60 Years a Priest
Father Richard Hadel, SJ, has been a priest for 60 years. As a Jesuit, he has served primarily in the St. Louis area and in Belize.
Born in Kansas City, Missouri, he entered the Society of Jesus at age 17 in 1952. Father Hadel completed his first studies at Saint Louis University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, a master’s in Latin and Greek, and a licentiate in philosophy.
He first went to Belize while a Jesuit regent in 1959, when he taught English and Latin at St. John’s College in Belize City. He was ordained a priest in 1965 and earned a licentiate in sacred theology from Saint Louis University in 1967 before entering a doctoral program in anthropology at the University of Texas, Austin.
He returned to Belize City in 1972, teaching at St. John’s College in addition to serving as a mission consultor, prefect of health and admonitor until 1981. During his time in Belize, Fr. Hadel learned the Garifuna language, spoken by Belizeans who are descended from Africans (mostly men) who escaped slavery and intermarried with Carib and Arawak women and eventually settled in Central America. They were among the peoples impacted when the British colonized what is now Belize from the mid-19th century until its independence in 1981. Using his anthropological research, he developed a Garifuna dictionary and translated the Mass, celebrating it for the first time on Christmas Eve in 1970. He recalls, “An elderly woman approached me after Mass to tell me, ‘The words went straight to my heart.’ Her words touched my own heart, and still do.”
Father Hadel returned to the U.S. in 1982 and has been in St. Louis ever since. His first assignment was at White House Retreat, then Saint Louis University’s Fusz Memorial from 1983 to 1986. From 1986 to 2005, he taught English and Spanish and served as the Jesuit superior at the city’s two Jesuit high schools, De Smet Jesuit High School and St. Louis University High School. From 2005 to 2008 he was a sacramental minister at St. Cecelia Catholic Church in south St. Louis, where he served a predominately Hispanic population.
He returned to White House Retreat in 2008 and served there as a retreat and spiritual director until 2015. Father Hadel was assigned to pastoral ministry to his Jesuit brothers, first at the Leo Brown Jesuit Community in St. Louis, and then at the Fusz Pavilion and St. Ignatius Hall Jesuit Community at Garden Villas North. Since 2023, he has been assigned to a ministry of prayer for the Church and the Society of Jesus.
“As I near the end of my life, I’m looking back,” he said in 2022. “I see a thread running through the whole thing: people have loved me, and it’s a reflection of God’s love. I see the work of God in my life like a symphony, and I am very grateful. Gratitude. That’s the theme that runs through my life.”
