After decade-long search, voice of Jesus led bishop to embrace life as a priest

DETROIT — For many years, the priesthood was the furthest thing from the mind of Bishop Gerard W. Battersby. He buried it. He ignored it. He ran from it.

But the still, small voice was always there.

At first, that voice took the form of an elderly Irish woman.

“My grandmother, who was an old Irish dear, she had an inkling in her heart that I was called to be a priest,” Bishop Battersby remembers. “She used to tell me that, and I used to tell her to stop fussing at me.”

As the youngest of nine children growing up on the east side of Detroit, Bishop Battersby was focused on all the things a typical young Catholic boy would be: sports, mostly, and the occasional roughhousing with his twin brother, Chris.

The family parish, St. Benedict in Highland Park, was the center of life for the Battersbys, so it was natural that the question would sometimes arise. The Battersby children would “play Mass” on occasion, and there was even a priest in the family, Fr. Edmund Battersby, the brother of young Gerry’s father, Chris Sr.

“My uncle Ed was for my siblings and I larger than life,” Bishop Battersby recalls. “Because my grandparents lived with us, he was frequently at our house. He and my dad were close; in fact, he was my dad’s best man when he got married.”

Growing up distinctively Catholic, Bishop Battersby recalls fondly the memories of kneeling next to his father while waiting in line for a Saturday confession or watching his mother, Helen, wearing her chapel veil as she knelt in thanksgiving after Communion. He remembers his pastors, who influenced his faith as a young man.

But despite the presence of Fr. Ed and many other priests and nuns, the thought didn’t seriously cross Bishop Battersby’s mind until he was out of the house.

He remembers it clearly: He was 19 years old and on a junior year abroad in Ireland. And it scared him.

“When I was in Ireland, I had an experience over the Easter week — actually I was at a youth hostel in Scotland — and I was musing about my life. One morning I woke up very early and I had what I guess I now would call an illumination: I knew I was going to be a priest,” Bishop Battersby recalled. “I had no previous desire or inkling — as a typical Catholic boy that was always somewhere in the background, but it was never in the forefront — but I really felt very strongly that that was the case.”

When he returned to Detroit, Bishop Battersby paid a visit to Sacred Heart Seminary to talk to the pre-formation director at the time, Fr. Don Archembault. But the butterflies won out.

“The idea not only frightened me, but I just wanted to run the other way, and I did,” Bishop Battersby said. “I ran for as long as I could until I couldn’t run anymore.”

Pursued by God

Thus began a decade-and-a-half-long pursuit — Bishop Battersby in pursuit of an alternative career path, and God in pursuit of Bishop Battersby.

As a high school student in the Lamphere School System in Madison Heights, where the family had moved during his teenage years, Bishop Battersby’s original plan had been to become a medical doctor, so he tried that first.

Putting the seminary on the back burner, he entered Wayne State University instead, earning a biology degree in 1983 and beginning courses toward his graduate studies. But God was still in pursuit, and quite literally put the brakes on those plans.

“Initially out of college I pursued a master’s in physiology, but I was in a car accident,” Bishop Battersby said. “I had some time to think about where I was going in my future, and I decided not to continue in the medical field. So I took a job with a pharmaceutical firm out of New York for several years.”

But like a Father calling His son, God continued to work in the future bishop’s life, and the next step back toward Sacred Heart began with a father calling his son.

Bishop Battersby’s father had decided to retire from his job as a residential appraiser, and asked the future priest to help him with some incoming business.

“The business kept coming in, and the next thing you know, I didn’t intend to go into appraising, but it had become too good of an offer to refuse,” Bishop Battersby said.

But after working in appraising for several years, the beckon of the seminary returned.

“The Lord has a way of pursuing you. He wants us to be free, but He also calls us to himself,” Bishop Battersby remembers. “I started going to daily Mass, and started reading Scripture. Then, I think one Sunday I was sitting in Mass, and the priest who had the Mass was older, and I thought to myself, ‘These guys need help.’ The Gospel reading that day was the rich young man, and it was very poignant for me. I began thinking, and I was pretty sure the Lord wanted me to be a priest. The real problem was me, not the Lord.”

Going all in

The next phase of Bishop Battersby’s vocation journey began with a conservative tactic: negotiation.

“I knew He wanted me to serve Him; I was willing to be lay missionary, but I wasn’t willing to be a priest. Priests don’t get married, and that was part of my plan, to have a family and that sort of thing,” Bishop Battersby said.

But the voice remained.

“So I said to Jesus, ‘I’ll be a permanent deacon, and I’ll serve you that way,’” Bishop Battersby said.

That offer lasted long enough to get the future bishop in the doors of Sacred Heart. But it didn’t take long for God to raise the stakes again, and by the very first class of his first semester in the fall of 1993, it was clear Bishop Battersby wasn’t turning back this time.

“My first course at Sacred Heart was with Dr. Bill Rearden, and it was called ‘Introduction to the Catholic Faith,’ and it was one of the most inspiring classes I ever had. I just drank it in like a thirsty man with a draught of clear, fresh water,” Bishop Battersby said. “It just set me on fire, and I couldn’t get enough of theology.”

Not only that, but the seminary atmosphere was contagious.

“I was meeting people who were believers, who loved Jesus and he was real to them. I wanted more of that,” Bishop Battersby said.

His professors and mentors at the seminary — including then-Fr. Allen Vigneron — set an example of holiness and personal commitment to Christ that soon put to rest any doubt, Bishop Battersby said.

“We loved his teaching,” Bishop Battersby said of the future archbishop and then-rector of the seminary. “He’s a natural teacher, and the second thing I would say about him is that I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone more reverently celebrate Mass than he did.”

Growing in the priesthood

With the thrill of the chase finished, the thrill of ministry was just beginning with Bishop Battersby’s ordination to the priesthood in 1998.

As a new priest, the 38-year-old Fr. Battersby recalled being awed by the sense of belonging and responsibility he felt toward his new flock.

“As a priest, you find yourself falling in love with the parish family you’re sent to,” Bishop Battersby said. “But there’s this strange dynamic: They think you’re holy, and you know the truth of that. And you think they’re holy. And so what ends up happening is they want to be better for you and you want to be better for them because they deserve it.”

Bishop Battersby said his favorite parts of being a priest — besides celebrating the Eucharist and “splashing people with holy water,” he joked — are the rare opportunities to enter into people’s faith lives.

“I love to preach, I love to baptize, and strangely, I love to bury,” he said. “It’s a time when you can really proclaim the kerygma that Jesus suffered and died for us that we might have life and have it abundantly and eternally.”

It’s in those moments, he said, “when you have an entrance into people’s lives that was bought with the blood of priests and nuns down through the centuries before you. You have a legitimacy that is not yours; it is borrowed and shared. So you’re able to walk into people’s lives in an instantly intimate way, and that’s an amazing gift.”

Seeing the dedication and faithfulness of those who attended his daily Masses at St. Thecla and St. Claude parishes in Clinton Township, as well as his later assignments at Presentation/Our Lady of Victory, Immaculate Heart of Mary, St. Gerard and St. Christopher parishes in Detroit, made a lasting impression on him.

“No matter whether you’re in the city or the suburbs, people are hungry for Christ,” Bishop Battersby said. “The same dynamic that exists in the suburbs exists in the city, and that is that it’s about people coming to Communion and falling in love with him. And in him with each other.”

An example for others

Bishop Battersby received another gift — albeit a surprise one — when he was appointed to the seminary at the recommendation of then-Auxiliary Bishop John M. Quinn.

But if anyone could understand the struggles of a young seminarian grappling with God’s will, he knew he was in the right place again.

“Walking through those doors is one of the mountains that a young man — or like myself an older vocation — has to climb,” Bishop Battersby said. “But one of the things I want (the seminarians) to remember is that the door swings both ways; you’re not locked in here. Come and see.”

Bishop Battersby said one of the greatest lessons of his vocation journey was the realization that God’s providence is limitless.

“God will never be outdone in generosity,” he said. “You be generous with the Lord and the Lord will pay you back beyond your imagination. Some people think, ‘Why would a young man give up his life and give up love, shall we say, for the priesthood?’ But you don’t come here to give up love; you come here to discover love, and to live in love.”

Asked whether his role as vice rector has prepared him in any way for his future ministry as a bishop, Bishop Battersby pointed to the role of Sacred Heart in helping young men — as well as lay men and women — to discover the truth about life.

“We live in an age where people are invited to live in alternate realities. So to be able to help young men to know that Christ is reality, and to live out of that truth, really prepares you for combat in a world that has grown weary of the message of Christ,” Bishop Battersby said.

While Bishop Battersby has loved his role at Sacred Heart, the archbishop’s decision to assign him concurrently as pastor of St. Mary of Redford Parish in 2015 was also “a gift from the Holy Spirit,” he said.

“As diocesan priests, we’re made for the parish. That’s who we are, and it’s kind of like reasserting my identity as a priest,” he said. “That’s been the greatest gift for me and something the people of St. Mary of Redford have given me.”

Mystery and purpose

Bishop Battersby said Archbishop Vigneron has made clear that, as an auxiliary bishop, one of his principal tasks will be to support the priests of the archdiocese, a role he’s observed and appreciated about his predecessors.

Asked whom he would like to emulate in his ministry, Bishop Battersby pointed to the archbishop and Bishop Quinn as models, as well as the late Bishop Walter Schoenherr, whom he called “a very simple, very bright, but very down-to-earth pastoral man.”

Still, Bishop Battersby admits that, like his calling to the priesthood or his assignment as vice rector, being a successor to the apostles isn’t something for which he feels humanly prepared.

“I have to admit that I’ve not allowed myself or dared myself to think too much about that because it’s quite a bit beyond me — it’s beyond all of us, to tell the truth of the matter. God’s election is so particular. He doesn’t always choose the best and the brightest, but he chooses who He chooses, and then he equips them for ministry,” Bishop Battersby said. “That mystery of choice, of being selected to be in the line of witnesses to Christ, is more than I can digest right at the moment, to be honest with you, but it’s something I think will unfold throughout my life.”

Ultimately, each man’s vocation is a product of the boundless love of Christ, Bishop Battersby said — especially for one called to be a bishop.

“The only thing I would want to emphasize and say is that this is about Jesus. And if it’s not about Jesus, than I’m irrelevant and so is everyone else. So I want to keep my eyes fixed on that central fact,” Bishop Battersby said. “He’s who explains every man to himself and every person. He’s who explains myself to me.”

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For more stories about the ordination and background of the Archdiocese of Detroit's new auxiliary bishops, Bishop Robert Fisher and Bishop Gerard Battersby, check out The Michigan Catholic's special section.