About Father Gene
Hi, I'm Father Gene Contadino!
I was born in Cincinnati, Ohio into an Italian-Catholic family, the second of four; two younger brothers and an older sister. My parents valued Catholic education, and that simple fact has made all the difference in my life. After a twelve-year stint in Catholic schools, I entered the Society of Mary at 18, and began what has turned out to be an amazing adventure lived in God’s saving grace.
After undergraduate work at Dayton and during the next twelve years, in Cleveland and Dayton, Ohio, I taught high school English and Religion and learned about moderating a newspaper, guiding a sodality cell, and trying to spark a religious vocation in teenage males. I was also tagged to be an athletic chaplain, at which I struggled to get the knack. These years were wrapped around four years of seminary training in Switzerland and St. Louis.
After undergraduate work at Dayton and during the next twelve years, in Cleveland and Dayton, Ohio, I taught high school English and Religion and learned about moderating a newspaper, guiding a sodality cell, and trying to spark a religious vocation in teenage males. I was also tagged to be an athletic chaplain, at which I struggled to get the knack. These years were wrapped around four years of seminary training in Switzerland and St. Louis.
In the Fall of 1977, I was asked to minister in a parish which, at that time, was forging a path as an intentional community. The parish was administered by lay men and women, and I was hired as the spiritual leader. This was a real learning experience for me, and was peppered with the bumps and bruises, graces and celebrations that helped me grow up and moved me from ministry in the teenage world to serving in the adult world.
After six years in the parish, my superior asked me to take a position as minister to faculty and staff at the University of Dayton, where I spent the next twenty-six years. My first unplanned job at the university was to minister to the men’s basketball team, which I did for twelve years. Then came a slew of positions, beginning with nine years as Rector followed by some years doing fund raising and student recruitment. I believe I had more different positions at the university. I moved when the need arose, and I enjoyed every one of them.
In 2010, when I was about to turn 70 and thinking of retiring, a phone call and another request from a superior found me saying yes to take over an urban parish in Cincinnati, ironically on the same property where I went to high school. Amazing? Beyond my wildest imagination!
Ten years at St. Francis deSales was icing on the cake for me. I could not have envisioned a more thriving and exciting parish community. Though we had all the challenges of an urban parish and school, we had the constant and generous support of parishioners and the stick-to-it-tive-ness of a caring and committed faculty. Most of our students were from homes were below the poverty level. While our students were 99% black, our faculty was 99% white, and no one seemed to mind. Of course, it helped to have a school secretary who was a grandmother with a huge embrace and a keen eye for discipline that kept the students on their toes. Were it not for state vouchers, the Catholic Inner-City Education Fund, and the generosity of so many of our parish, the school could easily have folded. But it did not! One important fact about our parish is that we included 800+ registered families from seventy-five different zip codes in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky.
It is tough to end this story because I am not at the end yet. I reached my 80th birthday in 2020 and asked to retire from full time ministry. I had plans, but COVID has arrived and so we all adjust. I know that there is more to life than working every day and one day being wheeled into church in a casket. I am doing my best to find how to be rewired in this new phase of my life.
My position at the Marianist Mission is helping me respond to the challenge of finding an appropriate involvement in retirement. The staff are helpful, and even fun as I learn to wend my way in this new venture. The podcasts keep me focused on the issues of our day, and the Midnet Media team makes our productions look so very professional. They are true experts, who know how to push for excellence while listening to voices of our day. Throughout my career, I have never worked alone but have been surrounded by a team of support and challenge. That is where I am now…looking and listening. What is next?
We hope these videos change your life in some way.