More than a Father

By Tanya Connor
The Catholic Free Press

Dad.

Grampy.

Being called those names is a gift the Catholic priest never expected, but cherishes.

Last month Father Joseph A. Marcotte, senior priest at Blessed Sacrament Parish in Worcester, was with Aaron Lee Langlois, who worships and volunteers at St. Joseph Abbey in Spencer and is vice president of hospice and palliative care for VNA Care. Other people were with them.

“I was proud to introduce myself as Aaron’s dad,” Father Marcotte said. “I never keep it a secret, and I love to tell the story.”

“I think it’s good [that] people know this story,” given how the sex abuse scandal took a toll on good priests, Mr. Langlois said. “As a priest, he’s done great work in his ministry,” but he’s also done great work as a dad, father-in-law and grandfather.
  “We’ve put in light fixtures, outlets, garage door openers … all the things a father and son do together,” said Mr. Langlois, 46.

“I became Aaron’s dad long before I became his father,” added the 80-year-old priest.

He did that by befriending the fatherless boy, and legally adopting him after he grew up.
Mr. Langlois said he lived with his mother, who suffered from addiction, until he was about 8. Then he briefly lived across the street from her above a bar room in Webster. There wasn’t space for him in the apartment shared by his 3-year-old sister, his mother and her abusive boyfriend, who wasn’t his father.

“My maternal aunt and her husband, on Halloween, ‘kidnapped’ me,” Mr. Langlois recalled. “I went trick-or-treating and never went home. … They were members of St. Louis,” the Webster parish Father Marcotte pastored from 1984 to 2012, and their children attended St. Louis Elementary School.

His aunt and uncle asked Father Marcotte for help to enroll him there.

“I said, ‘Of course, send him, don’t worry about tuition,’ which pastors could do in those days,” recalled Father Marcotte.

Mr. Langlois said his fourth-grade teacher at St. Louis later adopted his sister.

“I was trying to get my sister adopted,” he said, “because I was living with my aunt and uncle, and then my grandmother,” who became his legal guardian.

In 1985, the priest he called Father Marcotte or Father Joe baptized him.

“I looked up to him as a role model, a trusted person, a counselor, a teacher – I think of Joseph to Jesus,” Mr. Langlois said.

“I’d ... serve Mass in the morning and then go to the rectory and [have] a cup of orange juice, then go over to the school,” he said.

Father Marcotte said that when Mr. Langlois gave him the “Dad” pin after his Eagle Scout ceremony in 1994 “that was a pivotal point ... It grabbed my heart.”

Mr. Langlois said he went to St. Peter-Marian Central Catholic High School with an Adopt-A-Student scholarship, then discerned a vocation at Father James Fitton House for Priestly Formation in Leicester. Leaving Fitton House, Mr. Langlois earned his bachelor’s in social work from Anna Maria College in Paxton and his associate’s in nursing from Becker College in Worcester.

He also took in his 11-year-old brother. The love and support Mr. Langlois’ girlfriend, Jill Pownall, gave the boy showed him “she was the one” to marry.

Father Marcotte said he was touched that Mr. Langlois took him to the jeweler to show him the engagement ring. He officiated at their wedding at St. Louis in 2004.

“He was there when Jackson was born at St. Vincent’s [Hospital], held him, took him to Coney Island,” Mr. Langlois said of their first child’s birth and interaction with the priest. “We’ve had many father-son conversations” at that Worcester restaurant.

In 2006 the couple moved to Virginia, where Mrs. Langlois’ parents lived, and had their second child, Hannah, there.

In the spring of 2008 Mr. Langlois called Father Marcotte saying, “The adoption should go forward.” He wanted the priest to adopt him.

Learning of someone else adopted as an adult, they’d discussed this possibility, but hadn’t pursued it, Father Marcotte said. This time, they signed the required papers at Worcester Probate & Family Court.

“It is time for what has been in the heart for many years to become a legal reality,” Father Marcotte wrote in a letter to the court.

“And July 2 [2008] I was born” as an adoptee, said Mr. Langlois, who kept his birth name. His original birth certificate has his mother’s name, but not his father’s. (He said he was told his mother omitted it because she was upset with his father for leaving her. The man he thinks was his biological father died in 1979.)

Mr. Langlois’ new birth certificate has his adoptive father’s name, but not his mother’s; adoptions are considered a fresh start, he said.

Unsuccessful in selling their house in Oakham, the Langlois had just moved back to Massachusetts, where they had their third child, Lucy.

Father Marcotte is “Grampy” to them, all teenagers now, taking them out on their birthdays, present for their graduations, celebrating holidays with them.

“This is my family,” he said, adding that he is an only child with cousins.

Mr. Langlois said he brought members of both their families together at his house last August for Father Marcotte’s 80th birthday.

“Visits to your home are precious to me,” the priest wrote in one of his weekly emails to his son.

Mr. Langlois said Father Marcotte wrote, “I am your father because I love you” even before the adoption, then started signing the emails, “Love, Dad.”

“It’s just a gift I never expected to have – someone – calling me ‘Dad,’ three kids calling me ‘Grampy,’” the priest said. “I’m very grateful.”

“There was something greater that God had in mind for both of us ... coming together, finding each other,” Mr. Langlois said. “And now ... my kids have a Grampy and he has grandchildren.”