Girnius

Father Charles Girnius, M.M.

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Father Charles Girnius, M.M., a missioner to Peru, died Aug. 3 at St. Teresa’s Residence, Ossining. He was 96.

Assigned to Peru following his ordination in 1944, he initially taught at Colegio San Ambrosio, a pre-seminary high school in Puno, a city in southeastern Peru. He was named pastor of a parish in Cuyucuyo in 1946. In 1950 he was assigned to Puno Minor Seminary, where he taught Latin, physics and mathematics and then was appointed rector in 1952. In 1954 he was named director of Maryknoll’s Puno Society Mission House.

He returned to the United States in 1964 but went back to Peru the next year to resume his pastoral and education ministries, teaching again at the Puno seminary and serving in various parishes for more than two decades. In 1980 he established a residence for homeless men in Arequipa.

Though Father Girnius officially retired in 1988, he remained in Peru until 1992 when he went to Puerto Rico to take on a special pastoral ministry in San Juan. In 1994 he moved to the Maryknoll Center House in Cuernavaca, Mexico.

He returned to the United States in 1996 to reside at the Maryknoll Mission in Ossining, where he often translated homilies into Spanish for fellow Maryknollers.

Born in Maspeth he entered the Maryknoll novitiate in 1940 and professed his final vows in 1944. He held a bachelor’s degree from Cathedral College in Brooklyn and a master’s degree from Immaculate Conception Seminary, Huntington.

A Funeral Mass was offered Aug. 8 in Queen of Apostles Chapel at the Maryknoll Center in Ossining. Burial was in Maryknoll Society Cemetery.

Father Charles Girnius, M.M.