Remembering Bishop Dale Melczek 1938-2022
The Most Reverend Fr. Dale Melczek, D.D., who led Gary’s Catholic Diocese for more than two decades, died on August 25, 2022 at age 83.
Bishop Melczek was born in Detroit in 1938. In June of 1964, he was ordained as a priest by Cardinal Dearden. John Paul II appointed Melczek as the third bishop of Gary on June 1, 1996. The Gary Diocese that covers four counties in northwestern Indiana and it’s about 160,000 Catholics.
The fifth and current of Gary, Bishop Robert J. McClory described Bishop Melczek as a “true shepherd who loved his flock in the Diocese of Gary.”
“He was a tireless servant and a compassionate pastor. We have been blessed tremendously to have such a hopeful and caring leader. Until his last days, Bishop Melczek was still looking forward for new ways to share the love of Jesus in Northwest Indiana,” he added. “We now entrust him to the love of Jesus so that he may be drawn forward into the Lord’s eternal embrace.”
Bishop Melczek has served on countless national and international committees. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Human Values Committee, Committee on Marriage and the Family, Committee on Social Development and World Peace, International Policy, Administrative Board, and Eastern Europe.
While he was a member to the Board of Catholic Relief Services, Bishop Melczek made many summer trips on behalf of CRS from 1997 to 2002. He spent two weeks in the Philippines, visited Myanmar and Cambodia, visited the Catholic Relief Services’ projects in Indonesia and East Timor and visited the Democratic Republic of Congo and Congo Brazzaville. He visited Angola and Tanzania.
From 2002-2005, he served as Chairman of the Bishops’ Committee on the Laity.
Bishop Melczek also served as a member of the Joint Committee of Roman Catholic and Orthodox Bishops. He served the National Association of Catholic Chaplains as episcopal liaison from 2002-2007.
As co-chair of the Race Relations Council of Northwest Indiana, he issued pastoral letters in 2002 and 2003 advocating diversity and denouncing racism in northwest Indiana; “The Many Faces of Our Church: a Pastoral Letter on Cultural Diversity” and “Created in God’s Image: a Pastoral Letter on the Sin of Racism and a Call to Conversion.”
In November 2014, Bishop Dale Melczek retired. Upon his retirement that he hoped to be remembered for taking steps fighting racism.
In his retirement, he served as administrator of the parish of St. Mary of the Lake in Gary.
He is interred in the east transept of the Cathedral of the Holy Angels.
Contributing sources were Associated Press and Catholic News Wires and the Diocese of Gary website.