Father Alfred P. Corbo has been a priest for almost 70 years, and has only served in three parishes.

Corbo, the oldest priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago, will turn 97 in April, and on May 1, he will celebrate his 70th anniversary of ordination.

He served for eight years as an assistant pastor of Our Lady of the Angels, 23 years as assistant pastor and then pastor of Holy Rosary Parish and 21 years as pastor of St. Gertrude Parish in Franklin Park.

Asked if those long assignments mean that the people of his parishes loved him, Corbo laughed.

“It means they didn’t know what to do with me,” he said.

The things he is most proud of are the things that come with being a priest, he said: “Saying Mass. Doing the sacraments. Hearing confessions. Counseling, if anybody trusted you.”

Corbo, who has been retired since 2008, lives with his niece, Deanna Cole, and her family in suburban Addison, spending a lot of time in his recliner in the living room and watching the news and praying.

“I keep praying,” he said. “I spend more time with Jesus. I talk to him about the things that are happening. What’s going to happen? His will be done.”

And, he said, he is “waiting for the big call.”

Corbo was born in Elmwood Park in 1929, the second of three children, and knew as a young boy that he wanted to be a priest, he said.

“I had altars in the house,” he remembered.

When he graduated from St. William School, he went on to Quigley Preparatory Seminary, which at that time had a five-year program. After Quigley, it was directly to the University of St. Mary of the Lake in Mundelein for seven more years of education and formation.

His first Mass was also the occasion of first Communion for his younger sister, Cole’s mother.

After being ordained, he said, he became the fourth assistant pastor at Our Lady of the Angels, and he knew all the others because they had been ahead of him in seminary.

On Dec. 1, 1958, the day a horrific fire tore through the school, Corbo was at Walther Memorial Hospital with other priests, visiting patients, hearing confessions and preparing people who wanted to receive Communion the following day.

The fire killed 92 students and three teaching sisters, and dozens more students were injured.

The fire and its aftermath were “horrible. Just horrible. All the people who lost children.”

The assistant pastors stayed longer in their assignments at Our Lady of the Angels to comfort those families, Corbo said.

At Holy Rosary, Corbo served under two pastors before becoming pastor himself in 1974. Those were the years when parishes began implementing the changes of the Second Vatican Council, and Corbo recalled that as a great joy.

“We were so glad because we could use the vernacular in the liturgy,” he said. “Using the Latin, it seemed like there was a barrier between us and the people. They didn’t seem to grasp what was going on.”

The first time he celebrated Mass in English, facing the people, he said, “it was like a shade went up and we could talk to the people directly.”

In 1987, when Corbo was told that his time at Holy Rosary was ending and he needed a new assignment, “it was the first time I had to go before a board of about three priests,” he said. “They gave me a list of three or four parishes, and I had to research them and say which one I wanted to go to, and answer questions about it. They made the decision.”

He ended up at St. Gertrude, which wasn’t far from where some of his old parishioners at Holy Rosary had moved when they left their old neighborhood.

“There were people who grew up at Holy Rosary while he was there and got married there, and then when they found out he was at St. Gertrude, they started going there, and they’re still there,” Cole explained.

It was at St. Gertrude that Corbo met the Neocatechumenal Way, recognized by the church as a “post-baptismal catechumenate” that works in small groups within a parish.

After he retired, he spent three years as a missionary for the Neocatechumenal Way in Duluth, Minnesota.

“We used to visit all kinds of parishes and ask the people if we could bring the catechesis to them,” Corbo said.

Now, Corbo follows the news from home. He was delighted with the election of Pope Leo XIV.

“I’m glad he’s American,” Corbo said. “That was a surprise. It was an opportunity for the church to show that she is open to everyone. People think the church is closed off, but she is open to everyone.”