Years in ministry go by quickly

By Tanya Connor
The Catholic Free Press 

“I don’t know where the time went,” says Father William F. Sanders, pastor of St. Louis Parish in Webster, about his years as a priest. Many of those years he was involved in education, especially at Catholic schools.  
On July 1 he retires. But not because he wants to. 
“It’s my health,” he explains. “I said to the people, ‘I feel like I’m cheating you.’” He can no longer do what he feels he should do, since he’s got arthritis and heart issues, gets tired and needs to rest more. 
“That’s just not the style I’m used to,” he maintains. 
He’s had his active days. 
He recalls March 4, 1977, his first night as chaplain of the Fitchburg Fire Department, when he was associate pastor of St. Bernard Parish there. Firefighter John T. Cetrino was killed in the line of duty and other firefighters were seriously injured. 
“You don’t forget something like that,” Father Sanders muses. 
Part of his ministry was informing the firefighter’s 10-year-old, John L. Cetrino, of his father’s death.
“When Father Bill Sanders told me my father died, I made them take me to the fire scene,” Mr. Cetrino recalled years later in a Telegram & Gazette story. The story – about the Dec. 3, 1999, Worcester Cold Storage and Warehouse Co. fire that killed six firefighters – also looked back at other deadly fires. By 1999 Mr. Cetrino had joined the Boston Fire Department and was one of many firefighters working at the scene of the Cold Storage fire.
Father Sanders also ended up helping during that tragedy.  
“I had been chaplain for a couple of years” for the Worcester Fire Department, which wanted more than one chaplain, he says. Long-time chaplain Father Peter J. Scanlon, on leave  because of knee surgery, had given Father Sanders’ name as an emergency backup, but came to the scene of that fire anyway. 
As outreach plans were being formed “I did say, ‘You’re welcome to come to St. Stephen’s,’” recalls Father Sanders, who was then pastor of that Worcester parish. The families of the firefighters killed were taken to St. Stephen Elementary School, which provided private space for grief counseling in its classrooms, he says. 
Father Sanders often served at parishes with a school, St. Stephen’s among them.  
Born on Oct. 22, 1949, the son of William R. and Julia A. (Vilkas) Sanders, he was ordained on May 3, 1975, and assigned to St. Bernard Parish in Fitchburg. He also taught religion at St. Bernard Elementary School there, he says. In 1980 he was assigned to St. Bernard Central Catholic High School, where he taught religion.
In 1981 he was named associate pastor of St. Mary Parish in Shrewsbury. Among other things, he was founding athletic director for the parish’s school, started the school teams, and coached girls’ basketball, he says. 
In 1984 he was transferred to Our Lady of the Angels Parish in Worcester, which also has a school. 
The next year he became part-time associate pastor of St. Andrew the Apostle Parish in Worcester, and diocesan director of the permanent diaconate program, which involved education of adults. He directed the program for 10 years, he says, even after becoming pastor, in 1987, of St. Stephen’s, his home parish. He’d attended St. Stephen’s grammar and high schools as a youth. He oversaw the elementary school when he became pastor there. 
In 2020, when Father Sanders told St. Stephen’s students he was leaving to become pastor of Our Lady of the Rosary Parish in Worcester, their repeated question was, “Who will give out report cards?”
Each quarter, for 15 years, he’d made a point of distributing report cards to each student in each class, he told The Catholic Free Press at the time. “It was important to me; I disrupted vacations to come back for that,” he said. That helped him see which students were doing well and who could use additional help. 
He also hand-delivered faculty paychecks. 
“I wasn’t spying, but it got me into the building at different times of the day,” he was quoted as saying. “It was just another way of seeing what was going on.” 
Although Our Lady of the Rosary did not have a school “they used to send me out” to teach faculty working on their certification to teach religion in elementary schools, he says. 
In 2012 Father Sanders was sent to yet another parish with a school – his present assignment, St. Louis in Webster. In 2016 St. Louis Elementary and St. Anne Elementary in Webster were merged to form All Saints Academy. 
Father Sanders says he very much enjoyed working in education. 
“It kept me on my toes, staying abreast of developments in Church and theology and education,” he explains. 
Did he like working with children? 
“Absolutely!” 
But he doesn’t expect to continue that work in retirement, as he moves to Southgate in Shrewsbury.