Father Charles J. Brunick, CSP, entered eternal life on Feb. 26.
Father Brunick died at the Paulist Motherhouse in New York City after a struggle with cancer. He was 80.
Father Brunick had been a member of the Paulist community for 60 years and a priest for almost 54 years. During his priesthood, he was a parish pastor, campus minister, and staff member at Catholic Information Centers.
Charles Joseph Brunick was born May 26, 1943, in Quincy, Mass., one of five children of Vincent and Elizabeth Brunick.
When he was in the sixth grade, his family moved to Camden, N.J., where he attended Catholic schools. As a young teen, he went to a vocations exhibit in Philadelphia, where he picked up a Paulist brochure with the title “Are You a Missionary to Main Street?”
In September 1961, he began to study at St. Peter’s, the one-time Paulist junior seminary in Baltimore. He entered the Paulist novitiate on Sept. 6, 1963. He made his First Promise to the Paulist community on Sept. 8, 1964, and his Final Promise on Sept. 8, 1967.
During these years, he studied at St. Paul’s College, the Paulist’s major seminary in Washington, D.C., which was then a degree-granting institution. He was ordained a priest on March 7, 1970.
Father Brunick was a campus minister for the first 15 years of his priesthood.
From 1970 to 1974, he served at the University of Texas at Austin. There, he taught for-credit courses in the “Bible Chair” program. He served in Boston from 1974 to 1977 as director of the Newman Center at Boston University.
In 1977, Father Brunick became pastor at St. John XXIII University Parish at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, serving there through 1985. From 1986 to 1988, he was pastor of St. Rose of Lima Church in Layton, Utah.
Father Brunick entered preaching ministry and evangelization work in 1990 as an associate director of the Catholic Information Center in Grand Rapids, Mich.
That work took him to Chicago in 1993, where he spent the next 14 years as an associate pastor at Old St. Mary’s Church, while still being involved in evangelization work.
In 2007, Father Brunick moved to Portland, Ore., where he served first at the Northwest Center for Evangelization and Reconciliation. In 2010, he became pastor at Portland’s St. Philip Neri Church.
He entered senior ministry in 2016, living first at the Paulist Motherhouse in New York City. From 2018 to 2022, he lived at the Cathedral of St. Andrew in Grand Rapids, Mich. Last July, he returned to the Motherhouse.
In a 2022 oral history, Father Brunick said, “being a teacher and a preacher has been the most important part of my ministry.”
In addition to his parents, Father Brunick was preceded in death by his brothers, Vincent and John Brunick; and his sister, Jane Kolongowski. Father Brunick is survived by his brother Paulists; his sister, Betty Ann Wells; and many nieces, nephews, and cousins.
May the angels lead you into paradise,
may the martyrs come to welcome you,
and take you to the holy city,
the new and eternal Jerusalem.
