Styles of Ignatius Strecker |
|
---|---|
Reference style | The Most Reverend |
Spoken style | Your Excellency |
Religious style | Monsignor |
Posthumous style | none |
Ignatius Jerome Strecker (November 23, 1917 – October 16, 2003) was an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of Kansas City in Kansas from 1969 to 1993.
Ignatius Strecker was born in Spearville, Kansas, to William and Mary (Knoeber) Strecker. He was baptized at St. John the Baptist Church, where his parents were also the first couple to be married. He had a brother, Henry; and four sisters, Agnes, Catherine, Elizabeth, and Wilhelmina. Strecker was ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Christian Winkelmann on December 19, 1942, celebrating his first Mass in his native Spearville on the following December 21. He then studied canon law at the Catholic University of America, and was later made chancellor of the Diocese of Wichita in 1948.
On April 11, 1962, Strecker was appointed the second Bishop of Springfield-Cape Girardeau, Missouri, by Pope John XXIII. He received his episcopal consecration on the following June 20 from Archbishop Edward Hunkeler, with Bishops Charles Helmsing and Marion Forst serving as co-consecrators, in the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. From 1962 to 1965, Strecker attended the Second Vatican Council, during which he sat next to Archbishop Karol Wojtyła of Kraków; the Bishop was extremely dedicated to the Council's implementation in his diocese as well.