Like Santa Claus, Father Jim Taranto covers a lot of ground on Christmas Eve. First he drives 25 miles to Osceola, where he celebrates Mass at St. Catherine Church at 2 p.m. Then he drives 25 miles back to Clinton, where he celebrates Mass at Holy Rosary at 4 p.m. Two hours later, he’s celebrating Mass at St. Bartholomew in Windsor - with the detour, a drive of around 40 minutes.
On Christmas morning, he is back at Holy Rosary, celebrating Mass at 8:30 a.m. While it sounds like a full schedule, serving as priest of the Truman Lake Parish, with its three churches, is one of his lighter assignments.
Father Jim will tell you with a straight face that he is the oldest living priest in the diocese, having been ordained in 1881, a misprint in a publication. He is actually 68, and has been a priest for 42 years. He has no plans to retire.
Where does he get the energy?
“I love God. I love people,” Father Jim said. “I’m here to serve. It gives me energy to help people.”
The shortage of men going into the priesthood means priests have to cover multiple churches in a parish, he said, and are encouraged to continue to serve until they are at least 70 years of age.
Father Jim studied to be a diocesan priest, he said, meaning one who works in the diocese, and is not part of an order. His last parish before Truman Lake was St. Mark in Independence, which had 3,000 families. It took him a week to learn everyone’s name, he said, noting that the church had more people than the city of Clinton.
To accommodate all the parishioners on Christmas Eve, he celebrated Mass at 3 p.m., 5 p.m. and 7 p.m and at midnight while another staff person took two Masses in the parish hall. By the time Father Jim locked up the church and went home to get some rest, it would be 2:30 or 3 a.m., he said.
“I had to get up four hours later to celebrate Mass on Christmas Day,” he said.
Asked how he stayed awake at Midnight Mass at St. Mark, he joked “I didn’t. I told people I was praying.”
From 1987 to 1991, he served four churches — St. Stephen, St. Stanislaus, St. Matthew and Holy Trinity. The phones of all four churches were forwarded to his house at night, he said. When he got calls in the middle of the night from someone asking for assistance, he’d arrange to meet the caller at the church in the morning. Then the phone would ring again and it would be a call from the same person, trying a different church number.
The third time they called, he said, they caught on that they were talking to the same person.
Besides serving his current three churches, he receives requests to return to his former parishes to do funerals. Last week, he was in Raymore to conduct a funeral at St. Bernadette on Wednesday, and the next day, was in Independence conducting a funeral at St. Mark. He’s also served at St. Ann in Independence, Nativity in Independence and Visitation Church on the Kansas City Plaza.
He is entitled to an annual vacation, but hasn’t taken one in 14 years, when his mother died in 2009. His mother’s birthday was on Christmas Day, he said, so his family’s Christmas celebration included cake and ice cream. He grew up in north Kansas City, attended high school at St. John’s Seminary, college at a Benedictine seminary, and graduate school at Kenrick.
He has also served St. Charles Church in north Kansas City, and St. Matthew Church in south Kansas City. The difference between serving at St. Mark and in Clinton — at St. Mark, he had a staff of 12, he said. In Clinton, he’s on his own.
The advantage: staff meetings go so much more smoothly because everybody agrees.“It’s like, okay, we’ll do that,” he said, nodding his head as if conferring with the staff.
His Easter schedule is similar to Christmas Eve, with three services back to back, only they start earlier, at 7 a.m.
And next December, the schedule is even fuller because Christmas Eve falls on a Sunday. That means he’ll be celebrating Sunday morning Mass in Clinton at 8:30 a.m. and in Windsor at 11 a.m., then head out to Osceola in the afternoon for the first of three Christmas Eve services.
In all, he has put 100,000 miles on his car, a Ford Escape, in the past two years, and averages 3,000 miles a month. Since he was assigned to the Truman Lake Parish in July of 2016, he’s put in a lot of miles on the road, but his spirit never flags.
“I just go from one church to the other,” he said. “It’s a self-motivating job.”
That not only includes driving to his assigned churches, but also visiting people in their homes and in the hospital. It’s the part of his vocation that he enjoys the most — walking with people on their faith journeys.
“I’m there in the good times — weddings, anniversaries, birthdays — and the hard times,” he said. “I help them trust in the Lord.”
The bottom line, he said: Jesus loves you, and wants to be a part of your life. He celebrates Mass at Holy Rosary in Clinton, Fourth and Wilson, at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday through Friday, Saturday at 5 p.m. and Sunday at 8:30 a.m. Services at St. Catherine, Hwy. WW, Osceola, are Saturdays at 3 p.m. and at St. Bartholomew, 504 Benton in Windsor, Sundays at 11 a.m.
Everyone is welcome. For more information, go to trumanlakecatholic.com.
