A Mass of Resurrection for Father Victor (Vic) Karls, CSsR, was to be celebrated April 12 at the St. Clement Redemptorist Mission Community Chapel in Barnhart. Father Karls died April 2 after a brief time in hospice care at St. Clement Redemptorist Mission Community at the age of 82. A prayerful and dedicated Redemptorist missionary, Father Karls was a gifted preacher who always made himself available to minister to the people of God.
Victor Herbert was born to Herbert and Clara (Foss) Karls on Aug. 19, 1942, in Madison, Wisconsin. He knew that he wanted to be a priest at an early age and entered St. Francis Seminary in nearby Milwaukee after graduating from St. Bernard Grade School. He left after a year and tried a few careers after he graduated from high school. He completed one year at the University of Wisconsin but ultimately answered his vocation call. He was on the train en route to St. Joseph’s College in Edgerton, Wisconsin, in 1962 when he learned that his father had died of cancer.
He proceeded to the novitiate at Mount St. Clement’s in De Soto and professed temporary vows on Aug. 2, 1965. Vic began his theological studies at Immaculate Conception Seminary in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, and professed perpetual vows on Aug. 15, 1968. He continued theological studies at Mount St. Alphonsus Seminary in Esopus, New York, and was ordained to the priesthood on June 26, 1970, by Bishop Leo J. Brust, D.D., of Milwaukee in the chapel of Holy Redeemer College in Waterford, Wisconsin.
Newly ordained Father Karls was nominated from his class to serve in the Amazon region of Brazil. Father Karls was sent to Codajás, where he spent a few months before he went on to Manacapuru. He served there for three years, but the isolation and harsh living conditions were so detrimental to his health that he returned to the United States in 1975.
Father Karls was assigned briefly as director of Queen of Peace Retreat Center in Fargo, North Dakota, before he was appointed administrator of St. Joseph’s Preparatory College in Edgerton, Wisconsin, in 1976. Father Karls was appointed director of Villa Redeemer Retreat Center in Glenview, Illinois, in 1981. He served as superior of the local community for one term and continued as director for eight years until he was elected consultor of the former St. Louis Province leadership team in 1998.
After completing his term in office, he was appointed to Liguori Mission House in Liguori. He began by working in the circulation department of Liguori Publications, where he started the Liguorian Associates program, hiring people all over the country to solicit magazine subscriptions with personal phone calls. He also brought the magazine renewal effort in house when preachers weren’t able to visit parishes every year. He was so devoted to the flagship magazine that he preached for Liguorian every weekend for many years.
Father Karls was a respected and effective local superior of the Mission House community for more than 20 years. He started the Liguori Mission Team to preach parish missions across the country in 2008. As the years wore on, he continued to raise significant amounts of money preaching for Cross Catholic Outreach and Food for the Poor, one of the largest hunger relief organizations in the world. When travel became difficult, he focused on helping out at local parishes and nursing homes, the St. Louis-Lambert Airport, Mercy Hospital and Missouri’s Bonne Terre maximum security prison.
Burial was in Liguori Cemetery.
