Ghosts of the past.

I first met Rocco Facchini on a Sunday after Mass, when he told me with laser beam intensity and orchid sensitivity about his work in progress--the book Muldoon, subtitled, "True Chicago Ghost Story" and sub-subtitled, "Tales of a Forgotten Rectory." Now published by Lake Claremont Press, it recounts the author's experience of paranormal activity and reveals his own faith and fidelity to the church.

The hero of the story is Peter J. Muldoon, a real-life priest of the Chicago archdiocese and founding bishop of the Diocese of Rockford, Illinois. He became pastor of Chicago's St. Charles Borromeo Parish and built a magnificent church there in the late 19th century. In 1901 he was named an auxiliary bishop to Chicago and in 1908 became bishop of Rockford, a position he held until his death in 1927.

Although he originally intended to be entombed in St. Charles Borromeo in Chicago, his body was sunk into the earth in Rockford's St. Mary's Cemetery. In death, Muldoon remembered Borromeo and its people by bequeathing his episcopal ring to the parish. But somehow, somewhere Muldoon's ring disappeared and never made its way to the parish he so loved.

More than 50 years after Muldoon left Borromeo, Rocco Facchini took up residence in the rectory as a newly ordained priest. But all was not right on several fronts. The pastor, "Father Kane," had not an iota of pastoral sensitivity nor interest in the people of the parish, most all of them members of the economic underclass. His two great loves, money and his parish housekeeper, "Margaret" motivated his life. Weekly bingo games and a fundraising newsletter linked to a decrepit shrine in the corner of the church raised plenty of cash. The money, unfortunately, never found its way to ministries for the poor of the parish.

Among the clergy of the archdiocese, the rectory had the reputation of being haunted. Some said Muldoon's spirit, upset that the provision of his last will and testament was not carried out, stalked the rectory in search of his ring. Facchini experienced many paranormal events during his four-year stay there, and he relates hem all with care and precision in the book.

Although this author's faith in Muldoon's ghost is strong, his faith in what the church should be about is even stronger. Facchini's X-ray vision sees through an antiquated church system that blindly supports a lot of nonsense at the expense of effective ministry to people. What emerges from this ghostly story is a ghastly church culture so turned in on itself that the people of God are forgotten.

Muldoon's afterlife presence, Facchini suggests, had less to do with his missing episcopal ring and more to do with the unconscionable lack of any pastoral ministry under Pastor Kane and housekeeper Margaret.

Today there is no physical evidence of St. Charles Borromeo Parish. Its buildings, including the haunted rectory, were demolished in 1968 and turned into a parking garage. But this tale from a forgotten rectory is real, and this hook, an effective work of literary folk art, recalls and preserves an intriguing era of American Catholic history.

PETER GILMOUR ([e-mail]) teaches at the Institute of Pastoral Studies of Loyola University Chicago.