Bernard Patrick Prusak

1938 - 2026

Bernard Patrick Prusak, affectionately known to family, friends, and colleagues as Bernie, died with family at his side on January 18, 2026, at Paoli Hospital in Paoli, Pennsylvania, after a brief and sudden illness. He was 87.

Born in Newark, New Jersey on May 29, 1938, Bernie was the only child of Juraj/George Prusak, a steelworker who had immigrated from Kurima, Czechoslovakia in 1929, and Susan (Bugel) Prusak, who worked in a bakery. His parents educated him at Saint Ann’s Grammar School in Newark and Seton Hall Preparatory School in South Orange. During his childhood, they moved from Newark to Hopatcong, New Jersey, where Bernie had a small boat that he enjoyed taking out on the lake. Bernie attended Seton Hall University, where he majored in Greek and Latin while working in the produce department at a grocery store in Netcong. Having joined the seminary at a young age, he was sent by the Diocese of Paterson in 1959 for further studies in Rome, where he lived at the North American College, earned a degree in theology at the Gregorian University, and was ordained to the priesthood at the Church of Saint Ignatius on December 19, 1962. After a year back in New Jersey as an assistant pastor, he returned to Rome in 1964 for advanced studies at the Pontifical Lateran University, from which he graduated in 1967 with a doctorate in canon law. He also pursued studies in liturgy at the College of Sant’Anselmo and biblical studies at the Pontifical Biblical Institute, and he traveled throughout Europe, which he loved to the end of his life, on a Vespa motorbike. His time in Rome coincided with the Second Vatican Council, where he assisted Paterson’s Bishop James Navagh. Reflecting on the Council in an article published in 2012 in Commonweal magazine, Bernie wrote that it “had a profound personal effect on me; it is fair to say that it changed the course of my life.” After finishing his doctorate, Bernie worked as co-vice chancellor, with his friend Father Ken Lasch, for the Diocese of Paterson. He met at that point a young Benedictine sister, Helen McGonegal (then Sister Alice Marie McGonegal), with whom he developed a friendship. Eventually they decided to marry, and Bernie requested from Pope Paul VI a dispensation from the discipline of celibacy, which was granted on July 15, 1970. He and Helen married in a liturgy celebrated by Father Lasch on August 1, 1970, in St. Jude Church in Hopatcong.

With the help of an Augustinian who had himself studied in Rome, Father Arthur Ennis, and with the support of Paterson’s Bishop Lawrence Casey, Bernie had begun a job in the Department of Theology at Villanova University in fall 1969. After their marriage, he and Helen moved to Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, where they began a family. Their son, Bernard George, was born on December 29, 1972, and their daughter, Alice Susanne, was born on April 29, 1977. Drawing from his immense learning, Bernie was a creative and prolific scholar, and he was promoted to associate professor in 1974, tenured in 1976, and promoted to professor in 1978. He also was a gifted and inspiring teacher of thousands over the years (perhaps even of Pope Leo XIV in his studies at Villanova), as recognized by his receiving the University’s highest teaching honor, the Lindback Foundation Award, in 1982, and by the publication in 2021, which touched him deeply, of One Bread, One Body: Essays on the Ecclesia of Christ Today in Honor of Bernard P. Prusak, edited by two former students of his, Christopher Cimorelli and Daniel Minch. Bernie’s service to the University, the academy, and the Church included co-founding in 1974, with his Villanova colleague and friend Dr. Rodger Van Allen, Horizons: The Journal of the College Theology Society; coordinating Villanova’s distinguished summer Theology Institute; teaching in summers as a lecturer in the graduate program at La Salle University; participating for twenty-one years in the Religious Formation Conference’s “Insearch” program; and chairing Villanova’s Department of Theology and Religious Studies from August 2004 to January 2012. His book The Church Unfinished: Ecclesiology through the Centuries won first place for theology in 2004 from the Catholic Press Association. In 2013, the College of Saint Elizabeth awarded him its Servant Leadership Award for his teaching, scholarship, and personal witness of the vision of Vatican II. His paper “Explaining Eucharistic ‘Real Presence’: Moving beyond a Medieval Conundrum” won the award for best article published in theology in 2014 from the College Theology Society. After suffering a stroke, Bernie retired from Villanova at the end of the fall 2021 semester, having served the University for fifty-two years.

Bernie and Helen, who after Alice Susanne’s birth worked as a guidance counselor and administrator at the Academy of Notre Dame in Villanova, provided a warm, loving home for their children, whom they gave Catholic educations through high school and then liberal arts educations for college. After George Prusak’s death in 1978, the family moved from Bryn Mawr to a house in Villanova close to campus, and Bernie’s mother Susan lived with them until her own death at the end of 1992. The family enjoyed holidays with Helen’s parents and her sisters Mary and Ginny and Ginny’s family, and they visited Bernie’s extended family in New Jersey and the families of Helen’s other siblings, Alice, Phil, and Tom, up and down the East Coast. Bernie’s summer teaching at both Villanova and La Salle funded annual family vacations to Mount Desert Island, Maine; Block Island, Rhode Island; or Little Compton, Rhode Island. They went on numerous day trips throughout the year, and they had at different points two boats, which they took to the Sassafras River, a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, and to Little Compton. Remarkably, Bernie knew not only theology, and Greek and Latin and a handful of modern languages, but also plumbing, electricity, and auto mechanics. After the family’s first boat fell out of the truck on its way home from Sears, he rebuilt it in the style of a Boston Whaler, with a double hull filled with foam. He was notorious for home renovation projects, like remodeling bathrooms, that he claimed would take a year or less but stretched instead for years on end. As a rule, however, he finished them eventually, with great attention to detail.

Helen’s death on January 17, 2012, from ALS was a great blow to Bernie. He had stepped down as chair of the department on the day she died. He found comfort and joy in his children’s families, and he rarely passed in his later years on a good meal or pastry, while maintaining his heart for the poor and vulnerable through steadfast support of such organizations as the Patrician Society in Norristown, Pennsylvania. Alice married Josh Levine in June 2002 and had two daughters, Emma and Zoe Levine. Bernard married Margaret Kowalsky in October 2002 and likewise had two daughters, Helena and Anna Prusak. Bernie was extraordinarily generous to his children, their spouses, and his grandchildren, and he took great pride in them all. He also traveled with them several times to Italy, and he and Bernard visited family in Slovakia in January 2013. A new, unexpected joy came into Bernie’s life a year after Helen’s death, when he reconnected with Chris Morey, whom he had known in the 1960s. Chris became Bernie’s companion for the last decade-plus of his life. They traveled together, spent time at her home and with friends in Nashua, New Hampshire, and vacationed with her children Niav, Rex, and Jess, who with their own families were gracious, kind, and welcoming to Bernie. Through the Herculean labors of Alice, Bernie moved from the family home in Villanova to an apartment in Bryn Mawr in May 2023, and from there to Brightview Senior Living in Devon, Pennsylvania, in December 2025. He lived a rich, wonderful, and blessed life, and with his passing a great light goes out in the world. He will be deeply missed by family and friends.

Bernie’s Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated at St. Thomas of Villanova Church on the campus of Villanova University, 800 Lancaster Ave., Villanova PA 19085 on Saturday, January 24, at 11:00 a.m. The presider will be the Reverend Peter M. Donohue, OSA, President of Villanova University. Interment will follow at Calvary Cemetery. Family, colleagues, students, and friends are invited to the Mass, cemetery, and a luncheon following the burial.

For those unable to attend the services, the Funeral Mass can be livestreamed at the link below:

Mass of Christian Burial - Bernard Patrick Prusak

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in Bernie’s memory to The Patrician Society, 703 Green Street, Norristown, Pennsylvania 19401, www.patriciansociety.org/.