Sunday Edition: The Wise and Wisecracking Father Richard Poblocki

As a Buffalo News journalist, I loved the phone calls and the laughs: 'Put a hanky over your mouth'

Wednesday in Cheektowaga, at St. Josaphat’s Church, I sang with the St. John Paul II Schola Cantorum for the funeral of Father Richard Poblocki.

I didn’t really know Father Poblocki. However, I sort of knew him. Father Rick, as everyone called him, was a frequent host at one time of “Calling All Catholics,” a show on our local Catholic radio station, WLOF. I would look forward to his appearances, because he was so funny and so entertaining.

Plus, as I wrote in the Buzz column this week, he was a friend to Buzz.

I wrote the Buzz column for years and years for The Buffalo News, and Father Rick was, as I used to say, a great Buzz source. The first time I wrote about him was in a column that ran on Christmas Day, 2012. Reading back on it, I feel I am hearing his voice all over again.

That particular Buzz column recounted how one caller had phoned “Calling All Catholics” questioning the wording of the Our Father. Father Rick, after trying to reason with him for a while, dismissed him with the words: “It is what it is, and there it is.”

Another caller had to work on Christmas Day and wondered if it was OK to go to Mass on Christmas Eve. “You’re in like Flint, kid,” Father Rick assured him. As I wrote in Buzz at the time, you couldn’t say “in like Flynn” on Catholic radio.

A third caller worried whether it was OK if her son went to hear the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, which was about to barrel into town. “I’m not a fan,” Father Rick admitted. “It’s like elevator music, or something you’d hear sitting around a cafeteria someplace.” However if he didn’t exactlly give the show his blessing, he gave it his imprimatur. “He could be listening to a lot worse stuff.”

The memories go on, each funnier than the last.

Busy as he was, Father Rick always made time for me when I called him at St. Josaphat’s, where he was pastor. Once, when I was assigned a story on WLOF, our local Catholic radio station, he shared with me popular topics his callers asked him about.

“A lot of times they ask about practices in their parish,” he told me. He imitated the callers: “‘My priest is doing this. My priest is doing that. The media say this. What’s the real deal?’”

I mentioned I had heard him talking about Ouija boards. “We get a lot of calls about Ouija boards,” he said. “Something happens, and they freak out. It’s like, man, don’t do that!”

Pornography, Father Rick mentioned, was an increasing concern for a distressingly wide swath of people. “They get such easy access to it,” he pointed out. “Not just guys, too. Chicks are into it.”

He laughed as he told me he got occasional nutty calls.

“This woman called up, she had one of those creepy church lady voices,” he said. “She says, ‘I have a friend, she’s very, very holy, and she hears the voices of Purgatory. Do you think that’s possible’?

“I told her like this: ‘Sometimes at 3, 4 or 5 in the morning, it’s a Friday or Saturday night, I hear the voices of the lost and the damned. And then I see the bar across the street.’

“Oh, she got mad.”

I laughed and laughed. Father Rick had a great gift for mimicking angry people. That still crosses my mind at least once every day. It’s a way I have of keeping myself from getting angry over stupid things. I imagine myself being the kind of person he would parody.

The last story Father Rick helped me with was a Buffalo News feature I did on Confession. He spoke freely with his characteristic humor.

“I think people are worried about what the priest will think of the sins they committed,” he said. “That’s why we have a screen. Put a hanky over your mouth. If you don’t want me to know who you are, more power to you. I’m just glad you’re opening your heart.”

“Put a hanky over your mouth.” That was so Father Rick. He was relaxed talking to the press, and I just loved him.

Did I ever meet him in person? I can’t quite recall. However this wise, wisecracking priest was a presence in my life. He was what one of my editors, Bruce Andriatch, would call “a quote machine.” Everything Father Rick said was memorable. It stuck with you.

As recently as a month ago, I quoted Father Rick to Howard, my husband. Howard was doing yard work at one of his buildings and had dug up a portion of a Ouija board. It was an especially weird Ouija board, tiny and made out of glass, and Howard wondered if it was worth anything.

“Who cares what it’s worth,” I said. “This one priest I used to listen to on Catholic radio was talking about Ouija boards, because some kids had been using one and had gotten into trouble. He said just throw the Ouija board away. He said, ‘Don’t burn it or anything. Just put it in the garbage and throw it away.’”

That was advice I remembered verbatim. I can still hear it, in Father Rick’s voice. And Howard, God love him, did what Father Rick had said to do. He put that Ouija board in the garbage and threw it away.

Soon after that incident was when I learned that Father Rick was ill, that he wouldn’t be with us much longer. I heard the sad news from Steve Querbal, who leads the St. John Paul II Schola Cantorum. Father Rick had been his pastor and they were close friends. He said Father Rick had requested that the Schola sing at his funeral, and so we did.

It’s strange how these things play out, that one of the singers at this wonderful priest’s funeral was the newspaper writer who used to pester him all the time.

My view from the choir loft at St. Josaphat’s Church. Photo by the Author.

I couldn’t dwell on that too much while I was singing. If I had, I would have teared up, and then I wouldn’t have been able to sing at all.

But now, after the music has faded and the incense has cleared, I’ve been thinking: just because Father Rick is gone doesn’t mean I can’t keep pestering him. Last week, I wrote he could become our heavenly Buzz correspondent. I was only half kidding.

Surely this priest is in a good place. Surely he’s still working on our behalf—keeping us on the straight and narrow, with his trademark dose of humor.

And I have no doubt he’ll keep answering our questions. We’ll just have to ask them through heavenly channels.

No Ouija boards!

Mary Kunz Goldman is known in Buffalo for having written the Buzz Column, a popular feature in The Buffalo News, as well as another hit column, “100 Things Every Western New Yorker Should Do At Least Once.” She is the author of two books, “Pennario” and “Sketches of Buffalo.” Enjoy her independent Substack publication at MaryKunzGoldman.Substack.com. New stories appear just about every day!

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