In Pace Christi

For 47 years, Fr. Robert (Bob) Kleiner enjoyed the most beautiful adventure of sharing the Gospel and serving the people of the world as a Comboni missionary. He was kind, generous and friendly to all. After a full life he returned to the Father in the final hours of Saturday, 2 February 2019, in Los Angeles, California.

Fr. Robert was born in Cincinnati on 22 February 1944, into a large, loving and fervent family. He attended the parish of Saint Pius X and entered the Seminary of the Sacred Heart in Anderson Township (Forestville) for high school. Novitiate and theology required him to go to San Diego, California, and to Cincinnati, Ohio (1966-1971). He was ordained priest on 29 May 1971 in the Cincinnati Cathedral of Saint Peter in Chains.

Two months later, he was on his way to Peru for his first missionary post in the small city of Yanahuanca, in the high Andean mountains, eight hours by a climbing road from Lima. His mountain parish had 36 communities. As for his Spanish, he had learned a bit of it in the seminary but now he really “learned it well while working and celebrating Mass in various towns on the mountains”, as he himself wrote in an article in 2011.

He stayed in Peru for three years but his various health problems, which did not certainly improve in the cold mountain climate, forced him to leave the province. About a year later he was assigned to the seminary of the Comboni School at San Francisco del Rincón, Mexico. He remained there for six years, 1976–1982, working well and with good results.

In 1982 he was assigned to the parish of Holy Cross in Los Angeles, where he ministered for eight years. In 1991, he left sunny California for the Archdiocese of Chicago, the ‘windy city’. Together with Fr. Domingo Campdepadrós he began working in the parish of San Donato, Blue Island, Illinois, and in the nearby parish of the Seven Holy Founders. San Donato had started as an Italian parish but at that time there were immigrants coming from various Latin American countries. The challenges were many, most of them caused by overlapping and, at times, conflicting cultures, but the two Comboni confreres and their successors managed to establish a sound Catholic community.

Fr. Robert remained in Chicago up to the year 2002. After a Sabbatical year, he was reassigned to the Comboni parishes of Holy Cross and Saint Cecilia, in the South Side of Los Angeles, where he lived until his death, with the exception of a year spent serving the community of Covina, engaged in mission promotion.

Those years were also marked by increasingly bad health: in 2005, Fr. Robert seemed so close to death’s door that his funeral arrangements were being considered. Surprisingly, he recovered, After a period of convalescence, he asked to continue his missionary work, even though he was not really his old self yet.

Fr. Robert was no great orator, but he was especially gifted in making contact with people, whatever their social level. Charmed by his constant smile and his infinite patience, many people sought his advice.

Immediately after his death, many came to pay him homage and to express their admiration for him. His remains were taken to his native parish in Cincinnati for a requiem Mass. He was buried in the family tomb.

“It was really worth it: I would not change my missionary vocation for all the world. I feel motivation and love living and working with people. They are my inspiration in following Christ and my vocation to the priesthood”. May these words of Fr. Robert inspire us all.
(Lindsay Braud/Joseph Bragotti, mccj)