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Father George W. Hommel, a former regional dean of Ulster County who served as administrator and pastor of St. John parish in West Hurley-Woodstock for 25 years, died Nov. 29 at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Yonkers. He was 80.
Before his retirement in July, he had been regional vicar/dean of Ulster County since 2010, and senior priest administrator since 2014 of St. John’s, where he served as pastor, 1994-2014. He had also served as administrator of St. Francis de Sales parish, Phoenicia, beginning in 2009.
He had resided at St. John Vianney Priests Residence in the Bronx.
Cardinal Dolan celebrated the Funeral Mass Dec. 4 at St. John’s. The homilist was Father Christopher H. Berean, pastor of St. Mary of the Snow, Saugerties-St. Joseph, Glasco, and administrator, St. John the Evangelist, Saugerties.
“All of Ulster County is very sad of his very quick passing,” Father Berean told CNY in a phone interview. “It was quite a shock to all of us. Everybody up here loved him.”
Father Berean, ordained in 1987, said he and Father Hommel had been “the very best of friends for 25 years.”
Father Hommel “did all kinds of really good things” for a vast number of people, Father Berean recalled, including visiting on a regular basis those in nursing homes and hospitals. “He gave a lot of comfort to them.
“He was very well known up here, and throughout the whole county. He was a really wonderful man. I never met anybody who didn’t like him. He’s going to be a tremendous loss to all of us.”
Father Berean said Father Hommel “treated everybody as an individual.”
“It didn’t matter who you were. Everybody, every soul, was important to him. That’s the way he ran his priesthood.”
His pastoral approach was “to lead by consensus. He was more of a person who went along with what the committees wanted to do. That was kind of his way of doing things.”
“He really did love what he did,” Father Berean said. “It was more than a vocation, it was his life.”
Father Hommel also loved to cook, entertain family and friends, and watch the television game show “Jeopardy!”
He served on the faculty of Maria Regina High School, Hartsdale, 1990-1994, and Archbishop Stepinac High School, White Plains, 1971-1990. He was parochial vicar of Blessed Sacrament, New Rochelle, 1966-1971.
Born in the Bronx, he graduated from St. Raymond’s Elementary School and Mount St. Michael Academy, the Bronx. He was ordained in 1966 after studying for the priesthood at Cathedral College and St. Joseph’s Seminary in Dunwoodie.
Interment was at St. Francis de Sales Cemetery in Shandaken.
