Msgr. Joseph Lorio eulogized in childhood Plaquemine church

PLAQUEMINE, La. – Msgr. Joseph Octave Lorio, who served for 33 years as pastor of St. Louis King of France Parish in Metairie, was eulogized Sept. 8 at his childhood church of St. John the Evangelist as a priest fully dedicated to his parishioners and their spiritual well being.
    At the funeral Mass celebrated by Archbishop Gregory Aymond, Msgr. Allen Roy, Msgr. Lorio’s classmate from Notre Dame Seminary’s Marian Year class of 1954, described his friend as a “neat, private, precise, committed and good priest and pastor … with a great sense of obligation” to his people.
    Msgr. Lorio, died Sept. 3 at St. James Place Nursing Home in Baton Rouge. He was 83 and had served as a priest for 58 years. He retired in 2006 as pastor of St. Louis King of France, getting a send off from the parish that included a ride around the Bucktown neighborhood in a golf cart.
    “J.O. always knew and proclaimed where the obligation resided – the ‘musta, shoulda, oughta’ of any situation, especially what it meant to be a good pastor,” Msgr. Roy said in his homily. “Of all the parishes where J.O. was assigned, there was always the idea of fidelity to what he had to do to be a good pastor for his people.”
Plaquemine’s many vocations
    Msgr. Lorio was born in New Orleans but grew up in Plaquemine, on the west bank of the Mississippi River south of Baton Rouge. In fact, eight men from Plaquemine, including Msgr. Earl Gauthreaux, became priests from either the Diocese of Baton Rouge or the Archdiocese of New Orleans.
    Msgr. Lorio entered St. Joseph Seminary in 1945 and Notre Dame Seminary in 1948. He was ordained to the priesthood on June 5, 1954, at St. Louis Cathedral and served as a parochial vicar at St. Agnes in Jefferson, St. Joseph in Gretna and Our Lady of Lourdes in New Orleans.
    His first pastorate was at St. Anthony in Barataria, and he later became pastor of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Kenner. He was named pastor of St. Louis King of France in 1973 and served there even after having a serious health scare in 2001.
    Msgr. Lorio regularly went home to Plaquemine to visit family and attend Mass with them on his day off. On a visit one day, he suffered a massive rupture of an ulcer and was rushed to the hospital in Gonzales, where doctors gave him little chance to recover because of organ damage. He was in a coma for 20 days and spent 50 days in the hospital.
Recovery amazed doctors
    “From what we heard, he wasn’t going to make it through the night,” St. Louis King of France parishioner Jeff Prechter said. “I knew he had a Seelos relic at the rectory, so I grabbed that and pinned the Seelos relic to him and said the prayer. The nurses said, ‘Look, this is not something he can survive.’ They didn’t know J.O. and they didn’t know the Lord.”
    Msgr. Lorio recovered, and when he went back three months later for a checkup, “the doctors and the nurses started crying,” Prechter said.
    “They said, ‘Look, Msgr. Lorio, you don’t understand, you’re not supposed to be here,’” Prechter recalled. The doctor said, ‘You can’t survive what happened to you. I keep your picture on my wall. I am forever changed.’ The Lord gave him back to us to finish his mission.”
    Celebrating his 50th anniversary as a priest in 2004, he said: “Since then, life has meant so much more to me, and I have spent many hours thanking God for the gift of life. Life is a precious gift which God loans to us one day at a time for his honor and glory.”
    Msgr. Lorio’s friends remembered him fondly for his mathematical mind – “When he was at St. Agnes and they were building the church, he would come back on his days off and tell us how many bricks had been laid that week,” said Father John Carville, former vicar general of the Diocese of Baton Rouge and a native of Plaquemine.
Fast talker
    Sometimes Msgr. Lorio would speak so fast that he was hard to understand, parishioners said.
    “A lot of people didn’t understand him because his mind ran faster than his mouth, and the mouth couldn’t possibly keep up,” Prechter said. He was like one of those radio commercials where they speed it up to get all the words in. Over time, I learned the language. It was just like learning another language.”
    Rob Schroeder said his daughter Kristen was teaching at St. Louis when one of the children came out of the confessional sobbing because he couldn’t understand what Msgr. Lorio had given him for his penance.
    “My daughter wanted to do something to calm him down, so she said, ‘Look, just say three Our Fathers and three Hail Marys, and you’ll be all right,’” Schroeder said.
    Msgr. Lorio also had a habit of passing out report cards in the school, and he would use the occasion to encourage students to pay more attention to their studies.
    “He was all by the book,” said parishioner Bruce Nicolosi. “He used to tell us, ‘If each student in a 30-person class wasted five minutes of time, you’ve wasted this much time out of the whole day,’” Nicolosi said.
Fidelity to priesthood
    Archbishop Aymond said Msgr. Lorio was “a man who very much loved his family and loved the church and he was a very, very faithful priest.”
    Msgr. Lorio is survived by two sisters, Dorothy Falgoust and Charleen Averette, and more than 75 cousins, nieces and nephews. He was buried at West Haven Garden of Memories in Baton Rouge.
    Peter Finney Jr. can be reached at [email protected].