Encounter at Medjugorje led to the priesthood, lasting friendship

As a Mobil Oil geophysicist for 18 years, Tom Weisbecker was responsible for finding deposits of oil and natural gas from the waters of the Gulf of Mexico to the sands of the Middle East.

His most important and greatest discovery, however, didn’t come in an oil or gas field but rather in the tiny village of Medjugorje in Bosnia-Herzegovina. That is where in 1991 Weisbecker found Father Don Shane, an archdiocesan priest from his hometown of Omaha, and the confirmation of a calling to the priesthood.

Thirty-five years after the first of 18 visits to Medjugorje, the former scientist reflected on a journey that led him to a lifetime devotion to Mary and his ordination in the Archdiocese of Omaha.

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Father Weisbecker, pastor of St. James Parish in Omaha and a self-proclaimed “fan” of Our Lady of Fatima, said he learned of Medjugorje shortly after six children there claimed to have seen the Blessed Mother for the first time on June 24, 1981.

“The Houston Chronicle had a little bitty article about these six kids who said they saw the Blessed Mother in Yugoslavia in some town, started with M, I knew I couldn’t pronounce,” he said. “The second day, there was another smaller one further back in the paper that said they saw her again. So, it was definitely on my radar.”

Another newspaper story seven years later also piqued his interest.

In 1988, Weisbecker, who was living in Midland, Texas, read a six-page article in the local Catholic newspaper about Diocese of San Angelo Bishop Michael Pfeifer’s pilgrimage to Medjugorje. It’s an article Father Weisbecker has kept to this day.

A year later, Mobil transferred him to Turkey.

Living in Ankara in 1989, he attended a Sunday Mass at the Vatican embassy. On the one-page bulletin was an ad for a Medjugorje pilgrimage.

“After a week or two, I finally called the guy, and the day I called everybody else canceled,” Father Weisbecker said. “So we went.”

That “guy” was Robert Thorn, who later became Father Robert Thorn, a priest of the Diocese of La Crosse, Wisconsin.

For the next two years living in Ankara, Weisbecker made a yearly pilgrimage to Medjugorje.

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“The thing about Medjugorje is you encounter her there – whether you know it or not,” he said. “There’s a peace, there’s a joy, there’s a faith that is palpable. You can taste it.”

In 1991, on the third day of his third pilgrimage from Ankara – a three-day drive because of an airline strike – Weisbecker was at Mass and had a question for the Blessed Mother.

“I was getting interested in the priesthood, so I said, ‘OK, I lived in Dallas, Houston, Midland, New Mexico, grew up in Omaha – where do you want me to go?’”

At that 10 a.m. weekday Mass in Medjugorje, Weisbecker got an answer when the priest scheduled to say Mass was a no-show and a priest from the United States was called to the altar.

“There’s this priest from Omaha, Nebraska, who I never heard of; ‘Did you want me to talk to him?’” he asked the Blessed Mother.

The priest was Father Shane, who was making a pilgrimage with a group from Sts. Peter and Paul Parish, where he was pastor. 

On that day, he and one of the pilgrims had a chance meeting with one of the six visionaries, Vicka Ivanković (now Ivanković-Mijatović). 

“‘When I talk to Our Lady tonight, is there anything you’d like me to ask her?’” Father Shane, now retired, recalled Vicka asking.

The parishioner, who battled a health ailment said, “I did not come here to get well. I came here so I could be closer to Jesus.” 

Vicka, Father Shane said, smiled and said she’d tell Our Lady. 

She then asked Father Shane, “What about you?” 

Dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, he told her that he was a priest.

“Just ask her if I can be a good priest. She gave us a blessing and she went,” he said.

Shortly after, a tour guide went to Father Shane and told him that the priest who had been scheduled to offer the English Mass wouldn’t make it and asked if he’d offer the Mass.

He did, and that was Father Weisbecker’s first encounter with the priest from his hometown whose families for a time lived just blocks apart in the St. Bernard Parish neighborhood.

“He (Father Shane) gave a great homily as he normally does and usually there’s a gaggle of people who want to talk to Father, but there was only one person at the bottom of the stairs and it was me,” Father Weisbecker said.

Weisbecker asked if Father Shane had time to talk, so they embarked on a more than three-hour walk through the village.

“We’re walking, and I’m enjoying it,” Father Shane said. “Tom is sharing with me his life; he thought about getting married. We just kept walking because it was so pretty. It’s one of the special memories of my life.”

During that soul-bearing conversation, Weisbecker wanted to know from Father Shane how he knew he was called to be a priest.

“‘What made you want to become a priest?’ I asked him that,” Father Weisbecker said. “He told me the story of how he had wrestled with that for a long time. That seemed to say it was OK for me to have gone a long way, too.”

They wanted to exchange phone numbers and addresses but neither had a piece of paper. So Father Weisbecker pulled a Turkish bill from his wallet, tore it in half, and each wrote their addresses and exchanged halves.

“Some day if you ever get ordained, we’ll bring the two pieces of the bill together because I sure want to celebrate that and be at your first Mass,” Father Shane said.

Weisbecker returned to Omaha, met then-vocations director Father David Reeson, enrolled at Sacred Heart School of Theology in Hales Corner, Wisconsin, in 1992 and was ordained in 1996 at age 43.

At the new priest’s first Mass, Father Shane was the homilist, and shortly after ordination Father Weisbecker made another pilgrimage to Medjugorje.

Father Shane still carries that half of the bill with him every day.

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Father Weisbecker – a 1971 graduate of Rummel High School (a predecessor of Roncalli Catholic High School in Omaha) and a graduate in just three years from New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, Socorro, New Mexico, in 1974 – said there’s no question the Blessed Mother led him to the priesthood.

“I think she moved me to Turkey. God has a plan,” he said. “I loved what I was doing. Making tons of money, traveling the world. 

“I prayed every year a rosary novena to get married. After 18 years of that (working for Mobil Oil), this (priesthood) is something better,” he learned. “The Lord had to lead me slowly, slowly, slowly.”

He cites the Gospel story of the rich young man as a reflection of his journey of service to God.

“That was me. Could you give this up and come follow Me?” he said. “I didn’t want to go away in tears and said yes. The Blessed Mother, she touched my heart deeply and God tricked me, if you will, but I thank and praise God every day and Blessed Mother, how could you get me here? How could this have happened?”

No matter where he was living, the young Weisbecker stayed true to his Catholic faith and his devotion to the Blessed Mother.

In 1987, during a Marian Year in the Church, he committed to praying a daily rosary and has been faithful to it ever since.

He recalled that as a boy his family prayed the rosary, noting that he received a rosary from Lourdes, France, at age 7.

“I had a great devotion to Our Lady,” he said. “She’s been very, very dear. In Turkey, I made a consecration to her. She’s my mom.”

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