Upper Darby priest put up for sainthood

The Rev. William Atkinson would probably laugh at the idea that he could become a saint of the Roman Catholic Church.

The Upper Darby-born priest, who died in 2006 when he was 60, didn't think his life was anything extraordinary.

But the team of caregivers who washed, dressed, and fed Atkinson after he became a quadriplegic while in seminary think differently.

For them, the man who loved a roast beef sandwich and a beer conducted ministry while displaying a kind of inspiring - and otherworldly - acceptance of his situation that friends and family say they couldn't have mustered.

So Atkinson's fellow priests, family, friends, and caregivers have banded together to start a canonization movement for the priest who taught at Monsignor Bonner High School in Drexel Hill for nearly 30 years.

"He was a tremendous witness to the rest of us by both his sense of purpose, his perseverance as well as the full integration into the ordinary aspects of our lives," said the Rev. Michael DiGregorio, current prior provincial of the St. Thomas of Villanova province, of the Order of St. Augustine, Father Atkinson's religious community.

DiGregorio said that Atkinson lived a life of Christian virtue to a heroic degree, the first step in the process toward canonization. DiGregorio believed in the cause so much that he called a representative from Rome to visit the local community and learn more about Atkinson, who already was on the Vatican's radar.

The effort is preliminary, coming before the first of three official stages a candidate must reach before sainthood is declared. DiGregorio said that he has talked with Archbishop Charles J. Chaput about the initiative and that the leader of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia has agreed to support it.

DiGregorio and the Rev. Josef Sciberras, postulator general of the Order of St. Augustine in Rome, are scheduled to visit Chaput before the arrival of Pope Francis later this month and will discuss the issue, DiGregorio said.

The prior provincial was a schoolmate of Atkinson's at St. Mary's Hall, at Villanova University, the province's school of formation. Four years earlier, Atkinson suffered a tragic accident.

The son of a bus driver and homemaker, Atkinson grew up a sports-loving middle child in a household of seven children. The family lived in a three-bedroom rowhouse in Upper Darby.

"He was such a shy kid, we were all surprised when he said he wanted to become a priest," said Mary Connelly Moody, Atkinson's cousin who has collected five bulging binders of memorabilia on Atkinson to be used as part of the canonization effort.

Atkinson was 19 and studying at Good Counsel Novitiate in New Hamburg, N.Y., when he plowed into a tree while tobogganing in 1965.

Critically injured, Atkinson was virtually paralyzed from the neck down and spent more than a year hospitalized and in rehabilitation.

But he never wavered on his desire to become a priest, so the Augustinians and Atkinson's family and friends formed a care team that got him out of bed in the mornings, cleaned, clothed, and fed him, and put him to bed at night.

"Drinking out of a straw on his own was his little bit of independence," Moody said.

Atkinson was ordained in 1974, the first quadriplegic to achieve the designation, associates say. He began teaching theology at Bonner and lived at the school's friary. He served as a chaplain and moderator of the football team. He traveled around the school's hallways in his motorized wheelchair.

Atkinson wrote poetry, loved sports, and never complained about his condition, said Richard Heron, a nurse and Atkinson's childhood friend who helped care for the priest for 35 years.

But in the middle of the night, Atkinson told friends, his faith was sometimes shaken. Yet he handled what some might view as the embarrassment of having someone else take care of his every need with grace, friends said.

"Everybody talks about carrying your cross. He wasn't just carrying it. He was rising from it and found the joy in his life," said the Rev. Robert Hagan, associate athletic director at Villanova, which was founded by the Augustinians in 1843.

Atkinson inspired Hagan to switch jobs. Hagan gave up his career as an attorney to become a priest.

For the last 20 years of Atkinson's life, Stephen McWilliams, a film professor at Villanova, was part of the priest's caregiving team.

Atkinson eventually was moved to the order's infirmary because he was too weak to continue working at the high school. He became depressed, and McWilliams encouraged him to write his story.

"He didn't think he had anything to say. I said, 'How could you not have anything to say?' " said McWilliams, of Havertown.

McWilliams persuaded the priest to talk about his life and record it. The book, Green Bananas: The Wisdom of Father Bill Atkinson, was named after Atkinson's response to a question about whether he would attend a ceremony during which he was to receive an honorary degree.

"I never buy green bananas," Atkinson said, meaning he might not be alive when they ripened. He'd attend the ceremony if he was still breathing.

Atkinson died at 60 of complications from an infection in 2006 before the book was complete. He was surrounded by family and friends so certain of his model Christian life that they cut off locks of his hair so they could serve as relics if he ever became a saint.

"The church needs people that we can hold up as examples of people who live the faith in an extraordinary way," Hagan said. "[Atkinson] certainly is one of those people."