A memorial Mass for Father Richard E. Hadel, SJ, will be celebrated at 10 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 12, in the chapel of St. Ignatius Hall, the Jesuit Community at Garden Villas North. Father Hadel died Aug. 16 in Florissant. An educator and retreat director, he was 90 years old, a Jesuit for nearly 74 years and a priest for 61 years.
Dick Hadel was born Aug. 24, 1935, in Kansas City, Kansas, to parents, William C. and Julia S. (Seve) Hadel. He was baptized at St. Francis Xavier Church, a Jesuit parish. He later attended the same parish’s grade school and Rockhurst High School, a Jesuit school. He entered the Society of Jesus on Aug. 17, 1952, one week shy of his 17th birthday. He was known to comment, “I grew up in the Society. It wasn’t a bad place to grow up.”
He professed first vows on Aug. 22, 1954, and was ordained a priest June 9, 1965.
Father Hadel attended seminary at St. Stanislaus in Florissant before completing a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, a master’s in Latin and Greek, and a licentiate in philosophy at Saint Louis University. He earned a licentiate in sacred theology at St. Mary’s College in St. Marys, Kansas, and a doctorate in anthropology at the University of Texas in Austin.
Father Hadel’s first assignment as a Jesuit in formation was at St. John’s College in Belize City, Belize, where he taught English and Latin. Following his ordination and graduate studies in anthropology, he returned to St. John’s College in 1972 and taught anthropology until 1975, when he took a brief sabbatical. He returned to St. John’s College in 1976 and remained for five years, teaching religion and serving in administrative positions for the Jesuit community.
While in Belize, Father Hadel grew to love and respect the people and the culture. He learned Garifuna while living in a Carib village. With the blessing of the bishop, he celebrated Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve in Garifuna. It was the first time the people of the village had ever heard the Mass in their own language. “A woman stopped after Mass and told me in Carib, ‘It went to my heart,’” Father Hadel recalled some 40 years later. “I will never forget that.”
Some years earlier, Father John Stochl, SJ, had begun work on the first known Garifuna dictionary; Father Hadel took up that work and expanded the dictionary to be more comprehensive.
Father Hadel returned to the U.S. in 1981. After a yearlong sabbatical at Creighton University, he was assigned to serve at White House Jesuit Retreat and Fusz Memorial (for Jesuits in formation), before being assigned in 1986 to teach English at De Smet Jesuit High School, where he also served as the Jesuit rector (community superior). In 1993, he was assigned to St. Louis University High School as superior and teacher. He served at SLUH for 12 years, until 2005.
He served as sacramental minister at St. Cecilia Parish in St. Louis from 2005-08.
In 2008, Father Hadel returned to White House Jesuit Retreat as a retreat and spiritual director and remained until 2015, when he began pastoral ministry. He was assigned to a ministry of prayer in 2023.
In addition to his parents, Father Hadel was predeceased by his brother, William J. Hadel. He is survived by his sister, Judy Reichmeier.
Father Hadel donated his body to the Saint Louis University School of Medicine.
