c. 1998 Religion News Service

WARREN, Ohio _ The Rev. Thomas Spisak had already plunged a kitchen knife through his chest and was a fraction of an inch from death when he reassured church workers checking on him on a recent Saturday afternoon that he was OK.

He was feeling a little under the weather he said through locked doors at Christ Our King rectory here. The jovial priest known for his infectious laugh would over the next several hours repeatedly return to the knife _ 88 times, stabbing at his chest or arm or legs _ as a way out of the pressures of mounting medical bills and church financial problems, according to police accounts.

The pastor would finally call 9-1-1, close to shock and with four pints of his blood on the floor and furniture throughout the rectory after about 21 hours of torturous self-mutilation. Even then, he would be alert enough to make up a racially inflammatory tale of two black men breaking in and assaulting him.

The facade of the model priest was going to be the last thing to go.

As the priest shortage forces clergy to take on greater demands, some of those on the margins, living alone in rectories with multiple churches to care for and a Father O’Malley image to live up to, are reaching their breaking points.

While there are no national figures, experts say there are increasing reports of priests mentally and physically breaking down.

As the cracks begin to show in a church struggling to spread a thinning number of priests over a growing populace _ already 13 percent of parishes throughout the country lack a resident priest _ the 55-year-old Spisak has become the human face of the toll being exacted on priests, whose smiles at the church door after Mass often mask inner anguish.

Church officials portray Spisak as a troubled man who was depressed after heart surgery in March and just snapped. But others wonder why a man who had undergone such surgery was so quickly returned to the demanding task of running two good-sized churches from a rectory where he lived alone.

Throughout the country, priests are being asked to postpone retirement or are given pastorates despite physical or psychological limitations that would have in more flush years left them in other assignments better suited to their abilities, said the Rev. Eugene Hemrick of Catholic University of America in Washington.

“They’re not fit and we know that,” Hemrick said. “When you get shorthanded, you begin to overlook these rules” in making assignments.

Sitting in the shade on her porch overlooking Main Street on an oppressively hot afternoon last week, Beulah Nash, 30, admits she was scared after hearing what turned out to be the fabricated story of the assault on Spisak.”If they could do that to a priest, we don’t have a chance,” she said from her home near Christ Our King.

Like others in the black community, she thought the attack didn’t make sense. Churches and funeral homes are sacred places, and how could someone be stabbed 88 times by two young men and live?

Still, why would a priest lie? “I believed it. I really believed it,” Nash said.

While she and others in the predominantly black neighborhood were left living in fear, the police department was compiling evidence casting doubt on Spisak’s story.

Nothing was stolen. There was no sign of forced entry, no fingerprints or any indication there were other people in the room; not even a footprint or any evidence in the pools of blood in the rectory. And in a body riddled with stab wounds, there were no marks on Spisak’s right hand or arm.

“We didn’t want to believe he did this himself,” Police Chief Albert J. Timko said. But after days of gathering evidence, the police confronted Spisak and he admitted his deception.

What emerged was a gruesome tale of nearly a daylong period of self-mutilation.

When the police came, Spisak was sitting on the floor in the bathroom and that is when he told police he was assaulted by two black men. The news that a priest had been tortured shocked the community.”Everybody was shook up,” Timko said, “and as they found out what happened and they got even more shook up.”

“Couldn’t have made a better human being,” Allan Harris, 70, said of his pastor as he worked on a garden with a statue of the Virgin Mary in front of his home. “Always a jolly guy, always laughing, joking with you, talking about sports. … He was just a wonderful human being.”

Until his heart surgery. Then the priest with the laugh that could be heard down the block was no longer jolly. As he moved crosstown between SS. Cyril and Methodius Church and Christ Our King on Sunday mornings, the smile was gone.

“It was common sense to know something was wrong,” Harris said.

Looking back, there were other indicators of personal turmoil. Spisak would turn down social invitations from other priests. Associates would assure him that insurance would pay for his medical expenses, but the pastor became increasingly rattled by the mounting medical bills.

“As he was trying to be honest with me about the fact these wounds were self-inflicted, he was struggling with how to explain it,” said Monsignor Robert Siffrin, vicar general for the Youngstown Diocese.

Siffrin said Spisak was worried about personal and church finances, but “my impression was these were magnified in his own mind.”

The official explanation, from Bishop Thomas Tobin, is that Spisak “is a good and gentle man, but a man who because of serious illness acted and spoke irrationally.”

Tobin said the diocese did not receive any reports that Spisak was under duress and his self-mutilation was not the result of his assignment. Spisak, who was ordained in 1977, was named pastor of SS. Cyril and Methodius, a church of about 760 members, in 1990. He was given the additional pastorate of Christ Our King, a church of 600 members, in 1995.

Siffrin said the diocese told him to take all the time he needed to recover from his operation, yet Spisak was placed back in charge of both parishes shortly after his surgery.

While unfamiliar with the specifics of Spisak’s case, people who have done research on clergy stress and treated troubled priests find resonant chords in his situation.

“Many priests are experiencing a great deal of stress these days,” said the Rev. James Gill, a psychiatrist and director of the Christian Institute for the Study of Human Sexuality in Silver Spring, Md. “Some are experiencing it in the form of anxiety and tension, some in the form of frustration and anger, but most experience it in the form of a mild or moderate depression.”

Whereas once priests had a built-in support system among their colleagues in rectories, the priest shortage finds many clergy both living alone and under greater stress from increased workloads.

While the U.S. Catholic population is now 61 million and growing, the number of clergy is steadily decreasing. There are just under 24,000 diocesan priests on active duty today, down from 30,000 15 years ago.

Church officials express concern over how many priests can sustain the increasing stresses and workloads over the long term.

“They are overworked, pushed into workaholism by the demands, expectations and needs of their parishioners,” Gill said.

DEA END BRIGGS