Fr. Fardellone and Melchizedek: Brothers in service

    He is not Methuselah or even Melchizedek, but at 95 and with a mind so nimble it could run rings around a fifth grader, Salesian Father Emil Fardellone, former high school English and history teacher, pastor and Scripture scholar, is anything but retiring.
    In fact, don’t ever mention the “R” word to the man who ministered for 24 years as pastor at St. Rosalie and St. John Bosco parishes in Harvey because he has a ready reply, straight out of his favorite book.
    “You know the old man in the Bible, Melchizedek?” Father Fardellone asked last week before blowing out the candles on his 95th birthday cake. “The Bible says, ‘You are a priest forever.’ Now, if you’re sick or something like that, that’s understandable. But otherwise, come on, there’s no retirement from the priesthood.”
    Other than arthritic knees that require him to use a walking cane, Father Fardellone, a native of New York City, is amazingly spry. He awakens at 4 a.m. each day at the Salesian residence adjacent to Archbishop Shaw High School to pray in the small chapel.
    “Nobody’s there, and I like to sit by the tabernacle, and I always say two things,” he said. “I thank the Lord I’m alive, and I thank him that I’m not only alive, but that I have all my senses. And then I turn to the Blessed Mother and say thank you again.”
    He has lived an abundant life. He was one of eight children born in Manhattan to Italian immigrants – his older brother John, now 99, is the only sibling left. His mother Gilda was a teacher, and his father Peter became well to do in real estate. His father helped build Mary Help of Christians Church, run by the Salesians.
    “Our house was in walking distance of the Metropolitan Museum of Art,” Father Fardellone said. “I knew New York better than anybody. I walked every street, I skated every street, I went bicycle riding through the streets.”
    He grew up with a lot of Jewish friends and made a good living on Friday nights, when because orthodox Jewish families were prohibited from lighting their gas ovens due to the rules of the Shabbat, he was paid 50 cents for each oven he lit.
    “They could regulate their ovens, but they couldn’t strike the match,” Father Fardellone recalled. “I went down the street where all the doctors were Jewish. I got 50 cents here, 50 cents there. I lit the candles in the synagogue for 50 cents. I was the Gentile who was trusted in that area. On Fridays, I became a rich man.”
    Fifty cents went a long way then, especially when the New York Daily News was 2 cents and the New York Times 3 cents. A hot dog and soda at Coney Island was 7 cents.
    In 1931, Salesian Father Paul Zolin went to the Fardellone home for dinner.
    “He said to my mother and father, ‘We just opened a seminary in Newton, N.J. (Don Bosco Seminary), and I want your son to be No. 1,’” Father Fardellone said.
    “My heart sank,” he recalled. “I didn’t say anything. Of course, my mother and father were very happy. I went to my room and I couldn’t sleep. I got out of bed and knelt down. I remember saying three Hail Marys and saying, ‘Blessed Mother, help me make a decision.’ I went back to bed and fell asleep, and the next morning I got up and said, ‘Where’s my suitcase?’ I was ready to go.
    “Since 1931 to this date, I don’t regret a second of it. Not a second.”
    He was ordained in 1944. “When I was ordained, my mother and father said to me, ‘We’re not going to celebrate your ordination now. You have four brothers in the war,’” Father Fardellone said.
    In 1945, he joined the WWII effort as an unofficial chaplain, making it five Fardellone brothers in uniform. He got there in time to see the empty gas chambers at Auschwitz.
    “Above the entrance to the camp, they have the words: ‘Arbeit macht frei,’ which in German means, ‘Labor will make you free.’ What a lie! I cried. The women and children were told to take a shower in this long hall, and there was water that came out. But there was another pipe – for cyanide. They were all gassed.”
    In September 2001, when Father Fardellone was pastor of a Salesian parish in Miami, he flew to New York City for what he thought would be a one-day trip to repair a 100-year-old chalice that had been given to him as a farewell gift from the parishioners of St. John Bosco in 1994.
    As he walked on the morning of Sept. 11 to the religious goods store, he saw the first jet hit the World Trade Center. And then, he saw the second jet hit the other tower.
    “It was war time,” Father Fardellone said. “The hatred that is in the world today is unbelievable, and it’s the hatred that we saw at Auschwitz. War is hatred and greed. I stayed two weeks in New York, consoling people. I went to foreman’s precincts that became like sanctuaries. Women came up to me with pictures and asked, ‘Have you seen my husband?’”
    His chalice eventually was pristinely restored, and Father Fardellone gave it to the Salesian provincial. “I wanted him to give it to the seminary as an inspiration to a future priest,” Father Fardellone said.
    The 95-year-old man behind that 100-year-old chalice is the  real inspiration.
    Peter Finney Jr. can be reached at pfinney@clarionherald.org.