For future Archbishop, path to priesthood was straight

From modest beginnings, Archbishop Alex Brunett’s single-minded focus, intensity and energy have kept is priestly ministry on track

BY GREG MAGNONI

Alexander Joseph Brunett was born on January 17, 1934 in a house his parents rented in St. Regis Parish in Detroit, Michigan. The second of 14 surviving children (one sister died at birth), Alexander and his older brother, Ray, moved with their parents to a house on the lower east side of Detroit where Raymond and Cecelia Brunett would raise their family through the depression, World War II and the auto-industry boom of the post-war era.

In the back yard of his Detroit home dressed for first Communion.	A St. Ambrose School photo shows the future archbishop at about age 11.

It was a working-class neighborhood of factory workers, carpenters, brick layers and plumbers (like Raymond), who received low wages in the era prior to the growth and influence of unions.  Archbishop Brunett recalls that his father, who received only a third-grade education, was “a little bit of a character” who became an avid reader later in life.

“All throughout his life he enjoyed a good joke, he always enjoyed jokes and laughter,” Archbishop Brunett said. “I guess I learned to be a practical joker or someone that tells jokes from him. I always tell people it is great to be happy and have fun and to enjoy life.  You have got to learn to laugh.”

Alexander’s mother, Cecilia (Gill) Brunett, was of Irish and German descent.  A product of Catholic schools, she never attended college, but Archbishop Brunett described her as “a very intelligent lady” who, like Raymond, read a lot as she got older.

“She had so many children that her days were filled with cooking dinner, doing laundry and feeding babies,” Archbishop Brunett recalled, “but she always did things with joy and a certain amount of pizzazz.”

Award-winning salesman
As an elementary school student at St. Ambrose, and later as a high school day student at Sacred Heart Seminary, young Alex earned his spending money for clothes and other items by peddling “The Detroit Times.”  He was an exceptional salesman who won prizes, trips and various awards for selling new subscriptions.

“I won several trips, bicycles and radios,” Archbishop Brunett said, “but I worked real hard at it, and besides they gave you 10 cents for every new customer, and if you got a lot of customers you got a lot of money.”

During one trip to Boston, he and a few of his fellow carriers were chosen for a promotional picture with Hank Greenberg, the Tigers’ homerun-hitting first baseman, who was the first Jewish player to be elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame.

A young Alex Brunett (at top left corner) was among 120 Detroit Times newspaper carriers who won a trip to Boston for signing up new subscribers. They saw their hero, Hall of Fame slugger Hank Greenberg, who played all but his final season with the Tigers.

The future archbishop was named after Raymond’s older brother, Alexander Joseph, who was ordained a priest in 1933.  When he entered Sacred Heart Seminary in 1946, young Alex continued to live at home until he was a college sophomore because of the cost of room and board. 

He would rise at 6 a.m., grab his lunch sack -- which usually contained peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for breakfast after Mass and for lunch -- and make the daily trip across town by streetcar to Detroit’s Sacred Heart Seminary.  The trip took an hour and a half each way.

Seminary tuition was $20 a year paid by the Knights of Columbus council at St. Ambrose parish.  Despite his prowess as a newspaper salesman growing up in Detroit’s booming industrial economy, Archbishop Brunett never considered any future vocation other than the priesthood.

“I had a single focus back in those days,” he said, and he applied himself, worked hard and excelled as a seminary student.  As an upperclassman he dabbled in print as an editor and columnist for “The Gothic,” the seminary newspaper, he was athletic director for the seminary and eventually became valedictorian of his college graduating class.

Sacred Heart Seminary, 1955 class officers. The future archbishop was valedictorian of his college class.

He enjoyed athletics throughout his high school and college years and remembers fondly a basketball game in which the freshmen of first college posted an unprecedented victory over the “giants” of second college in an intramural league game.

“They didn’t think that I knew how to play, and they didn’t guard me too well,” he remembered.  “I was sinking baskets on the outside, probably way beyond my capacity,” he recalled.

The pope’s canary
The Archdiocese of Detroit had been sending two students each year to study in Rome following reopening of the North American College after World War II.  The young seminarian had excelled in his philosophy studies, and in 1955 the seminary rector informed him that he had been selected by a faculty vote to continue his studies in Rome at the Pontifical Gregorian University.  

Seminarian Alex J. Brunett leans on the ship’s rail enroute to Rome in 1955.

He remembers making the transatlantic journey by boat without experiencing seasickness and arriving in Naples in September on the Feast of St. Januarius.  The upper classmen at North American College came down to greet the arriving students and took them on a tour “which I remember with great fondness,” he said.  “It was really wonderful.  These were glorious days because I had never seen anything so beautiful in my life.”

Having studied Latin for eight years at Sacred Heart Seminary he was well prepared for the academic regimen, which included lectures and oral exams conducted entirely in Latin.

There was some time for relaxation even for a cash-strapped seminarian.  He recalled one summer when he and his fellow students retreated from Rome’s heat and humidity to Castel Gandolfo, the pope’s summer residence.  Mother Pasqualina Lehnert, Pope Pius XII’s famed confidante and housekeeper, came to the villa one afternoon with the pope’s favorite yellow canary, which managed to escape from its cage as it hung from a tree.

“I mean, it was chaos in Castel Gandolfo,” Archbishop Brunett recalled with a laugh.  “People were climbing trees and running all over the place trying to find the pope’s canary.”

Among the honors he received as a student at the Gregorian was his selection as the class librarian. As librarian, he also was ordained one year early at the end of his third year and was tabbed to stay in Rome an additional year to finish his studies in theology.

Father Brunett was ordained July 13, 1958 in the church dedicated to St. Alexis of Aventine by Cardinal Luigi Traglia, auxiliary bishop of Rome, and, as one of the youngest priests in Rome at the time, he was among those selected as an honor guard for the body of Pope Pius XII after his death later that year.

Father Brunett departed Rome and returned home to the Archdiocese of Detroit in 1959 amid speculation about what Pope John III’s decision to “open the windows of the church” by calling for an Ecumenical Council of the Vatican would mean.  But for the newly-ordained priest, the immediate responsibilities of serving in a parish became his all-consuming concern.

His first assignment was Detroit’s St. Rose Parish, located in a traditionally Irish neighborhood north of Jefferson Avenue on the lower east side near his family’s home.  The parish, like his native Detroit, was in a period of racial transition as the traditional Irish community moved out and a growing black population moved into the neighborhood.

Graduate studies
While serving as a parish priest at St. Rose he got a letter from his archbishop, Cardinal John Francis Dearden, instructing him to enroll at the University of Detroit for a degree in secondary school administration.  He eventually wrote his master’s thesis on his experience at St. Rose and titled it: “A Catholic School in a Changing Neighborhood.”

Left, seminarian Alex Brunett (second from left) stands with his “camarada” (comrades) at St. Mary Major Basilica in Rome. At right, he chats with staffers of the Catholic high school yearbook while associate pastor of St. Alphonsus Parish in Dearborn, Mich.

In 1961 he was transferred from St. Rose to St. Alphonsus in Dearborn, Michigan, one of the largest parishes in the Diocese, where he served as associate pastor until 1962.  He also taught 11th-grade religion at St. Alphonsus High School as a student teacher while finishing his degree program.

In 1962 he was sent to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor as an assistant chaplain to “a wonderful priest, Monsignor Bradley.”  The change was dramatic for young Father Brunett. 

While he had become accustomed to working into the wee hours of the morning as a parish priest, his ministry as a chaplain on a major college campus was to college students, who often talked until dawn “about philosophy, politics and the war in Vietnam.  Nothing happened before noon,” he remembered. 
 
In 1964, Cardinal Dearden called Father Brunett into his office and encouraged him to study for his doctorate in philosophy.  The cardinal wanted his university chaplains to have doctoral degrees in order to be on a par with the other faculty members.  Despite the cardinal’s skepticism, Father Brunett chose to study theology instead.

“To me, philosophy would not be as rewarding as theology, which is really where you preach from,” Archbishop Brunett recalled.  “You have to have the foundation in philosophy, no doubt, but to me it wouldn’t be as rewarding to teach philosophy as theology.”

So Father Brunett began making arrangements to attend Marquette University in Milwaukee attracted by the presence of noted sacramental theologian Father Bernard Cooke.  In his fourth year, as he was in the final stages of writing his thesis, Father Brunett travelled to Europe to complete his doctoral studies.

Soon after completing his studies abroad, Father Brunett was called by his archbishop from Marquette University, cutting short his program of studies and the work he was doing on his thesis, to serve as chaplain at Eastern Michigan University.

So in 1969, Father Brunett returned to the Archdiocese of Detroit.  Although he would continue to write, especially at the request of Cardinal Dearden, he welcomed the opportunity to get back to the life of a diocesan priest. 

“I would have liked to continue to pursue my studies, but I was happy to be a parish priest,” he said.  “I was always a church person, and I went where [the cardinal] wanted me to go, where the needs of the church were.  I decided to put my talents and abilities there and not into an academic career.”

An ecumenical pioneer
In 1969 the cardinal gave Father Brunett and another priest of the archdiocese materials from the council dialogues he had participated in and said, ‘I don’t want to see you guys until you get this book finished.’  Eventually titled “Synod 69,” the book was to outline and put into a local perspective the practical implications of Vatican II documents on the life of the local church.  

“We had to write the whole thing in three days, which we did,” Archbishop Brunett recalled.  It was among the first diocesan texts produced in the United States after the Second Vatican Council that provided guidelines for a particular church in keeping with the decrees of the council.

Father Brunett worked at Eastern Michigan for two years, and during his second year he was called on again by Cardinal Dearden, this time to join the faculty at St. John’s Provincial Seminary in Plymouth, Michigan. Father Brunett taught courses in sacramental theology at the seminary and was selected by the faculty as academic dean.

He left the seminary in 1973 with a new mandate from his archbishop.  Ecumenism and interfaith relations were unexplored frontiers at the diocesan and parish level that represented new horizons for the Archdiocese of Detroit, and Cardinal Dearden asked Father Brunett to be his diocesan ecumenical officer.

The young priest knew he would need to educate himself, so he was given an opportunity to study world religions abroad.  He would use the time to explore their origins, rites and practices. 

“At the time, not very many people had a real background in other Christian faiths and nonChristian traditions,” he said.  “There were experts in one area or another, but I was given the opportunity to get an overview of everything.”

After accepting the assignment, Father Brunett departed in 1973 and began his ecumenical research in Rome.  His studies abroad would span more than a dozen nations and include studies of the Orthodox churches; Protestant, Jewish and Muslim religions; and the Buddhist, Hindu and Confucian traditions.

On his return to Detroit, Father Brunett requested a parish in addition to his duties as Director of the Division of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs for the archdiocese.  Cardinal Dearden named him pastor of St. Aidan Parish in Livonia, Michigan and he began what would become the longest continuing assignment of his priestly vocation.

While pastor of St. Aidan Parish in Livonia, Mich., the then-Father Brunett blesses his parents at a celebration of their 50th wedding anniversary.

Return to pastoral leadership
After his studies in Rome, post-graduate academic experience, a university chaplaincy, a seminary faculty position and his recent international studies in ecumenism and interfaith relations, Father Brunett was making a welcome return to parish life. For the next 18 years he would walk with the people of Livonia in their journey of faith and be present to them in the best and worst of times.  He also brought innovation to the parish, especially in the construction of its new church in 1988, that reflected the liturgical renewal taking place throughout the world.

His duties, however, continued to take him beyond the confines of parochial life.  He worked with Protestant leaders to develop guidelines for ecumenical activities, he helped launch a national Catholic-Jewish dialogue and received numerous awards and commendations for his pioneering efforts.  Father Brunett continued his leadership in promoting ecumenical efforts and served as President of the National Association of Diocesan Ecumenical Officers from 1974 to 1981.

In 1990 the title of Monsignor was conferred upon him by Pope John Paul II, and in 1991 he was named pastor of the Shrine of the Little Flower Parish in Royal Oak, Michigan.  It was another difficult transition for the parish priest, but it also posed a new challenge and a new adventure in pastoral ministry.  The parish was not only one of the largest and most active parishes in the United States, but the church itself was a basilica as well as a national shrine.

In 1994, at the age of 60, Pope John Paul II appointed then-Monsignor Brunett Bishop of the Diocese of Helena, Montana.  As he recalled later, he was “picking up and starting over.”

“The only thing I knew about Helena, Montana was that it was the subject of a famous canonical marriage case that I studied while I was in Rome,” Archbishop Brunett said of the move from urban Detroit to the 54,000-square-mile rural diocese.  “I remember looking it up and was impressed by the large area it covered,” he said.

The Diocese of Helena Web site provides a succinct history of Bishop Brunett’s pastoral style: “Shortly after his arrival in Helena, Bishop Brunett began a series of ambitious tours of the diocese, attending welcoming ceremonies and visiting parishes. His preaching centered on themes that permeated his ministry in the diocese including that Catholics should be joyful about their faith, maintain hope for the future, and seek unity by healing division and attitudes which separate one from another.”

A future full of hope
In addition to his new role as the chief shepherd of a diocese, Bishop Brunett was elected chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs in 1996.  After a period of only three years, following the untimely death of Archbishop Thomas J. Murphy, Pope John Paul II appointed Bishop Brunett Archbishop of Seattle on Oct. 28, 1997 and he was installed on Dec. 18.

Archbishop Brunett (not shown) was one of the Catholic delegates to the 1998 Lambeth Conference in Canterbury, England, which drew almost 700 Anglican bishops from around the world. Held every ten years at the summons of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the conference impacts other Christian churches.

The newly installed Archbishop immediately began to familiarize himself with the large and diverse Western Washington Catholic archdiocese in the same manner he had gotten to know his Montana diocese: He logged a lot of highway miles.  Within a short time he had attended liturgies in every corner of the 28,000-square-mile archdiocese.   He inaugurated his ministry in the Archdiocese of Seattle with liturgies in each of its 10 deaneries, and before the end of his first year as archbishop, he would participate in many unique ethnic-cultural liturgies.  

He also continued his ecumenical involvement as a member of the International Roman Catholic-World Methodist Dialogue, and in 1999 became co-Chairman of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC).  His ecumenical efforts as ARCIC co-chair helped pave the way for the first joint international statement of understanding by two Christian communions on the place of Mary in the doctrine and life of the Church. The document, entitled Mary: Grace and Hope in Christ, addressed several points that have separated Anglicans and Roman Catholics including Catholic teaching on the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Mary.

Five years in development, the document is referred to as the ‘Seattle Statement’ because Archbishop Brunett brought members of ARCIC to Seattle for completion of the text in February 2004.  During his period of pastoral leadership, he also had oversight for the archdiocese’s response to the clergy sexual abuse scandal.

Recognizing that the problems went deeper than a few problem priests, he established policies and procedures in keeping with national norms approved in 2002 that ensured an ongoing effort to protect children, provide outreach and healing to victims and broad efforts in partnership with other organizations to address the societal problem of child sexual abuse.

When he was installed as Archbishop of Seattle, he inherited a five-year plan developed by the late Archbishop Murphy.  When Archbishop Brunett began work on his own five-year plan in 2001, “A Future Full of Hope: Priorities and Goals for the years 2004-2009,” it would in many ways summarize his five decades of priesthood.

“A Future Full of Hope” gave expression to Archbishop Brunett’s desire to unify the people of the Archdiocese of Seattle through their encounter with Christ, and his energy and determination helped animate the document and transform its words into action.

“I think people have done a marvelous job of picking up on the priorities and moving ahead,” Archbishop Brunett said.  “I have encouraged them and worked with them to see that happen, and I think the life, the vitality of the faith is very strong here.”

On January 17, 2009, Archbishop Brunett will be 75, the mandatory retirement age for bishops, but his single-minded focus, his intensity and energy make it unlikely that he will retire in the conventional sense.

“Fifty years seems like a long time, but it doesn’t seem like that to me,” he said in a recent radio interview.  “I have been very active my whole life, so I feel that I am about 40. God blessed me with a lot of energy and … I want to use it in ministry and I have always been happy.”