‘Jesus In Hillyard’ Retiring Pastor Of St. Patrick’s Leaving After 15 Years To Devote Time To Boys Ranch

After Mass last Sunday, as everyone wished the Rev. Joe Weitensteiner happy birthday, Rita Amberg Waldref wished him a happy Father’s Day.

For 15 years, Weitensteiner, 65, has been the sole priest at St. Patrick’s Parish in northeast Spokane. Along with his other job as director of Morning Star Boys Ranch, the priest has been a father-figure to hundreds of children in Spokane.

He doles out words of wisdom like a real dad.

During almost every Mass at St. Pat’s Elementary, he implores: “Brush your teeth and say your prayers.”

To the stragglers who wander in from the surrounding neighborhood for free doughnuts during Sunday coffee hour, he suggests: “Wash your face and say thank you.”

To the adults who flock to him for advice, he asks: “What would Jesus do?”

This month, he retires from the church to devote more time to the ranch on the South Hill. His tenure at St. Pat’s is longer than any Catholic priest currently assigned to a parish within the Diocese of Spokane. The congregation is already mourning the loss.

“Around here we always talk about Jesus in Hillyard, that’s the role for the church,” says Waldref, pastoral associate for the parish. “Well, really, he is Jesus in Hillyard. There’s just so many things about Jesus that he emanates.”

Weitensteiner was assigned to St. Pat’s in 1982 as a second job, because of a shortage of priests. He figured the assignment would be temporary. At most, he figured he’d spend six years there, the usual rotation for a priest at any given church.

But he fell in love with the congregation. The bishop offered him other assignments, but he opted to stay through one term, then a second and half of a third.

Now, after a decade-and-a-half, he is calling it quits, simply because he feels it is a good time for both himself and the congregation.

“It’s going to be so odd to just have one job,” he says.

The quintessential pastor

Weitensteiner grew up immersed in the Catholic faith and culture of Spokane. The middle of three sons, his father was a tailor.

His mother taught him the importance of service and charity. She was his best friend and her death in 1995 was the most painful experience of his life.

As a child, his teacher and pastors pegged him for the priesthood, but he never took them seriously.

First there was Sister Muriel, who asked him to stay after school one day in the eighth grade. She said, “We have been watching you and think you should be going to seminary.”

“I never did find out who we was,” Weitensteiner says. “Anyway, I was deeply in love with one of my classmates and I’d just bought her a year’s supply of gum.”

Then his counselor at Gonzaga Prep noticed the young Weitensteiner had written priest - after salesman or pilot - as a career possibility.

“At that time I was deeply in love with a girl named Patty,” Weitensteiner says. “I wasn’t thinking about the priesthood.”

After a three-year stint in the Navy and a spell selling real estate, Weitensteiner took a job as a counselor at the newly opened Morning Star Boys Ranch, a home for troubled boys run by the Catholic Diocese. Then-Bishop Bernard Topel visited often and mentioned that Weitensteiner should consider the seminary.

“I had lost all my lady friends by then because I spent 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week at that boys ranch,” Weitensteiner says. Finally, a pastor at the ranch suggested Weitensteiner go on a retreat and pray about the decision. He had just bought a new car, was afraid no one would take over his job as ranch counselor and didn’t know who would help support his widowed mother and younger brother.

Within a week his brother got a job at a grocery store and his mother found work as a nanny. Someone offered to buy his car and someone else applied for a counseling job at the ranch. He was 33 when he was ordained.

“I figured if God wanted me to be a priest, God would take care of everything. And it happened,” he says. “I was open to the possibility of God working in my life.”

His modest background and real-world experience, coupled with a penchant for storytelling, make him the “quintessential priest,” says Rick Fairbanks, a member at St. Pat’s for eight years.

“He can turn really stressful situations into opportunities for ministry,” Fairbanks says. “He always looks for the positive.”

One of Weitensteiner’s proudest accomplishments was his 12-year friendship with Charlie MacNamara, a homeless man who became the parish janitor. Weitensteiner had coffee with the man almost every day for more than a decade, gave him a parish home to live in, but never asked him for his last name.

MacNamara died last year of cancer with Weitensteiner at his side.

The house where the janitor had lived was in disrepair, almost unlivable, Fairbanks says. The parish council wanted to raze it. But Weitensteiner saw another opportunity.

He let a Russian family move in rent-free. They made repairs, cleaned up the yard and planted flowers.

“He just plows ahead when he knows it’s right,” Fairbanks says. “When he sees an opportunity to serve somebody, he does it.”

Work, play and prayer

When Weitensteiner first came to St. Pat’s as a 50-year-old, he got everyone’s attention when he canceled school and took the students skiing.

He soon became legendary for his ability to play. In addition to downhill skiing, he loves backpacking, boating and bike-riding. He is forever organizing some outing, both at the ranch and at the church.

He promises to continue doing so, even after leaving the church.

“He has a great balance between work and play and prayer,” Waldref says. “It’s a gift to have that balance in today’s world.”

He encourages a similar balance in other people. When Waldref came to work for Weitensteiner 10 years ago, the first thing he told her was to put her family first.

“You work during the school day,” she recalls him saying. “Never let your job get in the way of your children.”

Children are naturally drawn to his side, eager for the attention he freely gives.

He’s not afraid to appear old-fashioned to the kids or their parents. He talks about his dreams for a parish center open to the neighborhood, “where little girls can come and learn how to look pretty or play sports, where boys can come play basketball in the gym.”

He was one of the first priests in Spokane to allow girls as altar servers.

He’s openly affectionate with all children at a time when that is often frowned upon by the public, Fairbanks says.

“He’s very honest with the kids, even if he has to confront them and be blunt,” says Fairbanks, a social worker by profession. “He is somebody who is going to love them unconditionally and tell them the way it is.”

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