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Originally from Milwaukee, Fr. Leonard has ministered in many of the SCJs' locations, including six years in South Africa. He is now retired and lives Milwaukee.
Fr. Leonard Tadyszak, SCJ, learned of the Priests of the Sacred Heart through an advertisement in a religious magazine. "It was so small, I could barely see it," he said of the ad. "But I felt like I was called to serve the Sacred Heart, so I contacted them."
Coming from a poor family in Milwaukee's central city, Fr. Tadyszak was chopping logs in northern Wisconsin with the CCCs (Civilian Conservation Corps - a program that put young men to work during the depression) when he started to think about a vocation.
"I just wrote and told them I wanted to join," he said. At 19, he was considered a "PG-" or post-graduate student so he was placed in an intensive two-year Latin program at Divine Heart Seminary in Donaldson, IN. After making his first profession in 1944, he did his philosophy and theology studies at Sacred Heart Monastery in Hates Comers. In 1951, he was ordained.
His first assignment after ordination was back where he started - at Divine Heart Seminary as a Latin teacher. "They needed teachers, so that's where we (the newly ordained) went," said Fr. Tadyszak.
Was he a little nervous?
"Well, yes," he said with little hesitation. "I didn't know Latin all that well myself, since I only had those two years at Donaldson and a little later on. But I was usually about two days ahead of the class preparing, so I could figure out what they were going to ask. After seven years, I started to know it pretty well." Fr. Tadyszak was responsible for up to 80 freshman.
After almost 10 years of teaching, he headed to South Africa, where he was a missionary for six years. Returning to the States, he was again a teacher in the province's seminaries, and later did pastoral work.
Retired, Fr. Tadyszak is a member of the Sacred Heart community in Pinellas Parit, Florida. He continues to enjoy golf and gardening.
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