Father Bill Atkinson canonization cause completes first phase, moves onto Rome.
Archbishop Perez places a seal to the official documents.
“There’s something very ordinary about Father Bill in terms of how he did his work,” Father Michael said. “The extraordinary part was that he did his work, his ministry, exercised his priesthood in the context of great limitation—a physical limitation, but certainly not any limitation in terms of his mental ability or his will and his desire to be of service.”
Born in Philadelphia in 1946, Father Bill entered the novitiate following a year as a postulant at Augustinian Academy in Staten Island, New York. In the accident, it was unclear if Father Bill would survive, so he was given the opportunity to profess first vows from the hospital bed. He began a long and extensive rehabilitation process and continued in the novitiate.