By Renée St. Martin Wizeman

“Oh, my head looks like a watermelon. It used to be nice-shaped,” Father Stuart Long says, watching his profile on a monitor at Helena Civic Television, during a recent interview.

Father Stu, ordained less than three years ago, often makes himself the object of his humor. It’s one of the ways he responds to inclusion body myositis, the disorder that has taken over his body. At his ordination in December 2007 he walked with crutches. Today he is in a motorized wheelchair and lives at Big Sky Care Center, a Helena nursing home. Father Stu is in his mid-40s.

Given that he is both a priest and a man dealing with a terminal disease, he brings a unique perspective to questions about life, death and a lot in between.

His path to the priesthood was not a straight line. Raised in Helena, he was a rambunctious boy. He uses the words of one of his “priest heroes,” Father Benedict Groeschel, a founder of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal: “It’s funny; in life, you usually get what you’re looking for.” Father Stu finds that describes his youthful penchant for trouble, be it fighting, alcohol or danger.

“I was looking for trouble for a number of years,” he said.

In high school he played football and wrestled, then played football for Carroll College. Father Jeremiah Sullivan, a history professor and accomplished boxer, saw a good boxing prospect in the collegiate Stu and invited him to hit the bag at the Carroll gym. Father Stu said he still remembers watching Father Jeremiah hit the speed bag with unparalleled acumen and speed.

Father Stu boxed throughout college, but jaw surgery ended plans for a career in the ring. The 1985 Montana Golden Gloves champ was left wondering what next. He graduated from Carroll in 1986, moped around the family home, then headed for Los Angeles, where he got bit parts in movies. He found the industry’s ethos not something he wanted to mold his life around.

After a near-fatal motorcycle accident, his search for direction led him to the Catholic Church. He went through the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults, initially because he intended to marry his then-girlfriend. But as he joined the Church he felt a calling, persistently. He came to be a diocesan seminarian by way of the Capuchin Friars in New York and Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio.

During priestly formation for the Diocese of Helena at Oregon’s Mount Angel Seminary, Father Stu underwent hip surgery for knee pain that he attributed to boxing, injuries and accidents. Afterward, a tumor discovered at the incision point was removed. Father Stu said strength left his body. Then came the diagnosis: inclusion body myositis. Its progression mimics that of ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, he said, adding that “there’s no cure. Barring a miracle of Christ, this will claim my life.”

“It’s a profound experience–suffering,” he said. “Every person on the planet suffers, and the more you try to deny it, the more you suffer.”

Suffering has “helped me overcome my prideful ways, which was a big cross for me for many years,” he said. “It’s taught me a little humility. It’s taught me dignity and respect for others, especially for those who share the condition I’m in.”

Healthy and active until about five years ago, he finds that “the struggle of this disease is helping me to learn the way I should have been living all along.”

“We don’t get to choose what happens, only how we respond to it, how we’re going to cooperate with God to overcome the difficulties and challenges that exist in our world,” he said. The breaking down of the body and faltering of the mind bring “an opportunity for us to make our peace with God. When we pass from this world to the next, it will be a passage that opens us up to hope. And that’s the end that every person wants for themselves and for others, but sometimes we don’t know how to engage it.”

Father Stu said the demarcation around suffering and the desire to alleviate it can lead to poor decisions. “Many people feel it is a merciful thing to end someone’s suffering,” he said, “but that doesn’t allow them to pass in a happy and peaceful way that will allow them access to eternal life. This is being lost; the opportunity is not there for people who have their life terminated, some at the hands of others and some by their request. We always have to fall on the side of life.”

Amid daily struggles to wash, dress and get in and out of bed, his wheelchair and vehicles, Father Stu is thankful for his parents’ profound love and support. His father has lived with him for most of his ordained priesthood and helps with daily tasks. Father Stu said his mother, who like her husband is not Catholic, prays for him, to St. Padre Pio and St. Francis.

“It’s such a comfort to know my parents are with me in this struggle,” he said, but there also is heartbreak “because I think this disease and the disabling process is harder on them than me.”

Despite the disease, Father Stu is able to celebrate Mass at Big Sky Care Center. He used to serve in priestly ministry at Little Flower Parish in Browning and at the parishes of Anaconda Catholic Community.

As the interview wraps up, he talks further about suffering. God allows human suffering so that we when we regain our balance, he said, we are better than we were before. “It’s a tough way to learn,” he said with a chuckle.

Father Stu’s path, formation and ministry aren’t “typical” of a diocesan priest, but he offers much in his candor, his empathy and his witness to the inherent value of human life.


Published in The Montana Catholic Online, Volume 26, No. 6, June 18, 2010.


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