Monsignor Curtis T. Halfmann

Rosary vigil service is scheduled for Tuesday, December 4, at 7 p.m. at Saint John Neumann Church, 22nd and Frankford, Lubbock. Funeral Mass will be celebrated on Wednesday, December 5, 10 a.m., at the same church.

Another Mass and burial will be celebrated at St Boniface Church in Olfen, Texas on Thursday, December 6, 2013 at 10:30 a.m. Burial will follow in Olfen, Texas.

Curtis Halfmann was born May 27, 1934, in Olfen, Texas, to Paul and Elizabeth Halfmann, he was one of eight children. He attended Olfen schools, and then St. John High School in San Antonio, and Assumption Seminary. He earned a Masters Degree in Social Work at our Lady of the Lake, San Antonio, and was a licensed social worker.

Halfmann was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Amarillo on May 16, 1959, at St. Boniface Church, in his hometown of Olfen, Texas where he celebrated his first Mass the next day.

After ordination, he was assigned to a sanitarium in Shamrock/Wellington until September 1959 when he was assigned to six month stints at Saint John Church, Borger, and to Our Lady of Guadalupe and Saint Margaret Mary Parishes in Lamesa.

He also spent almost a year, from September 1960, until February 1963, as the pastor at each of the parishes in O’Donnell and Tahoka, Saint Ann, Morton, and Lockney San Jose and Floydada Saint Mary Magdalene.

His parishioners especially love his ‘genuineness,’ and many believe this attracted parishioners to the parishes he served. In the 1960s, Halfmann’s life of advocacy took root.

Halfmann’s early assignments in Tahoka and Lamesa awakened in him the desire to help farm laborers, the braceros, who worked long hours and lived in cramped, inadequate housing.

While serving as pastor at Our Lady of Grace in Lubbock, he organized marches against police brutality. He worked with union organizers, striking workers, and even mobilized a boycott against a power company, while pushing for voter registration rights for Hispanics. He also served as Executive Director of Catholic Welfare Bureau from 1966-1981.

Father Halfmann was assigned to serve as pastor to Lubbock Our Lady of Grace parishioners from 1963 to 1981, and as he led his busy political life, he kept time for the youth of his parish, working tirelessly to ensure they lived their Catholic faith

The next ten years were spent ministering to the Catholics at Slaton Saint Joseph Church, and Father Halfmann was named a monsignor in April 1985.

Monsignor Halfmann served as pastor of Saint John Neumann, Lubbock, from 1991, and on September 23, 1993, when the first bishop of Lubbock, Most. Rev. Michael J. Sheehan, was named Archbishop of Santa Fé, the Consultors of the diocese elected Msgr. Halfmann to serve as diocesan administrator until a new bishop was named. He served as administrator until Bishop Placido Rodriguez, CMF, was installed as Bishop of Lubbock in June 1994.

Monsignor Halfmann retired from official priestly ministry in January 2002, but continued to serve in Sacramental Ministry, and his tireless life of advocacy continued. In March 2009, he blessed the newly dedicated historical sign in Aztlan Park, near First Street and Avenue K in Lubbock.

“We come to this special place, this sacred place, seemingly empty, but today filled with voices—voices of the thousands who lived and died here,” he said during the blessing. “We listen to those voices. We hear the cries of the hungry children, the moans of the exhausted mothers giving birth to new life, the desperate songs of fathers searching for a way to feed them, to keep them warm.”

During the blessing he spoke about the park as the site of one of the largest migrant camps in Texas for cotton pickers and railroad workers who came to Lubbock. Thousands of Mexican migrant workers once lived there, slept in tents, truck beds or hastily erected row houses.

While speaking at an event commemorating Cesar Chavez, Father Halfmann recalled the conditions he witnessed at migrant workers living quarters. He said as many as 200 workers would be in the barracks at night, sleeping in bunk beds pushed so close together a person could barely make his or her way through the barrack.

In May 2009, Monsignor Curtis Halfmann celebrated fifty years of priesthood with a special Mass.

“We are grateful for all his help in building up the diocese, including strengthening the identity as a new diocese,” Bishop Plácido Rodriguez said during the anniversary Mass.

During his years of ministry, Monsingor Halfmann served many diocesan ministries and programs. Halfmann served as associate director of the Cursillo Movement, Vocations Director, Vicar General, Presbyteral Council President, and a member of the Priestly Life and Ministry Committee of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Most recently, Monsignor Halfmann served as spiritual director for the ACTS community and provided spiritual care during many retreat weekends at Mercy Retreat Center, Slaton.

Known for his good humor and ready smile, he always enjoyed a good joke. His love of fishing and hunting was well-known. He had a large extended family and often traveled “back home” to celebrate the sacraments of baptism and matrimony, and to preside over funerals.

Preceding him in death were his parents Paul and Elizabeth Halfmann and three brothers, Le Roy, Eugene, and Msgr. Hubert Halfmann, brother-in-law Louis Beuerlein and nephew Don Ray Kvapil.

Survivors include four sisters, Lucille Beuerlein of Snyder, Helen Lange and husband Andrew of Rowena TX, Norma Halfmann of San Antonio TX, and LeaAnna Niggemyer and husband David of Bellville TX, Sister-in-law, Lucy Halfmann of Burlington TX and a special friend, Adelaida Montemayor of Lubbock TX ; 14 nieces and nephews; many great nieces and nephews along with numerous cousins.

In lieu of flowers memorial contributions may be made to Catholic Charities Diocese of Lubbock 102 Avenue J. Lubbock TX. 79411