When the Rt. Rev. William C.R. Sheridan was consecrated the fifth Bishop of Northern Indiana in 1972 in the Roman Catholic Basilica of the Sacred Heart at Notre Dame University, it was an “earth-shaking decision” for its time and established a precedent for his successors. Bishop Sheridan died surrounded by family at his home in Culver early on Sept. 24. He was 88.

Bishop Sheridan was a first-generation American, born March 25, 1917, in New York City to an English mother and an Irish father. Raised in Baltimore, he suffered from tuberculosis as a child and fell behind in school before eventually enrolling in St. Paul’s, an Episcopal boarding school.

“It was there,” he told the South Bend Tribune in a 2003 interview, “at about the age of 15, that I became aware that I might have a calling to the sacred priesthood.”

After finishing prep school in 1935, he enrolled at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville. He dropped out a year and a half later, a victim of the Great Depression. “By extreme good fortune,” he told the Tribune, “I was able to continue with my education at the Nashotah House Seminary and Carroll College in Waukesha, Wis.” At Carroll, he met his future wife, Rudith Treder, a fellow student.

After graduation in 1942, Bishop Sheridan was ordained a deacon. He returned to Baltimore and after ordination as priest in 1943, he was appointed curate at St. Paul’s, Chicago. He later served Gethsemane in Marion, Ind., before assignment to St. Thomas, Plymouth in 1947. He was elected bishop in 1972 while serving as rector of that parish. He was invited by the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, then president of the University of Notre Dame, to be consecrated in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart.

Such consecrations of bishops of the Episcopal Church are relatively commonplace now, but at the time, it was momentous. Bishop Sheridan described it as “earth shaking” in his interview with the Tribune and said he believed that he was the first person not from the Roman Catholic Church to be so honored in Indiana. He retired in 1987.

After his retirement, he accepted invitations to preach at 239 churches, colleges and retreat houses throughout the world. One of the great disappointments of his life was missing the visit of the Archbishop of Canterbury to South Bend in 1996. Bishop Sheridan had made a prior commitment to fill the pulpit for a vacationing priest.

Bishop Sheridan is survived by his wife, “Trudi,” and their five children: Elizabeth Noak, Crown Point, Ind.; Margaret Bonen, LaPorte, Ind.; Mary Janda, Sandy, Utah; and twin sons Stephen of Dallas, Texas and Peter of Olathe, Kansas; as well as nine grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.

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