Our Bishop

In my younger days, large families were the norm.  One of my school classmates came from a family of 19 children.  It probably had something to do with the healthy spring water abundant in Austin, Minnesota (also known as Spam Town) and the frequency of spam (a famous product of the Hormel Meat Processing Company located in Austin) in our daily diets.  My beloved parents had seven children, five boys and two girls.  Not everyone in Austin opted for large families; some of us left our girl friends and boy friends behind and ran off to become priests and nuns.  I attended Catholic grade school and high school and then on to a Catholic University:  St. John's in Collegeville, Minnesota.

The first two years at St. John's I was enrolled in the preparatory program for priests.  I then became a Benedictine monk and member of St. John's Abbey.  I was ordained to the priesthood in 1958 by the Rt. Rev. Peter Bartholome, Bishop of the Diocese of St. Cloud.  As a cleric and priest, I served as a prefect in St. John's Prep School, taught Spanish and Latin, and worked in various parishes on weekends.  I later left the Roman Catholic priesthood, eventually married, and went to work.  For close to twenty-nine years I was employed by the State of Minnesota and the St. Paul Schools, working in rehabilitation and special education.

I continued my priesthood by ministering to family, friends, handicapped children and adults, the poor and the elderly.  I tended to soul development so that I might be a channel of blessing for those I came in contact with each day.  In the 1980's, I found opportunities to continue my priesthood in a more formal and structured way within the Old Catholic Church.  St. Ignatius of Antioch Parish was established and incorporated as the first parish of the Heartland Old Catholic Church, which has become the Holy Cross Diocese of Minnesota of the United States Province of the Old Catholic Church.  On July 31, 1999, I was consecrated a bishop of the Old Catholic Church by the Most Rev. Donald Wm Mullan, Archbishop of Christ Catholic Church International (an Old Catholic jurisdiction).

I was happily married to Hildegard H. Judd for forty-four years.  Hildegard went to be with God in January of 2004.  We have four children and many grandchildren.