RIP: 10/05/2023 - Lewes, Delaware
Fr. Roman Stadtmueller was born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, on 27 March 1928. After receiving his early education at St. Vincent’s Parish School, he went to high school and junior college at Salvatorian Seminary, St. Nazianz. There he became acquainted with the Salvatorians and felt the call to join them. In 1947, he entered the Society’s Novitiate in Menominee, Michigan, where he made his profession of vows on 8 September 1948. He continued his studies for the priesthood at Divine Saviour Seminary in Lanham, Maryland, and Catholic University of America in DC. He was ordained a priest in the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception on 5 June 1954. Fr. Roman’s first assignment was as a teacher at Jordan Seminary in Menominee, Michigan. In 1961, he answered an invitation from the Society to work in the missions in Africa. He was sent to Tanganyika (now called Tanzania) East Africa, where he ministered as a missionary and pastor, first in the village of Lukuledi, and then in Nandembo. He returned to the States in 1966, but after two years Fr. Roman went back to Tanzania and was assigned as pastor in Makanya. In April 1975, his left leg was crushed in a bad accident which eventually brought him back to the States for surgery and an extensive period of rehabilitation. While he was recovering, he assisted the province by serving as the Assistant Director of Novices. From 1976 to 1979, he was an instructor at the Notre Dame Academy in the Washington DC area. But not to be deterred, he returned to Lukuledi in 1979, where he served for three more years in the parish and also as acting Vicar General of the Diocese of Nachingwea, before coming home a final time. After completing a pastoral internship Fr. Roman served full-time as civilian chaplain at Walter Reed Army Medical Center from 1983 to 1997. He helped at St. Jude’s Parish in Lewes from 1989 until retiring in 2006. Through the years, Fr. Roman remained in relatively good health. Only several hours before his death on 10 May 2023, at the age of 95, he suffered heart failure and was placed in hospice care. He was just a few months away from celebrating his Diamond Jubilee as a Salvatorian.
