the chancery
office and oversaw a major renovation of the Cathedral of the
Incarnation. He encouraged the expansion of Catholic Charities, which
“developed exponentially” while he was bishop, Father Mallett said. He
spearheaded the effort to create the Diocese of Knoxville, which was
officially established on Sept. 8, 1988.
Bishop Niedergeses also undertook the complicated task of relocating
Father Ryan High School, from its original location on Elliston Place to
its current Oak Hill campus. That five-year logistical feat was
completed in 1991 and was a “great accomplishment,” according to Father
Connor, who served as administrator for the relocation of the school.
While he was a “very good bishop,” Bishop Niedergeses was first and
foremost a priest, Father Connor said, and “everything he did at the
diocesan level was designed to help parishes.”
Conscientious priest
Before he was appointed ninth bishop of Nashville, Bishop Niedergeses
spent 11 years in Chattanooga, the majority of his time there as pastor
of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish. During his tenure at OLPH, and
later at Sts. Peter and Paul Parish, he became one of the city’s
best-known spokesmen for ecumenism, as well as for the poor and for
ethnic minorities.
He was an active member of the Clergy Association of Greater
Chattanooga, and was the first Catholic priest to be elected its
president. He helped steer the organization toward more action on behalf
of the poor, including organizing a poverty march in 1968, which lead
participants through some of the most depressed areas of Chattanooga.
Bishop Niedergeses fostered OLPH’s on-going relationship with Monumental
Baptist Church, a predominantly African-American church. They met and
prayed together the night Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, and
Bishop Niedergeses recalled in 2004 that the unity between members of
the black Protestant church and the white Catholic church that night
“was a wonderful ting.”
Bishop Niedergeses’ work with Monumental Baptist Church was not only
unusual because of the racial tensions in the South during the late
1960s, but also because it crossed denominational boundaries.
That was just one way Bishop Niedergeses embraced the changes of the
Second Vatican Council, according to Msgr. Owen Campion, who served at
St. Jude Parish in Chattanooga while Bishop Niedergeses was at OLPH.
“Before Vatican II, there was a real distance between Catholics and
non-Catholics,” he said. Bishop Niedergeses “was very diligent about
studying the documents of the Second Vatican Council and taking the
recommended steps toward ecumenism.”
Msgr. Campion first came to know Bishop Niedergeses as his Latin student
at Father Ryan, and remembers him as a “very conscientious” teacher.
Teaching at Father Ryan was one of the first three assignments Bishop
Niedergeses received upon his ordination to the priesthood in 1944.
During the first years of his priesthood, he served as assistant pastor
of the Cathedral and chaplain at Overbrook School. He was also a
hospital and prison chaplain, often ministering to death row inmates
just before their executions. “I’m very comfortable with those who are
troubled in mind, body or spirit,” Bishop Niedergeses said.
Hospital ministry was often uplifting to him, and it was a job he
relished until the very end of his life. After retiring as bishop in
1992, he worked for many years as a chaplain at Saint Thomas four days a
week, remaining on-call at night. Only when his health no longer allowed
him to minister to hospital patients did he step away from that calling.
Bishop Niedergeses was “very demanding of himself” Father Connor said,
and was always working hard to meet the needs of those he served. He was
“a totally generous person to the core.”
--
You cannot bring democracy to tyranny by conquest. Democracy can be
neither injected nor imposed. It comes into existence through a long
rite of passage. It has achieved its liberty by the actions of its own
martyrs, rebels and enduring believers. It is not a system, it is an
ennoblement. Democracy must come from within.- Norman Mailer
Hoodude
First homegrown bishop of Nashville dies
Niedergeses led by serving
By ANNE PAINE
Staff Writer
http://www.ashlandcitytimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071117/OBITS/711170370/1291/MTCN01
http://shorterlink.org/3468
Bishop James D. Niedergeses (COURTESY OF CATHOLIC DIOCESE OF NASHVILLE)
or http://shorterlink.org/3467
In 1984, Bishop Niedergeses spoke to the media at St. Mary's Church to
urge elimination of capital punishment. (FILE / THE TENNESSEAN)
Bishop James D. Niedergeses, known for his caring for the sick and
downtrodden, died Friday at Saint Thomas Hospital at age 90.
The funeral Mass is planned for 10 a.m. Tuesday at the Cathedral of the
Incarnation, with burial in his hometown of Lawrenceburg, Tenn.
Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, Ky., will be the main celebrant.
Bishop Niedergeses graduated from Father Ryan High School, where he
later was vice principal.
He had wanted to be a priest since his boyhood days but entertained
other ideas occasionally, such as being a doctor or a baseball
infielder, according to a Tennessean article in 1992.
He decided to seek a divinity degree when as a high school senior he
visited Tennessee Bishop Alphonse Smith at the Cathedral in Nashville.
In 1975, he became the first priest of the Diocese of Nashville to be
named its bishop; he was the ninth bishop in the history of the diocese.
"I shall endeavor to be a bishop of the people, with the people and for
the people and my first priority will be to help the people in our
diocese grow into a greater community of love and service," he said
before the ceremony.
That's what he did, according to Bishop David Choby, who now leads the
diocese.
"He was an exceptionally kind man," Choby said. "To a large extent the
experience of growing up on a farm grounded him for all his life.
"He was very good to people and with people. He was a very good pastor
in every sense of the word."
Bishop Niedergeses led the diocese until 1992, when he retired as
required by church law at age 75.
He served in retirement
He remained active as a chaplain at Saint Thomas Hospital until his
health forced him to retire in the last couple of years.
He was known for his role in inter-religious dialogues, ministry to the
sick and imprisoned, opposition to poverty and racial injustice and
support of human life from its conception until its natural end,
according to the diocese.
He served as a prison chaplain and ministered to death row inmates.
Bishop Niedergeses began the Catholic Foundation of Tennessee, which
pursues purchase of land for new parishes in rural parts of the state.
While serving as a priest in Chattanooga in the 1960s, he spoke up for
the poor and ethnic minorities.
As the first Catholic priest elected president of the Clergy Association
of Greater Chattanooga, he helped move the organization to act on behalf
of the poor, including putting together a poverty march through
neglected parts of the city.
In his years as bishop, he oversaw growth in adult conversions to
Catholicism, ambitious renovations at the Cathedral, the construction of
a new Father Ryan High School in Oak Hill and the restructuring of the
diocese.
"In many ways, even after his retirement, he was seen as a father figure
for the Catholic faithful in the Diocese of Nashville," Choby said.