DETROIT — For 38 years, Bro. Leo Wollenweber, OFM Cap., served the sainthood cause of Ven. Solanus Casey, the Capuchin friar whose prayers in life and death many believe brought remarkable healings.
As vice postulator of Fr. Solanus’ cause for 38 years, he headed up the American effort to see the famous friar beatified and canonized (the postulator is a Rome-based Capuchin).
But when Bro. Wollenweber spoke or wrote about Fr. Solanus, he not only conveyed the stories others told — about his saintliness and what they believed had been the efficacy of his intercessory prayers — but was also able to relate his own firsthand experiences.
Bro. Wollenweber died Oct. 5. He was 95, and the oldest member of his Capuchin province.
By 1941, Fr. Solanus was receiving so many visitors and so much mail that the Capuchins of St. Bonaventure Monastery in Detroit assigned one of the younger friars to help him with his correspondence.
Bro. Leo Wollenweber served, in effect, as Fr. Solanus’ secretary for about five years.
Colleen Crane, public relations coordinator for the Capuchin Province of St. Joseph, said Monday the two were undoubtedly now reunited.
“The comment I’m hearing from most people since his death is, ‘Imagine what a joyful reunion Bro. Leo must have had with Fr. Solanus in heaven!’”
Bro. Richard Merling, OFM Cap., who worked with Bro. Wollenweber for nearly four decades, called him “a very delightful person to be around.”
His interest in art extended to painting or sculpting, mostly religious subjects or scenes from nature, Bro. Merling said. One of his woodcarvings was of a head of St. Francis, and some of his work can be seen at the Capuchin Retreat in Macomb County’s Washington Township.
Mary Comfort, who was Bro. Wollenweber’s secretary in the Fr. Solanus Guild office the past eight years, said, “Bro. Leo was always very patient with people,” and constantly eased their anxieties, saying, “It’s OK, God understands, God will provide.”
Fr. John Celichowski, the provincial minister, said, “Bro. Leo was a virtual encyclopedia on the history of the city, the Church, and the friars. It was not unusual for friars who were many decades his junior to be stumped during a dinner conversation about something that happened 40 or 50 years ago, and turn to him and say, ‘Hey Leo, do you remember….?’ He would pause for a moment and then say, ‘Oh yes, it was….’ and be able to recite the detail, chapter and verse!”
Bro. Merling said Bro. Wollenweber’s health had been “really going down over the past five to six weeks, with pain and difficulty getting around.”
Although he had said several years ago he would never retire until Fr. Solanus was beatified, Bro. Merling said his fellow friar was ready to accept that the end was near: “He was very prayerful through it all, and just left things in the hands of the Lord.”
Leo Wollenweber was born Sept. 6, 1917, in Detroit to Edward and Selina (Stauch) Wollenweber. The family moved to St. Martin of Tours Parish on the city’s lower east side, and he attended the parish’s grade school and high schools, graduating in 1935.
After high school, he got a job with an advertising studio in downtown Detroit. During the course of his reading about art and art history, he came upon a mention of what an important influence St. Francis of Assisi had been on the artists of the medieval period.
That led him to want to learn more about the life of St. Francis, and eventually to contact the Capuchins.
Fr. Solanus enrolled him in the Capuchins’ Seraphic Mass Association in 1938; he was invested in the Capuchin Order on May 17, 1940, and became perpetually professed May 18, 1944.
Besides serving, like Fr. Solanus, as St. Bonaventure Monastery’s porter (doorkeeper and welcome), and as Fr. Solanus’ secretary, Bro. Wollenweber also served for many years as the congregation’s assistant novice master and later on the staff of the Capuchin Retreat, before taking up his duties in 1974 as vice procurator for Fr. Solanus’ cause.
Bro. Wollenweber’s work on behalf of Fr. Solanus’ cause took him to Rome to deliver information that could possibly persuade the Holy See to credit Fr. Solanus’ intervention with a miraculous healing, but to date no claim of a miracle has been accepted.
Bro. Wollenweber is survived by a sister, Mary Lou Lietzau of Houston; and many nephews and nieces. A funeral Mass was celebrated Oct. 9 in the St. Bonaventure Monastery Chapel in Detroit.
Memorials to Capuchin Province of St. Joseph, 1820 Mount Elliott Ave., Detroit 48207.
