Special
FRANK J. METHE/CLARION HERALD
Father Joshua Rodrigue address seminarians at the Notre Dame Seminary after the announcement was made that he will become the next rector-president of the seminary in July 2022.
Father Joshua Rodrigue: ‘God will provide’ By PETER FINNEY JR. Clarion Herald Father Joshua Rodrigue, who will become the new rector-president of Notre Dame Seminary in July 2022, was a young seminarian in 2001 when he visited Msgr. Stanislaus Manikowski, an old friend living in retirement at St. Joseph Manor in Thibodaux. The purpose of his visit was to ask for Msgr. Manikowski’s priestly advice just before returning to the Pontifical North American College (the NAC) in Rome for his ordination as a transitional deacon for the HoumaThibodaux Diocese. Msgr. Manikowski, a Polish priest, had survived nearly six years of imprisonment in three Nazi concentration camps during WWII, including the death camp at Dachau, from which he was liberated by U.S. troops in 1945. Msgr. Manikowski immigrated to
the U.S. in 1951 and wound up serving many years at parishes in the dioceses of Baton Rouge, Lafayette and HoumaThibodaux and the Archdiocese of New Orleans, always thankful for his hardwon freedom and survival. “He had known me since I was in the second grade as an altar server,” Father Rodrigue said. “I asked him, ‘Monsignor, do you have any words of advice to give to someone getting ready to be ordained?’ And, he said, ‘Yes, I’m glad you asked me that! God will provide. It doesn’t matter how hopeless the situation is, God will always provide. No matter how dark the night is, at some point, the sun has to rise. God will always provide.’” “I think those words were what kept him going when he was in the concentration camp,” Father Rodrigue said. Father Rodrigue, 44, currently the director of spiritual formation at the
34 • Bayou Catholic • Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux • December 2021
Pontifical North American College in Rome, was named Oct. 14 by Archbishop Gregory Aymond to succeed Father James Wehner as rector-president of Notre Dame Seminary on July 1, 2022. “Father Rodrigue comes to us eminently qualified and with much experience in priestly formation,” Archbishop Aymond said. Father Wehner, a priest of the Pittsburgh Diocese, has served for 10 years as rector, overseeing a formation program that has catapulted Notre Dame Seminary into the secondlargest theologate in the country. He will remain in New Orleans through the end of July 2022 as part of the transition. Asked to identify the biggest joy of his tenure, Father Wehner said it was the quality of seminarians who have gone on to ordination. “It’s the seminarians, the quality of the men we’re seeing and
a
