By Alexander Rivero, Staff Writer

Fr. Richard Tartaglia–the veteran priest who has spent most of his career at St. Mary’s Church–turns 75 years old this year. As a result, says Rome, he must retire. Not exactly the easiest task for someone that has devoted himself to a job every day for the past five decades.

“You do something for this long and you certainly get used to it, to say the least” says Tartaglia. “But hey it’s the law.”

The beloved priest was ordained in 1972 at St. John the Baptist Cathedral in Paterson after completion of his grueling seminary school curriculum, which he boasts was “ten times tougher” than any military- style boot camp available today (with some minor exceptions). During his time in the seminary, candidates had to report to the chapel daily at 5:55 a.m. for morning prayers, followed by breakfast, and then a whole day’s worth of high-intensity academic, religious, and language training. 

Following a brief break for recreation in the afternoon, candidates would resume their training at 4:30 p.m. sharp, where they would meet to recite the full Rosary. Supper would follow, another small recreational break, and then night prayer at 7:00 p.m.

The grand finale of a typical day would be to report to their rooms–which candidates would often share with classmates–and maintain a pure, perfect, immaculate silence.

“Not a single peep,” laughs Tartaglia via phone, “until the break of dawn the next day.”

Born in the Bronx in 1946, Tartaglia was raised by members of what we describe as the greatest generation–the generation that fought in World War II and helped defeat the German war machine and save Europe. Given this, he thinks that the accomplishments of his own generation often go overlooked by casual historians.

“We had the 1960s, the riots, the drugs, Vietnam,” recalls Tartaglia. “I entered the seminary in 1964, and by the time I graduated eight years later, I realized this wasn’t even the same church I had signed up to serve originally.”

Tartaglia recalls these times of drastic change, not just in all of Western society, but especially within the ranks of the Roman Catholic Church itself. The Second Vatican Council had just finished in 1963, and slowly but steadily its changes in official protocol–which many at the time saw as drastic and even heretical–were beginning to spread to churches across the world. By 1968, for instance, any semblance of Latin, the official language of the Church for thousands of years, had been discarded, reduced more and more as the years went by to an academic right of passage for anybody who sought to take vows.

Before he ever set foot inside that seminary program, however, Tartaglia had gone to high school at Archbishop Stepinac High School in White Plains. While at Stepinac, a school named after the famous Yugoslav clergyman, Tartaglia found his calling, but he is not quite sure how.

“I really don’t know what happened,” he says. “Some people say that God was talking to them. But the fact of the matter is that it really just came into my head and it wouldn’t go away. Back in those days, if you were interested in the life, all you had to do was go and talk to your priest and the rest was history. And that’s exactly how I went about in those early stages.”

Ever since becoming a priest, Tartaglia has been a faithful servant to God and Church, fulfilling his duties to the Denville community with grace and magnanimity for all of the past 48 years. Naturally, he has seen generations of families come and go from his parish, and recalls the days in the 1970s and 1980s where he would preside over three weddings each weekend. Now, the church sees about three weddings a year.

“Times were certainly different back then,” he says. “There were a lot of things to get involved with, not just as a lay person but even as a clergyman. I became chaplain to the Knights of Columbus of Denville, the Council of Our Lady of the Lakes, as well as all the various activities that you could just jump into and lend a hand in whatever way you could.”

Tartaglia reflects on his early days at St. Mary’s as days where whole families–large families with many children, whole generations– would attend service, confession, would be integral and enthusiastic participants in church life, and he sees those days as reflective of the society at large. He believes that the drops in attendance and the overall loss of influence of the church in the daily lives of its community members is also a clear reflection of the society.

That said, Tartaglia is optimistic of the church’s role moving ahead.

“Christ promised us,” he says, “that the Church would be around until Gabriel sounded his horn. And that’s all the assurance I need.”