Auxiliary Bishop William Winter Celebrates his 90th Birthday

As he turns 90 today, May 20, retired Pittsburgh auxiliary Bishop William Winter says that his nearly 65 years of ordained priesthood “have all been happy.”

Social distancing for COVID-19 will throw a crimp into the celebration at the diocesan retirement home for priests, where he lives. Normally those with birthdays close together have a party, with everyone gathered in the common room, and choose the menu for that night’s dinner.

Due to the virus – which has infected no one at the home – gatherings are out. The men eat socially distanced meals at two sittings, with the cafeteria sanitized between the two. At last month’s group birthday there were two birthday cakes and two rounds of “Happy Birthday” as the guests of honor were divided between the two dinner shifts.

His biggest complaint about social distancing is that, when he removes his mask to eat “my hearing aids fly off.”

Since his ordination in 1955 he’s never witnessed anything like the COVID-19 quarantine. However, back when everyone lived in fear of polio, a seminary classmate from another diocese contracted the paralyzing disease.

“He recovered but had a limp all of his life. That was a tough one. This is too,” he said.

Bishop Winter is awaiting word on what will happen to the four Confirmations he was scheduled to celebrate this spring.

“I feel bad for the kids, including the First Communion kids. I have a great-grand-niece who is waiting anxiously for her First Communion,” Bishop Winter said.

He hopes to attend that Mass, though he won’t be the celebrant. “I like for the pastor to celebrate it. He’s their shepherd,” he said.

At the retirement home, “I’m just another resident – and I like it that way,” he said. He will let others pick the menu for the birthday dinners. “I tell them that, as long as it’s not liver or sauerkraut, I’ll be happy,” he said.

Ordained a bishop in 1989, he continued to serve as a parish priest, first at St. Philip in Crafton and then at Sacred Heart in Shadyside.

“I just love parish work,” he said.

He believes that young men today will find that same joy and satisfaction if God is calling them to the priesthood.

“The main thing is to pray about it,” he said of anyone who thinks of ordination. “If that is what the Lord asks him to do, then he can’t find a happier life. He needs to put himself in the hands of the Lord and follow wherever the Lord might lead him to.”