Our brother Gervase Degenhardt, OFM Cap., passed to the Lord’s eternal life at our Provincial motherhouse, St. Augustine Friary, in Pittsburgh, PA, on Wednesday, September 27, 2023. He was 91. He had been suffering weakness in the past few months and growing increasingly frustrated that the Lord was delaying the moment when he could be freed from the weakness of Brother Body.
Francis Degenhardt was the fourth of eight children born to Martin and Pauline (Leiker) Degenhardt in Antonino, KS, on December 28, 1931. As a child, he recalled flowers growing around his home and his parents tending a vegetable garden. His interest in horticulture began! Walking to St. Joseph Grade School in nearby Hays, KS, he noticed flowers and shrubs thriving in yards along the way.
Capuchin friars served at St. Joseph’s parish in Hays, and when the young boy was 12, he traveled with 13 classmates on a train from Kansas to the Capuchin Seminary High School, St. Fidelis in Herman, PA, where he would flourish. He had the added advantage of being able to remind those “Easterners” how much they were missing out on the beauties of the prairies they’d never experienced (at least his classmates thought it was an overstatement).
On July 13, 1952, he received the Capuchin habit as well as the name he would retain for the rest of his life: Gervase. He made his first profession of vows in 1954 alongside confreres who would precede him in death: Marvin Justi (+2009), Mario Mastrangelo (+2022), and Ben Madden, who was taken by Sister Death in July. After finishing their collegiate work in 1955, they began theological studies at Capuchin College and were ordained in 1958.
Earning a License in Theology (STL) from DC’s Catholic University in 1960, the young friar priest taught the friars who prepared for priesthood ordination before he was called to St. Fidelis College in Herman in 1965, continuing his teaching of theology while serving as the College’s Vice President.
The community witnessed Gervase’s love of the arts, his attention to beauty and his devotion to poetry and literature. He was tapped for further studies and attended classes at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, earning a Master’s Degree in English Literature in 1968, and, for the next eleven years, added classes in English Literature to his course load.
Tradition has it that St. Gervase, his patron, was a martyr who, along with St. Protase, was killed during Nero’s persecution in the second century. While teaching at St. Fidelis, Gervase had a pair of parakeets, Gervase and Protase, who fortunately did not suffer martyrdom -- but they were exposed the classical music and operas which would often be playing from Gervase’s stereo. A true renaissance man, Gervase could use poetry and literature to show how God’s goodness and beauty showed up in the art of creation and human invention.
While teaching at Herman, our confrere Reginald Russo (+2020) requested that Gervase plant a few rose bushes in front of the school and walkways. When St. Fidelis College closed its doors in 1979, he was named parochial vicar of St. Joseph Parish in York, PA – and you can bet that flowers and gardens thrived there as much as they blossomed and flourished in Herman.
At the 1986 Provincial Chapter, the friars who admired Gervase’s sensitivity and elegance elected him to the Provincial Council where he was asked to serve as Vicar Provincial under the leadership of minister Francis Fugini (+2021). He also served as the Secretary of Personnel and Ministries and the Director of Retirement. In the latter role, he authored a policy for friars who would choose to retire where he cited poet Robert Browning (long before the quote became an internet mantra):
“Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be, the last of life,
for which the first was made.
Our times are in his hand who saith,
'A whole I planned,
youth shows but half;
Trust God: See all, nor be afraid!”
When his terms in leadership ended, Gervase was appointed guardian of St. Augustine Friary where friars would live out that retirement. He managed that retirement and a brief sabbatical where he followed courses in theology at Duquesne University. He was asked once again to take up parish ministry, this time at St. Augustine Parish (1995), and served for a time as an elected member of the Clergy Council for the Diocese of Pittsburgh.
In 2002, a chaplaincy to Sisters of St. Francis of Millvale at the Mt. Alvernia Convent was to be his final assignment. He was loved by the Sisters, and without a doubt, they loved him for the next fifteen years.
Throughout his time at our motherhouse in Pittsburgh’s Lawrenceville section, he could continue to bring things to life in the gardens and shrubbery there. In an article in the city’s Post-Gazette in June 2002, journalist Carol Mackenzie described “a veritable paradise of color and scent, and currently it features hundreds of roses – about 250 in all.” She asked him about his fascination and attention to all of this growth in nature, and Gervase felt that it all emerged from his graduate studies in English from Carnegie Mellon University: “Shakespeare so often wrote about different flowers, about roses. I think my love of poetry fueled my love of flowers, or is it the other way around?” He asked that last question with a laugh.
A T-shirt he would wear while working on his gardens expressed his love of gardening: “A kiss of the sun for pardon, the song of birds for mirth, one is n
earer God’s heart in a garden, than anywhere on earth.” To the local Rose Society, he was known as the “Rose Priest.” He served as an officer and judge of the Pittsburgh Rose Society and was certified a rosarian consultant. A deep red, miniature rose is named for him, the Fr. Gervase Rose (he is posing by the certificate given in his honor, to the right on most screens).
At his own request, Gervase relinquished daily pastoral responsibilities at Mt. Alvernia in 2017, becoming a confessor for the Sisters until his retirement at age 87.
Gervase was a faithful and good friar and a zealous priest. As a teacher, he was able to communicate the love and beauty, imbued from the beauty he heard, read and produced. As a disciplinarian, he treated students as adults and encouraged honesty and integrity. As a devoted chaplain, he gave our Franciscan Sisters reason to love the Lord and be faithful. He loved his family and stayed in close contact with them, often taking vacations with them. As a friar, he will be remembered as fun-loving and as one who also spoke his mind without hesitation. He loved being a Capuchin. Until his final months of life, Gervase was able to recite from memory lengthy passages from Shakespeare. His passion never wavered even as his body weakened.
Gervase was preceded in death by his parents, his brother Martin and sisters Viola Sack, Dolores Herrman and Esther Burghardt. He leaves three sisters to mourn his passing: Verna Schumacher and Joyce Pfeifer of Hays, KS, and Veronica Ditto of Everman, TX, as well as many nieces and nephews.
Gervase was ready for the beauty and goodness alive in an eternal life with the Lord. He experienced so much of its joy and abundance while he lived among us.
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Livestreaming videos below
St. Margaret of Cortona Chapel
St. Augustine Friary
221 36th Street
Pittsburgh PA 15201
Monday, October 2, 2023
4:30PM
Reception of the body
(friars only)
5:15PM
Evening Prayer
7:00PM
Visitation
8:00PM
Wake Service
Tuesday, 03 October 2023
10:00AM
Visitation
10:30AM
Mass of Christian Burial
(Interment at St. Augustine Cemetery • Friars' Plot)
A luncheon will be serve
in the Friary Dining Room