Fr. Joseph Gurdak, who devoted his life to serving the peoples of Central America both in their homelands and here in the northeast U.S., died on May 6 in New York City. He was 81.
Father Joe was praised for keeping his eye on the poor, the hungry, and the persecuted. “The Samaritan pays attention to the man who was robbed and beaten and left on the side of the road to die,” said Fr. Jack Rathschmidt, who preached at Father Joe’s funeral at Sacred Heart Church, Yonkers, N.Y., on May 10. “That’s like God. That’s why we’re here. That’s why Joe became a friar and a priest. Because he knew through his prayer and through his service of God’s neediest that God would always accompany him. But even when he failed to respond to those most in need the way he wanted to, he knew that God would guide him because he paid attention—the rarest and purest form of generosity.”
Our brother was born in Yonkers, N.Y., on Aug. 12, 1943, to Joseph R. Gurdak and Catherine Farrell and grew up with the friars at Sacred Heart Parish. He entered the novitiate on Aug. 31, 1962, professed his perpetual vows on Sept. 1, 1966, and was ordained to the priesthood on Sept. 12, 1970.
Father Joe spent 15 years in Central America, mainly in Honduras, from 1975 to 1981 and again from 1983 to 1994. He served in parochial ministry as a pastor and in formation as a director of novices. For one term, from 1985 to 1988, he was the vice provincial minister of what is today the Custody of Our Lady of Hope (El Salvador-Guatemala-Honduras). (He is standing second from left in the photo at right.)
He returned permanently to the United States in 1994. After four years at Holy Spirit Church in Lake Wales, Fla., he moved to Our Lady of Sorrows in New York City, where he served as pastor until 2005. In 2006 he became the pastor and guardian at St. Anne-St. Augustin Parish and Friary in Manchester, N.H., a multicultural, multi-ethnic congregation that ministers to the city’s African, Latino, and Vietnamese communities. Father Joe was a tireless defender of Manchester’s immigrant and refugee population, and he built bridges between the Irish and French-Canadian Catholics who were the historic core of the parish and present-day immigrants.
“Father Joe was more [to me] than my biological father. We had an extraordinary friendship that will last into eternity,” said Mario Morales, a Honduran-American whose family was helped by him.
In 2017, Father Joe fell into a coma while attending a retreat with his Capuchin brothers. He spent the next six months in recuperation before returning to St. Anne-St. Augustin. Relieved of his pastoral duties, he moved to Our Lady of Sorrows in May 2020 and then to St. Clare Friary in Yonkers that November. He remained there until moving into hospice care a month before his death. He is survived by a sister, Sr. Carole Gurdak of the Congregation of Sisters of St. Agnes, Fond du Lac, Wis., and other relatives.