Fr. Felix Petrovsky

Fr. Felix Rudolph Petrovsky, O.F.M. Cap., 94, senior friar of the Capuchin Province of St. Conrad, died at Via Christi Village, Hays Kansas, on Dec. 10, 2024. He had been a professed member of the Capuchin Franciscan Order for 74 years, and a Catholic priest for 69 years.

Son of the late Rudolph P. and Marie Gertrude (Erkens) Petrovsky of Ford City, Pa., Rudolph Petrovsky was born there on May 23, 1930.

The priesthood was a well-known vocation in Rudolph’s family. Fr. Benedict Erkens and Fr. William Erkens of the diocese of Pittsburgh were brothers of his grandmother, Fr. Werner Erkens of the German archdiocese of Cologne was his mother’s great uncle, and his cousin Fr. James F. Petrovsky is in the Diocese of Greensburg. And in 1940, Rudolph told a grade school teacher he wanted to be “a priest who takes care of the boys who want to be priests.”

After attending St. Mary’s Grade School in Ford City, Rudolph himself began studies for the priesthood at St. Fidelis High School Seminary in Herman, Pa., in 1943. He continued college studies at Herman, graduating as a bachelor of philosophy in 1952.

Meanwhile, he entered the Capuchin Order at St. Conrad’s Friary in Annapolis, Md., in 1949 and, after a year’s novitiate training, during which he received the new name Felix, he professed vows in the Order on July 14, 1950.

Felix’s theological training for the priesthood continued at Capuchin College in Washington, D.C., and he was ordained a priest by Bishop John M. McNamara in the crypt church of the then still-under-construction National Basilica of the Immaculate Conception on June 4, 1955.

After an additional year of theological studies at Capuchin College, Father took a year of graduate studies in math and science at Washington’s Catholic University of America in preparation for a teaching assignment at St. Joseph Military Academy in Hays, Kans. He joined the school in 1957 as its prefect of discipline and teacher of math and science, assignments he held for the next 13 years.

Meanwhile he continued studies in education, math and science and English at Ft. Hays State College, assisted priests in numerous western Kansas parishes, and from 1968 onward was part time associate pastor at St. Mary’s Church in Ellis, Kans.

Felix’s priestly ministry became many-faceted in 1970. When the military academy merged with a high school seminary under the new name Thomas More Prep, Felix left academia and spent the rest of his life mainly in pastoral ministry and service to the Third Order of St. Francis which at the time was transformed by Pope St. Paul VI into the Secular Franciscan Order, and also in many other apostolates.

For 21 years (1970-78 and 1983-96), Felix was either pastor or associate pastor of Capuchin-staffed Kansas churches in Hays, Victoria, Walker, Antonino, Schoenchen, and Lawrence. During the 1976

Centenary of the Volga Germans in Ellis and Rush Counties, he helped compile and edited Towers of Faith and Courage, a 272-page pictorial history of parishes in Victoria, Walker and Emmeram.

Felix began serving as director of the Franciscan Third Order in Victoria in 1970, and in 1980, when the Order had begun to direct itself, he became the province’s spiritual assistant to the Secular Franciscan Order and served as such till 1983 and again from 1995 till he suffered a stroke in 2011. During most of those same years he was also spiritual assistant to the Our Lady of the Mountains OFS regional fraternity, and spiritual assistant at various times to local fraternities in Victoria, Hays, Atwood, Lawrence, Overland Park, Liberal, all in Kansas, and Rapid City, S.Dak. After his stroke he remained a consultant to the Order.

Much of Father’s priesthood was spent in the confessional. For 19 years it was his principle assignment. He directed the Alverne Chapel in St. Louis 1978-83, where the sacrament of reconciliation was offered many hours each weekday. Later, 1996-2007, he and a few other friars offered an itinerant Reconciliation Ministry to numerous churches in the Denver archdiocese, and from 2008 till 2011 he was at the Capuchin confessional ministry at the Citadel Mall in Colorado Springs.

Viewing the rest of Father’s curriculum vitae brings to mind the Energizer Bunny. The number of chaplaincies and boards on which he served was truly of record proportions.

He served on the Capuchin provincial council 1992-95, and for 18 years was either guardian or vicar at local fraternities. For the Salina diocese he was on its presbyteral council, pastoral council, marriage tribunal, liturgical commission, due process board, schools commission, and community appeals committee. He was state and local chaplain of many Daughters of Isabelle councils and chaplain of many Knights of Columbus councils, a team priest for Engaged Encounter, board member of the Mary Elizabeth Maternity Home, Hays; president of the Hays Community Assistance Center, member of the Hays Medical Center Bio-Ethics Committee and the Ellis County Committee on Alcoholism, and the list goes on.

Fr. Felix was predeceased by his parents, Rudolph and Marie Petrovsky, his sister, Mary Catherine Dinga, and nephew, Frank Dinga, Jr. He is survived by five nieces: Mary Albers, Joan Lane, Madonna Reider, Loretta Kiedrowski, Yvonne Horner, their 18 children and 28 grandchildren, and many cousins and their families.

Services for Father will be in the Victoria Basilica of St. Fidelis: Visitation, Sun. evening, Dec. 15th, 5-8 p.m. with vigil service & rosary at 6:30 p.m.; Visitation, Mon., morning Dec. 16th, 9-10 a.m.; Mass 10 a.m. Burial will follow in the Friars’ Plot in the parish cemetery.

Memorials are suggested to the Capuchin Province of Mid-America, Inc., 3613 Wyandot St., Denver CO 80211. 

Services are in the care of Cline’s-Keithley Mortuary, Victoria. Condolences can be emailed to clineschapels@gmail.com or left by guestbook at www.keithleyfuneralchapels.com