By Lauren FitzPatrick
Staff writer
You could call him Father Al.
It’s the name the Chicago-born man preferred; a name which encompassed the private and professional parts of his spiritual life, and pithily bridged his baptismal name, Alfred, and Aloysius, the name he chose for his new life in the priesthood.
Father Al: It was as honest and subtle as he was in his faith-filled life.
“He was not a gadabout type; he didn’t wear his religion on his sleeve,” his brother Edward Sieracki said. “It was a personal type of religion.”
Sieracki didn’t say a whole lot about his brother; he didn’t have to.
“He was involved so much in his lay ministry — he traveled around the country — I think people knew him,” Sieracki said.
Father Al, the Rev. Aloysius Sieracki, died Feb. 17 at age 75.
He was born on Chicago’s South Side on Nov. 5., 1929, the eighth of 11 children — seven boys and four girls.
The Sieracki brood were raised by very religious parents in the parish of St. Mary Magdalene at 84th and South Marquette, and graduated from the parish grammar school.
The Rev. Sieracki went to Mount Carmel High School, but he had to pay his own way by working. Tuition for 11 children proved to be too much for his parents, Sieracki said.
He once told colleagues he regretted that working made him “unable to devote his full time to the experience.” But he must have found time to study because his academic excellence led him to the Illinois Institute of Technology.
He majored in chemical engineering but was immediately drafted into the Army’s chemical division for two years during the Korean War. He already was considering the priesthood though, and while working at an Army arsenal in Arkansas, he studied Latin through a Knights of Columbus home study course. The language used to be an entry requirement for the Carmelites, whom he joined in 1953.
He took the name Aloysius, presumably after St. Aloysius Gonzaga, at a time when priests as well as nuns were encouraged to take religious names.
While the Rev. Sieracki had always been a good Catholic like his parents, his decision to become a priest shocked his family.
“We were very surprised,” Sieracki said. “Here the family is figuring, well, in 1954 or ’55, when he got out of the service, (that) a chemical engineer with two years of experience in the chemical division could write a pretty good ticket with a company.”
The Rev. Sieracki would continue to use the science he had mastered, but in the form of chemistry and calculus classes he taught at his alma mater, and in master’s classes in math he took at the University of Notre Dame. He then went on to teach math at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wis.
After 14 years of teaching, the Rev. Sieracki spent some time at an Arizona parish and then returned to Illinois to help thousands of Third Order Carmelites, the lay people who keep a religious life according to Carmelite principles and values. He eventually directed 200 North American lay Carmelite communities, until retiring at the very end of 1999 with a successful New Year’s Eve liver transplant.
Even after retirement, the Rev. Sieracki kept active. He said Mass at St. Alphonsus Parish in Lemont, and he liked to make pilgrimages to shrines and write poetry, which he collected and published in two volumes.
“He wrote kind of deep poetry,” his brother said. “It was not simple poetry — it had a spiritual slant to it.”
Sounds like the man who inspired it.
Arrangements are by Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, (630) 852-3303.
Visitation is scheduled Sunday between 4 and 8 p.m. at the National Shrine of St. Therese, 8501 Bailey Road in Darien.
Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated Monday at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, 8404 Cass Ave. in Darien, followed by interment at Mount Olivet Cemetery.
The Rev. Sieracki is also survived by brothers Norbert, Thomas and Joseph; one sister, Barbara; and many nieces, nephews and friends.
Memorial gifts in the Rev. Siericki’s name may be made to the Order of Carmelites, 1313 Frontage Road, Darien, IL 60561, or The Loyola University Medical Center Liver Transplant Fund No. 263, 2160 S. First Ave., Maywood, IL 60153.
