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Bishop's legacy: humility, inclusion

Tom Larkin helped the St. Petersburg diocese reach out to minorities. He has died at 83.

By CRAIG BASSE and MELANIE AVE
Published November 5, 2006

ST. PETERSBURG - A small-town boy, Tom Larkin wanted to be a small-town pastor, the kind who would know every parishioner by his voice in the confessional.

Instead, he became bishop of the fastest-growing Roman Catholic diocese in the United States, a megaparish where people inevitably became ciphers.

Bishop Emeritus W. Thomas Larkin, who led the St. Petersburg diocese through a decade of explosive growth and was a friend of the late pope, died at his Clearwater home about 1:50 a.m. Saturday (Nov. 4, 2006) after a long battle with leukemia. He was 83.

Bishop Larkin, who was the seminary roommate of the late Pope John Paul II, was appointed by the pope as the second bishop of the burgeoning Diocese of St. Petersburg, serving from 1979 through 1988.

"He was the first person with whom I spoke upon arriving in the diocese in 1995 and he remained a wise counselor and friend throughout," said St. Petersburg Bishop Robert Lynch, who was out of the country, in a written statement. "He was always witty in his homilies, usually beginning with a story of his own ministry here in Florida."

Friends described Bishop Larkin as a quiet and humble man, who liked eating jelly doughnuts, helping people and teaching priests about church history.

He co-authored the first book on priestly ministry in the post-Vatican II period, As One Who Serves, published by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.

"He loved to reminisce about the characters that were part of priesthood and part of the church," said the Monsignor Aiden Foynes, who is retired from Clearwater's St. Cecelia Catholic Church. "He was a truly spiritual man who loved the Lord and loved the people."

Through the church, Bishop Larkin traveled to places he never imagined and found a church swept up in the 20th century by change.

When he entered the ministry, priests said the Mass in a dying Latin, their backs turned to the congregation. Two decades later, he attended the last session of the Second Vatican Council, the historic convocation that turned the church around, bringing it face to face with the people.

He retired abruptly as bishop in November 1986 after he was diagnosed with leukemia, but the disease went into remission for more than a decade.

Eligible to hold the office for an additional 10 years, he continued to lead the diocese until his successor, Bishop John C. Favalora, was installed in May 1989.

Five years later, Favalora left to become archbishop in Miami and was succeeded by Lynch.

"It has been a great 10 years," Bishop Larkin said after announcing his plans to step down. "It was pretty hard for me to make the decision to retire because I have grown to know so many good people around the diocese."

He said he had received a letter from the late Pope John Paul II, whom he tutored in English in Rome during the 1940s, "expressing his sympathy and thanking me for my years of service to the diocese."

Bishop Larkin was the spiritual leader of about 300,000 Catholics in 71 parishes in the diocese comprising Pinellas, Hillsborough, Pasco, Hernando and Citrus counties.

During his term as bishop, 19 new parishes opened in the diocese and 23 churches were dedicated. The diocese contains more than 200 priests, 400 sisters and brothers of religious congregations, 27 elementary and special education schools and three high schools with 739 teachers and more than 12,000 students.

Faced by constant growth of the churches in his diocese, Bishop Larkin established offices for Hispanic ministry, people with disabilities and black Catholics and offices for long-range planning and real estate development. To provide services and provisions to the needy, eight centers were set up around the diocese.

In 1986, he established WBVM-FM radio, one of only five Catholic radio stations in the country.

Bishop Larkin was a staunch advocate of closer ecumenical relationships with Greek Orthodox and various Protestant denominations, the Episcopal Diocese of Southwest Florida and the Jewish community. In the spring of 1988, he and the late Episcopal Bishop E. Paul Haines received an award from the National Conference of Christians and Jews for their ecumenical endeavors.

William Thomas Larkin grew up in Mount Morris, N.Y., outside Rochester, where his father published the Union, a weekly newspaper, by himself. His parents, William and Julia, attended Mass every day.

When he was in high school, he had to walk past the convent on the way home, he recalled in a 1997 interview. "One of the nuns saw me and she called me in and said, 'What are you going to do after you graduate?' " Instead of waiting for an answer, she arranged for him to visit the seminary in Rochester.

"I was so impressed by the campus and the spirit of the fellows," he said, "that I started thinking about the priesthood."

His decision to enter the seminary was not controversial. Even his father, who had hoped he would go to law school, was delighted. "Nobody said, 'You're making a mistake,' " he said.

When he was in his last year of seminary, Florida Archbishop Joseph Hurley made a recruitment trip to Rochester. The church needed bodies in the Sunshine State. He asked his bishop if he could go, and the bishop said, "Go ahead. I've got so many priests, I don't know where to put them."

He was ordained May 15, 1947, at Immaculate Conception Cathedral in Syracuse, N.Y., and began his career in Daytona Beach.

Soon after, he went to Rome to study for a doctorate in sacred theology. He lived in a house with 15 Belgians, five Americans and two Poles. One of the Poles was Karol Wojtyla, a young priest who sang Polish folk songs and read books while waiting for buses. He helped Wojtyla with his English as they walked to classes together.

"I wrote a letter to my parents saying how outstanding he was, and how I thought he'd go far in the church," he said. Wojtyla, of course, later became Pope John Paul II.

When he returned from Rome, he became an aide to Archbishop Hurley in the Diocese of St. Augustine, which covered all of Florida except for the part west of the Apalachicola River. He later was associate pastor of Holy Family Catholic Church in North Miami and senior pastor at Christ the King in Jacksonville.

Pat Farmer, 72, president of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul's upper Pinellas County district, said Bishop Larkin was not only a gifted administrator but also a great pastor.

"People just loved him," said Farmer, who worked with Bishop Larkin when he was a Jacksonville priest and again when he became bishop. "He had a fantastic memory. When he would call people, whoever answered, he would call them by their first names."

He arrived at St. Cecelia's in Clearwater in 1967 and served there for a dozen years as a pastor and also held a job in administration for the diocese.

Bishop Larkin was well known for quietly helping priests who got in trouble with alcohol or sex.

"I don't feel that we should cover things up," he said. "But I didn't go out of my way to make them known."

He advised young priests to keep up on theology and church history, work hard on their homilies ("That's your chance to reach people"), and most importantly, pray.

"I feel that prayer is very important to every priest," Bishop Larkin said. "If we don't stay close to the Lord in prayer, we're just spinning our wheels."

On Thursday, despite failing health, Bishop Larkin insisted on hosting a dinner in his home for a handful of older priests, said Monsignor Brendan Muldoon, a vicar general for the diocese.

"He couldn't sit at the table," Muldoon said. "He was in a hospital bed, on oxygen. All of the guys went and said hello and wished him farewell. We knew sitting at that table it was going to be a last supper.

"We're glad he's at peace. He's with God and I know that."

Tentative plans call for a public viewing and evening prayer Wednesday at the Cathedral of St. Jude the Apostle, 5815 5th Avenue N, St. Petersburg, and a funeral Mass Thursday, also at the Cathedral. Moss-Feaster Funeral Home is in charge.

[Last modified November 5, 2006, 01:49:10]