After 60 years of service in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tucson, the Rev. Gilbert Padilla died last week.
Padilla, 86, died Nov. 5, according to the diocese.
Padilla nephew Tim Reckart said a leg infection hospitalized Padilla and then worsened.
“It was less than a week,” Reckart, 59, said. “He was in great health.”
Padilla, who was ordained in 1955 at Ss. Peter and Paul Parish, 1946 E. Lee St., served in Tucson, Tempe, Nogales, Avondale, Willcox, Bisbee and Mammoth, the diocese said.
“He was a very spiritual person who had a great love for God and the church,” said Padilla’s aunt, Sister Corina Padilla of the Dominican Sisters of Peace. “To him, all people were important.”
The Rev. Padilla was the son of Sister Padilla’s oldest brother and was born in Morenci, Arizona to Joseph C. Padilla and Sophia Doak. With 26 years between the sister and her brother, she is only 10 months older than her nephew.
“He always used to tease me that he would catch up with me,” said Sister Padilla, 86.
Reckart described the priest as a “witty and tender man.”
“He had these lines that were so funny,” Reckart said. “As he would leave the house after dinner, he would say, ‘I have had a good time, but this wasn’t it.’”
During football season, Reckart and his uncle saw each other weekly to watch the games. Padilla rooted for the University of Arizona — until the UA played Notre Dame.
“He was passionate about his prayer, that’s number one, and he spent hours a day in prayer,” said Monsignor Robert Fuller, the pastor at St. Frances Cabrini Parish, 3201 E. Presidio Road.
“He was also very passionate about Notre Dame football, and opera.”
Fuller met Padilla the summer he graduated from Tucson High School in 1948. Padilla, also a Tucson High grad, was a year ahead and already in seminary.
“We have done everything together,” Fuller, 85, said. “Even when he was ordained, his first assignment was in Tempe, and a year later my first assignment was in Mesa, so we took our days off together. We took vacation and retreats together. We continued our education together” at Notre Dame and Seattle University.
Padilla earned a master’s degree in religious education at the latter, the diocese said.
And not long ago, the friends also played tennis together three times a week.
Even in his supposed retirement, Padilla continued to serve, filling in to celebrate Mass at St. Frances Cabrini and other parishes and serving in prisons and nursing homes, Sister Padilla said.
“He was an extremely devout man,” Reckart said. “He was an extremely prayerful man and you always had a sense of the presence of God with him, that God was with you and with him.”
Padilla served as vicar of both the Cochise and Pima Central vicariates and was involved with other associations for priests. He also received an award from Chicanos Por La Causa for work with the homeless, the diocese said.
“Gil was unique,” Fuller said. “He sort of did it his way. Whatever he thought, he said. And he gave us an example of a prayerful priest, an example of a priest who has totally entered the service of the people, and we will always miss an example like that.”
