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Jesuit Father Albert A. Grosskopf received the James J. Young Ministry Award for his longtime ministry to divorced Catholics during the Catholic Divorce Ministry Conference Sept. 14 in St. Louis, Missouri. Board member Ann Moloney presented the award, a carved wooden statue of the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well, a biblical figure some consider the patron saint of divorced people. (Photo courtesy Catholic Divorce Ministry)
December 2, 2019
Christina Gray
As a young priest at Holy Family Parish in San Jose during the 1970s, Jesuit Father Albert A. Grosskopf was tasked with forming a singles group. The majority turned out to be divorced or separated.
“From the beginning, a number of divorced and separated people found ready acceptance in the singles group, and through this group, entered into the life of the parish community,” recalled Father Grosskopf, who was presented this fall with what amounts to a lifetime achievement award for ministry to divorced and separated Catholics.
On Sept. 14, Father Grosskopf received the James T. Young Ministry Award at the Catholic Divorce Ministry Conference in St. Louis, Missouri. The award is named after Father James Young, a Paulist priest who founded the North American Conference of Separated and Divorced Catholics in 1974, the first U.S. Catholic ministry to divorced Catholics.
Father Grosskopf was a close friend of Father Young, who died shortly after he founded NACSDC. He picked up where his friend began, and at 88, has spent almost five decades in divorce ministry.
“I have a strong empathic feeling for people who experience alienation and non-acceptance by others,” Father Grosskopf told Catholic San Francisco Nov. 25, when asked what drew him to divorce ministry. “Divorced people are often alienated and have experienced rejection and loss and an enduring fear of abandonment.”
Father Grosskopf said that divorced Catholics can feel isolation and exclusion as members of the church. Divorce ministry support groups help them share their painful experiences with each other.
“This is truly a peer ministry,” he said.
As his Holy Family parish singles group developed in 1970s, the divorced and separated became so numerous that the young priest decided he should start a program exclusively for them.
“Publicizing it in the weekly parish bulletin was the first time public recognition was given to the presence of divorced and separated Catholics in the Holy Family community, and their presence was legitimized,” he said. “They were invited to consider themselves as an integral part of an all-embracing Christian community that binds up wounds and heals.”
Father Grosskopf eventually founded one of the first Catholic divorce support groups in California, New Horizons, based on the model of Father Young. They eventually formed Catholic Divorce Ministry, a ministry of the nonprofit NACSDC.
His own awareness of the significant presence of divorced members in his parish grew as he offered prayers for ‘the divorced members of our community’ in the prayers of the faithful at weekend Masses.
“This was noticed by a number of divorced parishioners who had been keeping a low profile, and they individually thanked me for acknowledging their presence and praying for them,” he said.
Father Grosskopf returned to his hometown of San Francisco in the 1980s and worked in campus ministry at the University of San Francisco. He later served at St. Ignatius Parish and as a pastoral minister at Loyola House in San Francisco, where he continued to facilitate a divorce support group and help with declarations of marriage nullification.
Now in residence at Sacred Heart Jesuit Center in Los Gatos, Father Grosskopf continues his pastoral ministry as a priest consultant to Catholic Divorce Ministry and contributes weekly homilies to “Jacob’s Well,” its member newsletter.
“By the grace of God, we continue to minister to the healing of those who have suffered the pain of divorce and separation, a healing ministry in the tradition of the healing ministry of our Lord and brother, Jesus Christ.”
Visit nacsdc.org.
HE’S A CORKER: Father Michael Healy, pastor of St. Bartholomew Parish in San Mateo will be honored as “Corkman of the Year” by the United Irish Cultural Center in San Francisco Dec. 7. The Cork city native celebrating his Golden Jubilee in 2020 has served at more than a half-dozen parishes. He has been longtime chaplain to the SFPD, and to the Ancient Order of Hibernians. In the 1980s and early 1990s when Irish immigration to the city was at a modern peak, Father Michael was a driving force in what was called the ‘Joseph and Mary’ group which offered support to the new immigrants, later becoming the Irish Immigration Pastoral Center.
MESSAGE FROM MEDJUGORJE: Dominican Father Leon Pereira, left, of the order’s English Province, visited St. Dominic Parish Nov. 23 to share his personal witness of Mary’s messages in Medjugorje. Father Periera, pictured with St. Dominic pastor Father Michael Hurley, right, is chaplain to English-speaking pilgrims to the town in the Herzegovina region of Bosnia Herzegovina where Mary is said to have appeared to six Herzegovinian teenagers in 1981.
Though neither the local diocese nor the Catholic Church have recognized the apparitions as supernatural or authentic, Pope Francis declared in 2017 that the original visions are worth studying because people who go there convert, find God and change their lives. The Vatican officially recognized Medjugorje this summer as a place of pilgrimage. (Photo courtesy St. Dominic Parish)
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