FATHER FRANK D. TORRES (1952-2022)
HEBRON – Kind, knowledgeable, generous and fun are descriptions of Father Frank D. Torres repeated by those who worked with him and grew to love him in his 28 years as a Diocese of Gary priest.
Those are the traits they will miss most following the sudden and untimely death of Father Torres, 70, on Nov. 14 at the St. Helen parish he had served as associate pastor since 2016.
His death was announced to his brother priests and diocesan staff early Nov. 15 by Bishop Robert J. McClory, who was notified while attending the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Fall Plenary Assembly in Baltimore. “(Vicar General) Father Chris Stanish was able to anoint and give Father Torres the Apostolic Pardon before he passed,” stated the bishop.
“Father Chris (Stanish), Father Tom (Mischler), his sister Maria and I were able to say good-bye at the hospital,” said Uriel ‘Chino’ Martinez, of Gary, a St. Helen staffer and good friend of Father Torres who met him in the late 1990s while the priest served at Holy Rosary in Gary.
“I was out of work then, so I started volunteering at Holy Rosary, offering to do anything Father Torres needed. I began helping with the church bulletin; he liked it to look good,” recalled Martinez, a graphic artist by trade. “He was also very specific about the worship space in the church. It was very eye-opening when I accompanied him to baptisms, weddings, quinceaneras and funerals. He became like a brother to me.”
Deacon Roberto Mendoza, who worked with Father Torres at St. Edward in Lowell, where he celebrated a Spanish-language Mass each Sunday for the past six years, used the same term to describe his relationship to the Gary native. “He was like my older brother; everybody loved him,” said Deacon Mendoza. “He was a kind man and a special person. If you served Mass with him, you felt like you’d been on a retreat. Spiritually, you felt fulfilled, and that’s something I’m going to miss.
“He had the faith of a child, and he was phenomenal with kids – teaching them, connecting with them, making them smile and laugh,” added the deacon.
Father Mischler, pastor at Holy Spirit in Winfield and administrator for St. Helen and St. Mary in Kouts, recalled Father Torres inviting the Missionaries of Charity to bring their summer campers from Gary “out to the country” to visit St. Helen and St. Edward in Lowell, play outdoors and enjoy a picnic lunch. “He also loved to load up a truck with donated toys and drive them up to St. Mark’s for the kids.”
Pat Hren, a St. Helen parishioner who worked closely with Father Torres, remembers hearing about one recent trip. “He was so excited telling us about delivering toys to Sojourner Truth House in Gary that he made me feel like I had been with him,” she recalled. “He was a wonderful priest – happy, excitable and knowledgeable. He loved celebrations and would come up with ideas, like a taco dinner after the All Souls Day Mass. ‘What about …?’ he would say.”
It was Father Mischler who suggested that Father Torres be assigned to St. Helen in 2016, when St. Mark in Gary, where Father Torres was associate pastor (along with St. Francis Xavier in Lake Station), closed. “I agreed to become the administrator (at St. Helen) and he took on the pastoral duties and assisted me at Holy Spirit, later at St. Mary in Kouts, too,” explained Father Mischler.
“Interestingly, we first met at St. Meinrad Seminary in 1973, when he was a college sophomore and I was a freshman. He and others took me under their wing, but then he took a pause from the seminary a year or two later,” added Father Mischler, who was ordained to the priesthood in 1981. Father Torres returned to the seminary, first at Assumption Seminary in Texas and then at Sacred Heart Seminary in Wisconsin, before being ordained in 1994 at the Cathedral of the Holy Angels back home in Gary.
“When I became pastor at St. Mary of the Lake in Gary in 1998, Father Torres was the administrator at Holy Rosary, so we worked together before he went back to St. Mary in East Chicago for a second stint (in 2003),” said Father Mischler.
Father Rick Holy, too, welcomed Father Torres to south Lake County. “When I was assigned to St. Edward in Lowell (as pastor) in 2016, I was very happy to learn that Father Frank, as part of his assignment, was also going to be part of the St. Edward family, assuming responsibility for the Hispanic Ministry,” recalled Father Holy. “(He had spent) decades of his priestly ministry with Spanish-speaking communities, so I knew that he would be a great blessing to St. Edward.
“It was also special for me because Father Frank was one of the first priests that I got to know. My first summer assignment as a seminarian was at St. Mary in East Chicago with Father Steve Gibson and Father Frank,” added Father Holy. “He was a blessing to me and to St. Edward, and he is already greatly missed.”
Father Torres had many adventures, including his four-year service in the U.S. Navy before originally entering the seminary, and his marathon running in Chicago, New York City and even the prestigious Boston Marathon in the mid-1990s. “He trained by running barefoot in the sand at Miller Beach, and he always liked to visit Boston for Patriots Day even after he stopped running,” noted Father Mischler, who also mentioned Father Torres’ strong support for Notre Dame football. “He was a huge Irish fan.”
Another of Father Torres' passions was church architecture and history, and he enjoyed leading tours of churches not only in Gary, but in the Archdiocese of Chicago and even Rome, Italy. “He made the flight arrangements (to Rome) and planned the pilgrimage itinerary himself,” said Father Mischler. “He also loved to take a car or van full of people to Chicago, or to the north end of our diocese, to visit different parishes and then stop for lunch. He introduced me to Evening Advent Vespers in Chicago. He was very gracious about putting those visits together.”
Karen Yankauskas, director of religious education at St. Helen, accompanied Father Torres to Rome twice. “He was so full of energy and ideas, but also so reverent, with a love of people and the Mass,” she said. “I feel blessed to have spent time with him at church and as a friend.”
“If I had to sum up (his) personality in one word, it would be ‘generosity,’” Father Mikel Uribe in a letter from the Diocese of Alicante in Spain. “It was thanks to him that I had the possibility of spending time in the U.S. … he welcomed me with open arms and an open heart and introduced me to the parish community (in Hebron),” it read. “I always found a good priest friend (on two subsequent U.S. visits and in Rome).”
Noting that Father Torres’ absence “will leave a great emptiness in your community,” Father Uribe added, “I am also certain that when the Risen Lord, in his infinite mercy, welcomes him into eternal blessedness, he will intercede for each and every one of you.”
“Father Frank had a sign up in the sacristy that read: ‘Say each Mass as if it were your first, or your last,’ and he did that,” said Hren. “We loved Father Frank, and we always felt that Father Frank loved being a priest.”