Ordination day for Springfield diocesan priests in 1983 was on the diocesan calendar for months. Then the unimaginable happened. Just five weeks before Bishop Joseph A. McNicholas was to ordain the men priests at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Springfield, he died suddenly of a massive coronary thrombosis.

"We had yet to be called to orders by the bishop," says Father Joe Molloy, a member of the ordination class. "For three and a half weeks our ordination was up in the air. We weren't sure if we were going to be ordained, who was going to ordain us, and for sure if it was going to be at the cathedral on May 28. We couldn't send invitations out. My mom was a nervous wreck."

Meanwhile ordination classmates at Kenrick Seminary in St. Louis were going around with calendars, marking down dates to attend each other's ordinations.

"We told them to tentatively pencil in May 28, in Springfield," but it wasn't until a week and a half before the ordination matters were resolved and they could send invitations out.

Msgr. Paul Sheridan, the diocese's administrator after the bishop's death, appealed to Archbishop Pio Laghi, apostolic delegate in the United States, who called the men to ordination.

Bishop Victor Balke of the Diocese of Crookston, Minn., a Springfield diocesan priest, and former rector at the diocese's Immaculate Conception Seminary, agreed to come back to ordain the priests.

"To my knowledge the Class of 1983 is the only one in the history of the diocese not ordained by our own sitting bishop," says Father Molloy. "The fact that this is our 25th jubilee, and it is Bishop Balke's 50th jubilee, is an interesting coincidence."