For 45 years, the Flying Fathers raised money for charity with a team that featured a former NHL player, two horses that played goalie, seven frozen toes ... and a bunch of hockey-playing priests. Now, they're back. OnlyAGameNPR
In some ways, the story of how John Perdue became a Roman Catholic priest is a story about hockey."My mom would tell you that I didn't like it at first, and I would cry the whole time I was out on the ice," Perdue says.
"Every Friday the seminarians played," Perdue says."And I could continue playing sports and being normal and be a priest as well — which was kind of a piece of my saying, 'Yes.'" But once he got to seminary, Perdue learned that the Flying Fathers had disbanded just a year or two earlier, in 2008. "His great patron was Martin de Porres, who's a 15th century South American saint who was devoted to the poor," Perdue says."And so, his garage and his living room were full of stuff that he was taking out to the poor. And he never owned a vehicle. He would just go down the road and just jump in a truck and take it and use it to deliver a fridge."
"Murray was going to the Chicago camp, and Father Costello was heading to Toronto. And the two of them got on the train, bid the family goodbye," Quinn says. "And at North Bay, just 'bout the last little bit of the train ride..." "I think all the humor got added in that first game in North Bay," Quinn says."They only had about four skaters taking on a whole team. But the police chief was at that game. And [Father Costello] borrowed the handcuffs from the police chief and handcuffed the goalie to one post. So that helped him score a lot."Frank Quinn didn’t become a priest. He became a cop. But his childhood connection to Father Costello helped him snag a spot on the Flying Fathers as a"ringer.
"The Flying Fathers would pull out a rule book and say, 'Show me in this rule book where it says you can't throw the football in the net.' "And then, there was the team’s backup goalies: two horses named Patience and Penance. And, the priests said, spending this time together and meeting with people all around the world — it gave them material for their sermons; it made them better priests.And then, in 1979, something happened that made the Flying Fathers even more famous than they’d been before: Father Les Costello lost his toes.
"So that he only had three toes," Cosentino says."And he called them 'the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.' "Well, I think everybody knows," Quinn says,"with the scandal in the priesthood, we couldn't find enough hockey players. We were all getting far too old. I played, God, 'til I was nearly 60 years old. That's too old to be playing that level of hockey, you know?"
"The funeral home couldn't handle the number of people that were coming. The funeral had to be held in the arena that he played hockey as a boy, you know."The Flying Fathers kept playing for another six years. But it was never the same.
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