By Celine Klosterman
CENTERVILLE – A priest now serving as a hospital chaplain will take over as pastor of St. Mary Parish on July 1 after current pastor Father Dennis Schaab, C.PP.S, leaves because of health concerns.
Father Bill Hubmann, C.PP.S, 60, has been ministering at St. Mary of Nazareth Hospital in Chicago since 2007. He said he has been a hospital chaplain, most often in intensive care units, for 20 of his 33 years as a priest. His service has included developing AIDS ministry, hospital and community education programs and a suicide survivors support group.
He also has served at parishes in North Dakota, Missouri, Wisconsin and Texas; been an adjunct professor for Our Lady of the Lake Seminary in Syracuse, Ind.; and helped prepare deacon candidates for hospital-related ministry. From 1988-93, he was a chaplain in the Army National Guard.
Growing up as one of nine children in West Allis, Wis., he announced in second grade that he’d like to become a priest. At an archdiocesan Vocation Day four years later, the Missionaries of the Precious Blood invited him to someday join them. He left home to do so in 1966, after finishing eighth grade.
Fr. Hubmann was ordained a priest June 9, 1979. He earned a B.A. in philosophy from Rockhurst University in Kansas City, Mo., and an M. Div. from St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minn.
A lover of music, he sings and plays the mandolin, dulcimer, bowed psaltery and keyboard. Other hobbies include cooking, bread baking, vestment design and sewing, hunting, fishing, photography and spending time with his dachshund, Wolfgang.
He has worked with architects to design two churches and helped renovate four, he said. “More than anything, I love a good laugh.”
St. Damian of Molokai, St. Francis of Assisi, Blessed Pope John XXIII, St. Teresa of Avila and St. Catherine of Siena inspire Fr. Hubmann, the priest said.
In Centerville he will succeed Fr. Schaab, who has been at St. Mary’s since 2008. “I am not ready to leave, but heart and cancer say otherwise,” Fr. Schaab said. “I will become the ‘old priest’ in residence at Sacred Heart/St. Patrick in Sedalia, Mo.”
“I am very grateful to all the good people of St. Mary’s family, to God and for the medical care and all the prayers that I have received in my four years here. The Davenport Diocese has a good bishop and a good newspaper, and I have enjoyed the priests.”
