Msgr. Roppolo was a healer and a good listener

Msgr. Ignatius Roppolo, who worked to bring harmony to parishes beset by division and who valued the work of the laity in building up the church, died April 29 at Chateau de Notre Dame. He was 85 and served as a priest of the Archdiocese of New Orleans for 60 years.

At his funeral Mass May 5 at St. Rita Church, Msgr. Doug Doussan said his friend emphasized “collegiality” in all his parish assignments.

“We all knew him to be intense, filled with zeal in his dedication to his priestly ministry, deeply spiritual, a hard worker, a competent administrator, highly organized, decisive and creative, with a strong sense of justice and compassion toward the poor,” Msgr. Doussan said.

Msgr. Roppolo had an elevated sense of hearing that good priests always seem to possess, an ability to listen to and understand words that are being whispered but not fully expressed.

When then-Father Roppolo, who was ordained in 1954, was named to his first pastorate at St. Joseph the Worker Parish in Marrero in 1967, he knew he would have to lean heavily on his ability as a keen listener.

Racial strife encountered
There was an ugly story out there that couldn’t be wished away. In 1959, the racially mixed parish had suffered unimaginable racial strife. Like many churches in the archdiocese at the time, St. Joseph the Worker had two or three pews reserved in the back of church for black parishioners. But that limited arrangement was not nearly sufficient to accommodate the numbers, and so quite often African Americans were left to stand in the back of church while rows of pews between the white and black sections – “no man’s land” – went unfilled.

Three black teenagers – two boys and a girl – decided to test the arrangement one Sunday by walking to the front of church and sitting near the altar. As they left church that day, they were warned by white parishioners not to try it again.

When on the following Sunday they refused to heed the warning, as they left church they were pistol-whipped and beaten with tire irons by a group of whites while sheriff’s deputies looked on impassively from across the street.

Eight years later, Father Roppolo became pastor and the racial wounds were still raw. He decided to listen and to act.

“We worked on integrating everything in the parish, and I got wonderful cooperation from the people,” Msgr. Roppolo said in an interview with the Clarion Herald in 2009, when he was honored by the local Catholic Campaign for Human Development with its Human Development Award. “I remember talking about it in a few sermons. Of course, we lost a few white people. But there was a lot of cooperation on the part of both whites and blacks. It turned out to be a real blessing.”

Valued married couples
Father Roppolo touched lives in so many areas. He was director of the forward-thinking Cana movement in which married couples helped prepare engaged couples for marriage, and he later became vocations director under Archbishop John Cody.

Whenever a parish needed a reconciler – as St. Philip the Apostle Parish in the Desire neighborhood did in 1973 – Father Roppolo was called upon.

His later years of ministry involved hospital chaplaincy and teaching clinical pastoral education to seminarians at Notre Dame Seminary. As always, he urged them to be present and to listen.

“He believed in lay participation, and one of his major commitments was that lay people should be deeply involved in every aspect of the parish,” said Msgr. Doussan, his associate at St. Joseph the Worker and later the pastor there for 23 years.

Msgr. Doussan recalled how Father Roppolo visited the home of every white family that had removed children from St. Joseph the Worker School, urging them to return.

“To be perfectly honest, not every (pastor) would have felt that would have been his responsibility or would have been afraid of how he would have been received, but he went,” Msgr. Doussan said.

Loved, challenged seminarians
Archbishop Gregory Aymond said Msgr. Roppolo did a superb job at Notre Dame Seminary as director of pastoral education.

“He was a priest who had the heart of Christ the shepherd, and I had the privilege to call him a friend,” Archbishop Aymond said. “He was always very attentive to the seminarians. At the same time, he was always willing to challenge them. In every pastoral setting, they had to be the very best priest they could be.”

Msgr. Roppolo’s physical abilities began to diminish with the onset of Parkinson’s Disease, but when he lived at Chateau de Notre Dame, he regularly celebrated Mass and made the rounds, always listening and hearing confessions.

“Dealing with Parkinson’s has been difficult, because there’s a lot of things I can’t do,” he said in 2009. “I’d much rather be living in a parish, but I realize my limitations. Recently, I’ve been thinking about then passage from St. Paul that for those who love the Lord, all things work together unto good. I say, ‘Lord, you have to explain that to me.’ But, I’m sure it’s working together for good. It’s making me slow down and put things in low gear rather than high gear.”

Msgr. Roppolo attended St. Joseph Seminary College and Notre Dame Seminary. He was ordained on June 5, 1954. He served as a parochial vicar at St. Matthias, St. Frances Cabrini, St. Cecilia and St. Robert Bellarmine parishes before being named as pastor of St. Joseph the Worker in 1967. He also served as pastor at St. Joseph in Gretna, St. Philip the Apostle and Our Lady of Divine Providence.