Dear Editor: I would like to express this heartfelt tribute to the late Bishop Ignatius Catanello, who was my professor in New Testament Theology during the Fall 1973 at St. John’s University.  I fondly recall Father Catanello as a warm and flexible professor, whose course reflected on select New Testament chapters and verses that were significant in Christology and the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

In music, where the “hook” captures the listener’s attention, the hook in Father Catanello’s course was his moving recitation of “the way of love” in St. Paul’s 1 Corinthians 13: 1-13, “But I shall show you a still more excellent way . . . So faith, hope, love remain, these three, but the greatest of these is love.”

That evening, having been so spiritually moved in class that day, I sat both my parents down and read that chapter aloud before them. This was the profound quality not only of St. Paul’s eloquent words, but also of Father Catanello’s pastoral ministry in the college classroom!

Father Catanello was as patient as a saint with my apostasy at the time, and gave me an “A” in the course, so I give him an “A” as he rests in eternal peace in Heaven with all of God’s angels and saints, particularly Bishop Ford of Brooklyn.

JOSEPH N. MANAGO
Flushing