FATHER J. Eustace Wolfinger would appreciate how I’m approaching this editorial. It’s due on Wednesday at noon. I’ve started writing it a good two hours early.

That’s kind of how Father Wolfinger ran his parish, Twelve Holy Valkyries. If the parish’s annual report to the diocese was due Feb. 1, he’d be up late on the night of Jan. 31. He’d mail his Christmas cards on Dec. 23 “to avoid the last minute rush.” And when he saw the first spring robin, Father Wolfinger would remember it was time to take down the Christmas wreaths from his church doors.

Who is Father Wolfinger?

Readers of The Catholic Post from 1973 to 1989 would certainly know, because during that period he was among the most quoted priests on our pages.

Father Wolfinger was the biretta-wearing, fictitious cartoon creation of Father George Wuellner, a very real and beloved priest of our diocese who died earlier this month in Champaign. With Father Bob Reynolds, Father Wuellner was the co-creator and producer of the weekly cartoon calendar “Graffiti from Cathedral Walls,” which took a lighthearted look at local church life by incorporating original art with, well, “borrowed” art such as old movie stills. The bishop, for example, might be Bing Crosby one week and Paul Revere on a horse the next. Members of the Priests’ Senate discussing “weighty matters” were once represented by the Marx Brothers. Anyone and everyone was fair game, including priests on their birthdays, and (gasp) even the editor of The Catholic Post.

“Graffiti” had two principal recurring, original characters –Father Wolfinger, usually penned by Father Wuellner, and the venerable Mother Mary Goodsmeller, the creation of Father Reynolds who was wary of changes in the church and took pride in her well-starched wimple.

We will miss the many gifts of Father Wuellner, whose pastoral style of “making people feel at home” was so well captured in the funeral homily by Father Tom Royer. But we’ll also miss Father Wolfinger and his “Graffiti” friends, who taught us that while our faith is a serious matter, we should never take ourselves too seriously. It’s a valuable lesson in this era of political correctness.

Mother Mary Goodsmeller once opined that “As the corners of your mouth go, so goes your day.” In bidding farewell to Father Wolfinger and thank you to Father Wuellner, we reprint just a few of the illustrations that gave us very good days and weeks. — Thomas J. Dermody