✝ BRUCE CLANTON SDS
RIP: 22/05/2025 - Racine, WI, USA
He was 80 years old and had been professed for 58 years.
Father Bruce James Clanton was born in Tacoma, Washington, the first of three boys in the family. The family made their home in northern California. After graduating from El Camino High School, he spent a year in St. Nazianz, Wisconsin, to prepare for college seminary studies. He then entered the Novitiate in Colfax, Iowa, and made his profession of vows on September 8, 1966. After four years at Mount St. Paul College in Waukesha, Wisconsin, he spent four “Apostolic Years” teaching – one year at Francis Jordan High School in Milwaukee, and three years at JFK Prep in St. Nazianz. He completed his seminary studies at St. Francis Seminary in Milwaukee and was ordained a priest on April 1, 1978.
Fr. Bruce spent two years in parish ministry in Milwaukee area churches. For five years he was Campus Minister at St. Catherine’s High School in Racine, and there he developed a love for the city, its people and cultures. He opened programs that served the Latino teens, and he became like a father figure to many young people. He visited public schools with his reading programs and spread the Gospel through his actions. He loved the poor and forgotten, real peace, deep thinkers, and God’s creation. In contrast, he placed little value on money, petty rules, or narrow minds. He also published several collections of stories and wrote articles for national youth and liturgy magazines over the years. His free and unstructured approach to life and ministry – while often frustrating to the leaders of organizations and groups – was the best way he found to reach out and care for those who were already outside the margins and borders of societal and institutional norms.
For Fr. Bruce, it was living “the life of the Gospel that meets people where they are” and not where someone else might want them to be. That approach endeared him to so many people over the years. He wasn’t afraid to minister in the roughest neighborhoods where others might hesitate for fear of their safety. He marched with people in their picket lines; he wrote public letters calling for justice and equality for the marginalized; he stood with those whose lives were most affected by the violence and death they experienced each day in the city, and he comforted them with the unafraid love of Jesus. In the last couple years of his life, bouts with cancer and its treatments and surgeries, a weakened heart muscle, and decreased mobility slowed down Fr. Bruce’s life considerably. Through it all he was supported by friends and community members. He died on May 22, 2025, at the age of 80, with 58 years in religious vows, and 47 years of priesthood.
