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| Rev. Rich Coveny |
My brother and his family live in the lovely little town of
Colden NY in the ski hills of western part of the state. I honestly don’t think you could find a nicer
place to live and for years one of the factors that made the town so lovely was
the Catholic Parish of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart. For forty years Father Richard Coveny was
pastor of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart and guided the parish in the years after
the Council into a real Vatican II parish.
Now my brother certainly appreciates Mass in English and
Communion in the hand, has never really cared for the “handshake of peace” (I
use that term because that is the most you’ll get out of him and he will wipe
his hand on his jeans when it is over) and in general never got the vision of
Vatican II. For years he wasn’t very
fond of Father Rich, Father often being a “bridge too far” for my brother’s
middle of the road Catholicism. I would
tell him, when he complained, that he was pretty lucky to have Father Rich and
the sort of parish Father had built up, but my brother, a frequent communicant
at the time, didn’t seem impressed any
Father Rich said that he would stay at Colden as long as he
could possibly serve and stayed long beyond the retirement age. He knew in this time of diminishing vocations
there would be no one to replace him.
But the day came, it always does, when Rich had to face the limitations
of age and reluctantly retire. For a few
years the parish managed to run under the capable direction of Sister Margaret
Donner, a Notre Dame Sister who had been Father’s Pastoral Associate. Sister did a great job of holding things
together, even building them up. She
would get a retired priest or a vacationing priest or some priest from
somewhere to say the Sunday Masses or do the funerals or whatever else needed
to be done sacramentally. Father Rich
had laid a sound foundation and the parish continued to flourish.
These situations can’t last forever. Sadly, eventually the Bishop decided to close
Our Lady of the Sacred Heart and absorb it in a neighboring parish. It was a sad day but the parishioners
Father Rich had specified that he didn’t want flowers or
even Masses when he died, but donations to the Bread of Life Outreach
Center. I am sure people were very
generous. But Father also left his
entire estate to Bread of Life and it was not an inconsiderable estate. He owned a retirement home in Florida among
other things. It was a most generous
bequest.
Like many generous bequests to charity it proved to be too
great a temptation to those family members who felt they had been cheated out
of an inheritance. “Father Rich changed
his will on his deathbed,” they came forward and alleged, “he just wasn’t able
to write it down.” Mmmhmmm, sure.
Their claim would never have been held up in court, of
course, but the Board at Bread of Life didn’t want to dishonor Father’s memory
by getting into an ugly squabble. They
accepted $10,000 for the charity and moved on.
It is sad, tragically sad, that Father Rich’s legacy of serving others
and looking out for the needy, a value he had inculcated in his parishioners
over 40 years, had never passed on to his nieces and nephews. But what is really sad is that I don’t
suspect that Father will be seeing his relatives at any time soon. Just as there is a special place in heaven
for those who, like Father Rich, make alleviating the sufferings of the poor a
main focus of their lives, there is a special place in hell for those who take
the food from the mouths of the poor.
Requiescat in pace, Father Rich.
And we will pray for those who stole your legacy.
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