He left home and wandered, serving in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone, working on an Israeli kibbutz, helping orphans in the Bronx. He also drank. He didn't consider himself an alcoholic, but every time he thought someone was about to discover how much he imbibed, he would move to the next adventure. In September 1970, he ended up at Loyola House seminary outside Detroit where he began training for the Jesuit priesthood. One of Wigmore's first work assignments as a novice was helping out at a drug and alcohol treatment center, which required him to go through a 17-week program for addicts. It helped him stop drinking for a while, but by the time he reached his next assignment, assisting the chaplain at Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, Ohio, Wigmore was drinking again. He said he smuggled gallons of communion wine into his room and frequented the bars. "I'm heading for hell," he remembers thinking.
In December 1972, Wigmore returned to Detroit and confessed his addiction to the Jesuits. He sought out a counselor he knew at the treatment center where he had volunteered, who asked him: "Are you willing to go to any lengths to get sober?" "Yes," Wigmore said. But he was broke. Where could he go? "Bill, there's a place for people who don't have anything. It's called the Salvation Army." He slept at the shelter and cleaned houses during the day feeling "naked, raw and unglued." The women of the houses he scrubbed would give him sandwiches he had to eat outside on the back steps. But he didn't drink. After a year of sobriety, the church no longer spoke to him, so Wigmore he took a job at the treatment center as a counselor trainee and began learning how to help other addicts. He put his faith in the 12-step recovery program, and counseling took him to centers across the country and eventually to Austin in 1990. He is now chief executive officer of Austin Recovery.
It took 20 years for Wigmore to reconnect with Jesus. Not the superhero Jesus of his youth, but a powerful liberator. Through research, he discovered the Christian roots of AA and a spiritual approach to recovery. "I think that's what's happening in recovery: Christ is present in us," he said. The priesthood called to him again. But as a married man in his mid-50s, Wigmore no longer fit the Catholic Church's preferred mold, so he tried the Episcopal Church. He has spent years working with the Episcopal Diocese of Texas to prepare for the priesthood and build his ministry. Thirty-four years after he left the seminary, Wigmore was ordained in January and is the kind of priest that the Rev. Howard Gray — the former superior of that Jesuit seminary — thought he would become.
Sierra Leone RPCV Bill Wigmore gives hope to addicts through his special ministry
A resurrection ministry
Easter story gives hope to addicts through priest's special ministry
By Eileen E. Flynn
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, April 08, 2007
The priest is tall and wears blue jeans and a beige stole. He greets everyone like a long-lost friend. When the music stops and everyone has taken a seat, the priest steps to the lectern. "Hi, I'm Bill. I'm an alcoholic."
Some of the roughly 100 people gathered to hear him are patients here at Austin Recovery, the Northeast Austin center that helps people overcome addiction and that hosts the service in its converted gym. Some have been sober for years, some for days.
The Rev. Bill Wigmore is one of them. Thirty-four years ago, Wigmore's alcoholism led him to drop out of the Jesuit seminary and landed him on skid row in Detroit, the beginning of a long journey back to sobriety and his faith.
Today, as Christians worldwide rejoice in the triumph of their risen Lord, Wigmore, 61, will preach his first Easter sermon as an ordained Episcopal priest at the service he created six years ago for people in drug and alcohol recovery.
The stories that ministers recite leading up to Easter hit home with Wigmore's flock: Jesus alone in the garden, wondering if he must really endure the pain of crucifixion, then being betrayed by his friends before suffering a slow and brutal death.
But Wigmore is here to help them focus on the part of the story that addicts tend to overlook: the resurrection.
There may be no better man to tell that story than Wigmore. A man who saw his life disappearing into a bottle, who lost faith, who dried out at the Salvation Army and struggled to overcome his feeling of worthlessness.
Wigmore calls his ministry The Prodigal service. It's really a "campus ministry for drunks," he said with a broad smile.
The service includes a blend of scripture and the tenets of 12-step recovery. The Bible and the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, the twin belief systems that helped Wigmore come back from the brink.
Each speaks a different language, but, as he likes to point out to anyone who will listen, both the church and AA share the same Christian roots.
Maryse Saffle is listening. She started attending The Prodigal service more than five years ago, after her addiction to alcohol and drugs led her to Austin Recovery.
"This place saved my life," she said. But Wigmore's service, she said, sparked her spiritual awakening.
"I remember (Wigmore) looking into my eyes," she said. "He said, 'You have the spirit of recovery.' "
She had been sober for a month and didn't believe it herself. But "he saw something in me that I didn't."
Saffle now counsels addicts in Temple.
'I'm heading for hell'
Wigmore grew up in Manhattan, the youngest of three children born to a longshoreman and a schoolteacher. Two things dominated his Irish Catholic world in the 1950s: alcohol and the church.
While other kids in the neighborhood played stickball, he played Mass with communion hosts pilfered from the parish. At home, his father — who has since died — drank heavily, Wigmore says. But in his family, you weren't an alcoholic if you could keep a job.
Wigmore said he started drinking at age 12, "a real rite of passage in my neighborhood." But he vowed he wouldn't become like his dad.
"He would rage, break up the furniture," he said. "It was an embarrassment. . . . I swore I was never going to be like that."
He left home and wandered, serving in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone, working on an Israeli kibbutz, helping orphans in the Bronx. He also drank. He didn't consider himself an alcoholic, but every time he thought someone was about to discover how much he imbibed, he would move to the next adventure.
In September 1970, he ended up at Loyola House seminary outside Detroit where he began training for the Jesuit priesthood.
One of Wigmore's first work assignments as a novice was helping out at a drug and alcohol treatment center, which required him to go through a 17-week program for addicts. It helped him stop drinking for a while, but by the time he reached his next assignment, assisting the chaplain at Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, Ohio, Wigmore was drinking again. He said he smuggled gallons of communion wine into his room and frequented the bars.
"I'm heading for hell," he remembers thinking.
He knew he couldn't hide in the seminary any longer and began plotting his next escape. Somewhere far away.
That's when he crumbled. "If (India and Australia) are your only choices at age 27," he thought, "there's something wrong with you."
In December 1972, Wigmore returned to Detroit and confessed his addiction to the Jesuits. He sought out a counselor he knew at the treatment center where he had volunteered, who asked him: "Are you willing to go to any lengths to get sober?"
"Yes," Wigmore said. But he was broke. Where could he go?
"Bill, there's a place for people who don't have anything. It's called the Salvation Army."
He slept at the shelter and cleaned houses during the day feeling "naked, raw and unglued." The women of the houses he scrubbed would give him sandwiches he had to eat outside on the back steps. But he didn't drink.
After a year of sobriety, the church no longer spoke to him, so Wigmore he took a job at the treatment center as a counselor trainee and began learning how to help other addicts.
He put his faith in the 12-step recovery program, and counseling took him to centers across the country and eventually to Austin in 1990. He is now chief executive officer of Austin Recovery.
It took 20 years for Wigmore to reconnect with Jesus. Not the superhero Jesus of his youth, but a powerful liberator. Through research, he discovered the Christian roots of AA and a spiritual approach to recovery.
"I think that's what's happening in recovery: Christ is present in us," he said.
The priesthood called to him again. But as a married man in his mid-50s, Wigmore no longer fit the Catholic Church's preferred mold, so he tried the Episcopal Church. He has spent years working with the Episcopal Diocese of Texas to prepare for the priesthood and build his ministry.
Thirty-four years after he left the seminary, Wigmore was ordained in January and is the kind of priest that the Rev. Howard Gray — the former superior of that Jesuit seminary — thought he would become.
His gifts "had to be molded, they had to be softened, had to be touched by compassion and love," Gray said. "I think that's what he's gained over the years."
'Forgiven and loved'
In the converted gym at Austin Recovery, Wigmore's congregation exudes a joyous energy. People don't just shake hands during the peace exchange, they give bear hugs.
With his cropped white hair and kind eyes, Wigmore has a priestly aura, but his self-deprecating laugh and frank confessions about his own foibles endear him to people who have never felt welcome in church.
He invites them all to receive communion. A few of the newcomers, even the big guys with bulging muscles and tatoos, look scared, as though they might just crumble at any moment.
Wigmore smiles as he hands each one a piece of bread.
"Most of us got here because we screwed up," he tells them.
He'll have another message for them today during his Easter sermon.
"We're forgiven and we're loved in spite of anything and everything we've ever done or ever failed to do," he will tell his flock. "That's the Easter story. That's our story. . . . What drunk or drug addict can't relate to that?"
eflynn@statesman.com; 445-3812
To learn more
To see more about The Prodigal service and read sermons, go to www.austinrecovery.org/community/sundayservices.asp.
