Father Wally Kasuboski rides on horseback through the jungles of Panama as he is followed by his guides when there were no roads. This is one of the earliest photos at the beginning of his mission in Panama. During the rainy season, there was nothing better than a horse to get through the deep mud. The Ripon native died last week, but his legacy lives on.
Father Wally Kasuboski leads mass in the candlelight in his chapel in Panama.
FATHER WALLY Kasuboski takes his shoes off to cool off at the dam site when it was nearly complete.
FATHER WALLY KASUBOSKI performs communion at his church in Tortí, Panama.
FATHER WALLY Kasuboski stands by a river near where he lived in Panama. It’s one location he was doing work on back in 2007.
Father Wally Kasuboski speaks to the Ripon Rotary Club.
Surrounded by the other contestants, Father Wally Kasuboski is named winner of “Heroes of Panama for 2016.”
A group of people of all ages and gender from the Ripon, Wisconsin area have traveled to the jungles of Panama to do mission work with Father Wally.
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Father Wally Kasuboski rides on horseback through the jungles of Panama as he is followed by his guides when there were no roads. This is one of the earliest photos at the beginning of his mission in Panama. During the rainy season, there was nothing better than a horse to get through the deep mud. The Ripon native died last week, but his legacy lives on.
Ripon native Walter Paul Kasuboski, better known by many as “Father Wally” or “Padre Pablo,” started every day the same way.
Around 5:30 each morning, the Capuchin priest held mass by candlelight in a little chapel near his home in Panama.
The chapel could hold about 10 people. Roosters crowed and monkeys hollered in the jungle during mass.
“There were always bats flying around, so he’d be saying mass and this little bat would just be part of the mass,” said Robin Wallenfang, one of Wally’s friends who went on 15 mission trips to help him in Panama.
Sometimes, if Father Wally had a large group of volunteers from the Ripon area, he would lead mass in one of the meeting rooms on his compound.
Father Wally Kasuboski leads mass in the candlelight in his chapel in Panama.
“It was quite a moving experience every morning in that little chapel,” Wally’s brother Peter Kasuboski said. “... He did it every day even though we were gone.”
In fact, Peter Sensenbrenner, a friend of Father Wally who went on seven mission trips to Panama, said that morning mass would draw Catholics and non-Catholics “because it was just so special.”
Following mass, Wally held a morning meeting, which consisted of a prayer and then figuring out where crews of American volunteers and Panamanians would be working for the day to enhance the lives of the local people.
“He talked to each one of them, they said a prayer every morning together and he’d give instructions on what to do,” Peter Kasuboski said.
Father Wally held his final mass July 18, from his hospital room in Chicago. He accidentally grabbed the book for the 2020 liturgical year instead of 2022, but it turned out to be appropriate.
Wallenfang recalled the reading given at Wally’s final mass was about “taking care of the poor,” which is what he spent his life doing.
“I feel so privileged to have been a part of his final mass,” Wallenfang said, after being by her friend’s side when he died two days later.
Panama and Ripon lost a hero last week Wednesday, when Father Wally passed away at the age of 75. He returned to the United States after suffering heart trouble, and had a stroke while in the hospital.
Since 1988, Father Wally has been a missionary in the jungles of Panama, where he received the nickname “Padre Pablo.”
“My middle name is Paul, so in Panama they call me Pablo — there, the people know me as ‘Padre Pablo,’” he explained in the 2016 documentary, “From Mass to the Mountain.”
Father Wally oversaw the construction of a school, a hospital, roads, churches, bridges, electrical and plumbing upgrades and maintenance on existing buildings.
The biggest projects were the construction of water systems in eastern Panama, two of those being the Tortí Water System and the Cañasas Water System. The Cañasas Water System is a dam and reservoir that serves more than 7,000 people during the dry season.
“Without water, there is no life,” Father Wally said in the documentary. “... Water [is] a gift from God that we’ve got to fight to preserve. If you don’t have anything to die for, do you have anything to live for?”
Aside from leading construction projects, Father Wally was a teacher — not only of faith, but of trades and life-skills — as well as a negotiator.
Surrounded by the other contestants, Father Wally Kasuboski is named winner of “Heroes of Panama for 2016.”
Throughout his life, Father Wally was a champion of social change and civil rights for the marginalized. His efforts inspired more than 190 people from Ripon, surrounding communities and even other states to go on mission trips to help him in Panama.
The people of east Panama held a body-less funeral mass for Padre Pablo last week Saturday.
In an email to Wally’s family, Panamanian Andrés Domínguez noted Father Wally’s death has not been easy on the people of eastern Panama.
“Yesterday, the mass was a very special moment. I don’t remember seeing all the people at a funeral before with tears in their eyes,” Domínguez said. “In our parish, we will keep some belongings of Father Paul.
“He was an exceptional being, someone very difficult to match him in all the work he did. Time will take care of healing the wounds that his departure has left in us.”
A funeral and visitation in the United States will be held at St. Lawrence Seminary Chapel at 301 Church St. in Mt. Calvary, Wis. Wednesday (today). Visitation will be from 9 to 9:45 a.m., followed by a Memorial Service.
Father Wally was born Jan. 28, 1947 in Ripon and grew up on a farm southeast of town.
Wally had a “typical childhood,” playing games and doing a lot of chores on the farm, according to his brother, Fred Kasuboski.
Peter Kasuboski recalled working side by side with Wally, milking cows and doing construction work.
In fact, Wally and Peter Kasuboski worked together on many of the buildings on the farm, aside from the main barn.
“We all pitched in to help do those barns,” Peter Kasuboski said. “When he came home from college or seminary school, he would lay blocks and I was a block tender. We worked pretty hard.”
One day, Wally woke up, felt a calling and believed that it was his mission to become a priest, Peter Kasuboski noted.
“It was in his blood,” Fred Kasuboski said. “[There was] never much debate about it; he just decided to do it and did it.”
After graduating from Ripon High School, Father Wally received a degree in theology from the St. Francis School of Pastoral Ministry in Milwaukee and a law degree from the Antioch School of Law in Washington, D.C. He also went to seminary school at St. Lawrence Seminary.
Before he was ordained, Father Wally once hitchhiked his way from Milwaukee to Ripon in order to come home for Christmas, Fred’s wife, Sally, recalled.
“Somebody was driving a semi up here, and they picked him up and brought him home,” she said.
Father Wally was invested in the Order of Capuchin Franciscans in 1967 and was ordained to the priesthood June 1, 1974.
Soon after ordination, Wally focused on missionary work. First, he was sent to Mexico to learn Spanish and then to Nicaragua.
In fact, Peter Kasuboski remembers bringing the bell from St. Wenceslaus’ old parochial school in Ripon down to Nicaragua with Wally and their oldest brother, Raymond.
“My dad volunteered us to take it down at no cost,” Peter Kasuboski said.
While in Nicaragua, Father Wally’s path almost crossed with Wallenfang, who was a foreign exchange student at the time.
Wallenfang was traveling with her host family and natives told them that “there is an American priest in this town — you should go meet him.”
Her host mother called a taxi, but it never showed up. Years later, Wallenfang learned the American priest everyone was talking about was Father Wally.
“It was really funny that he would be in that part of the world and I would be there, but because of a taxi driver that never showed up, we didn’t meet,” she said.
In 1988, the Capuchin order sent Father Wally to Panama, under orders of obedience.
“I had no choice,” he said in the documentary. “Normally, we receive our orders and we complete them. So I said, ‘OK, I’ll go.’”
FATHER WALLY KASUBOSKI performs communion at his church in Tortí, Panama.
When he arrived in Panama, Father Wally “totally embraced it,” and realized that the need for clean water was immense, Sensenbrenner said.
“All of a sudden, that earthly thing became his priority,” Sensenbrenner said. “Wally believed, ‘I need to find or make available, quality water, so these people can live. Once they can live, then we get involved in spiritual activity.’”
Soon after getting to Panama, Wally was visiting local people down the Pan-American Highway on a hot dusty day.
He walked into a building and the person inside thanked him for his visit and offered him a glass of water.
“When they passed it to me, I looked into it and it had about 25 little squigglies swimming around,” Wally said in the documentary. “... Every house I visited, it was the same story.”
That water was contaminated with microbes and parasites and put residents at risk of life-threatening cholera.
After returning to his small chapel, Father Wally got down on his knees and prayed for wisdom that would help him help the people of eastern Panama solve the problem.
“When he realized what he was doing, he said [to his superiors], ‘If I’m going to start something major here, you’re not going to move me in three years — I’m staying,’” Wallenfang recalled.
Father Wally’s predecessor didn’t feel the same need to help the people of eastern Panama.
“[Wally] started from scratch, basically, because the old priest who was there before him just lived in this hut,” Peter Kasuboski said. “He didn’t worry about freshwater; he didn’t worry about electricity — he just went about being a poor missionary priest.
“Wally didn’t want to be just a poor missionary priest; he wanted to bring fresh water, feed people and make sure they could feed themselves.”
In the early days, Father Wally would have to be “dewormed” every time he came home.
“He’d have to take worm medicine to deworm. That went on for five years, until he got a few water systems in,” Peter Kasuboski said. “Then, he started thinking about how he can help these people with fresh water from out of the mountains [and] out of the streams, instead of carrying five-gallon buckets of water every day.”
Around that time, Wally began to focus on providing education to the locals about getting products to market, and he started building culverts, bridges and schools.
“He just recognized the need of these people to become more self-sufficient,” Peter Kasuboski said.
Father Wally Kasuboski speaks to the Ripon Rotary Club.
As a missionary, Wally connected people in Panama with engineers, donors and construction companies, as well as created jobs, enabling locals to learn a trade, farm and fish.
“He worked with individuals in the area to achieve certain skill sets and to better their lives, so they could move on to do wonderful things,” Sensenbrenner said. “... He would work with them on skill sets for auto mechanics, electricians, plumbers or farming rice.
“He would teach them to be better people in society, but also gave them additional hope to be better human beings.”
Peter Kasuboski added that Father Wally believed in the saying: “If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.”
In addition to helping with infrastructure projects, Wally was an activist against deforestation as he recognized the negative impact the industry was having on the environment by causing a lack of water.
Wally negotiated with the government in an effort to protect the Tortí watershed, and helped ensure the Cañasas watershed — all 1,600 acres — was titled to the local water committee.
“He negotiated like an attorney would because people didn’t know what a land title was,” Wallenfang said.
With the help of many volunteers from Ripon and the surrounding area, the Cañasas Water System and its dam were finished, completing a decades-long project.
The dam holds 10 million gallons of water, serving nearly 8,000 people in the dry season.
“We’re building a dam because, during the long dry season, the river dries up and there’s no water,” Wally said in the documentary. “The dam will provide water at the times when the river dries up.”
Beginning in 1994, Father Wally began recruiting people from his hometown of Ripon to accompany him on mission trips to Panama.
Wally and his family have encouraged people to help financially and participate in mission trips to his compound in Wacuco, Panama.
The trips usually lasted around 10 days, and left attendees feeling inspired. The Ripon Rotary Club also has played a major role in Father Wally’s mission through physical and financial support.
“By far this is Ripon Rotary’s most significant international project,” Rotarian Lee Prellwitz said.
Over the years, two Ripon Rotarians organized 23 working mission trips, as well as helped organize and fundraise material shipments. Items shipped included bicycles, clothes, school supplies, tools, tractors, construction equipment and much more.
In fact, it was through Rotary that Sensenbrenner met Father Wally. He wrote a matching grant to Rotary International in 1996 on behalf of Father Wally for the building of a major dam in the Cañasas Water System.
A group of people of all ages and gender from the Ripon, Wisconsin area have traveled to the jungles of Panama to do mission work with Father Wally.
Ripon Rotary provided $35,000 and Rotary International supplied $35,000 in matching funds.
Sensenbrenner met Wally in-person a few years later, when he came for his annual visit, before going on seven-consecutive mission trips from 2009 through 2016.
“My visits with Wally in Panama validated the things I do teaching at Ripon College, and that is management and leadership,” Sensenbrenner said. “I think father Wally really exhibited the servant/leader-style of management because he was teaching people skills.”
Riponite Bill Boesch also was active in helping Father Wally’s mission, going on more than a dozen trips to Panama over the years.
In the early days, Boesch said there was no electricity on Father Wally’s compound besides a few military generators.
“One of my first projects there was to help distribute the power from these several generators he had to provide power to his rice equipment, farming equipment,” he said.
Eventually, Father Wally got electricity to the facilities. The part that sticks out to Boesch about his time with Wally was the way he interacted with the Panamanians.
“He met his men every day; they talked about work projects that they had to do and his men were very conscientious,” Boesch recalled. “I was always impressed with that. He was the leader of the group, in terms of getting all these things out.”
In the meantime, Wally also was a parish priest.
“He spent a lot of time at several other local locations they built, remote churches,” Boesch said. “He would spend time there on weekends for mass. At the big church in Tortí, he did a lot of parish work there and weddings.”
Boesch especially was impressed with how Father Wally responded to the many needs of the Panamanian people.
“He would make time for all kinds of people,” Boesch said. “They were constantly asking for help and assistance for something. He helped a lot of people financially, emotionally, religiously and also construction wise.”
While Wally’s accomplishments helped improve the standard of living for many in eastern Panama, it didn’t come without a few bruises along the way.
Boesch often joked with Father Wally that he “had a death wish” because of how many times Wally was injured.
In the early days of building his mission center, there were snakes in a pile of lumber, so Wally decided to light a fire.
“He put a bunch of gas on it and made a little line to get back at a safe distance, but the fumes floated,” Wallenfang said. “When he lit the match, the fumes around him went ‘kerpoof.’”
FATHER WALLY Kasuboski stands by a river near where he lived in Panama. It’s one location he was doing work on back in 2007.
One of his men described Wally as a “ball of fire” when that happened, Wallenfang added.
The fire was extinguished, Wally washed himself off and ended up in a Panamanian hospital, where doctors contemplated cutting his leg off.
Wallenfang noted Wally’s men had to kidnap him from the hospital in Panama and take him to a U.S. military facility for treatment.
“He thought he was not going to live through that,” Boesch said of the burns.
Another time, Wally was in Tortí, standing on the side of the road and waiting for a bus to go by.
The driver behind the bus got impatient and went around the bus, directly hitting Wally, “busting up his collarbone,” Boesch recalled.
One time, when Boesch was with him, they loaded a gravel truck with cement bags to be hauled to the dam for construction.
As they were riding in Wally’s pickup truck to the dam, Wally grew concerned that the gravel truck wasn’t coming and that something had happened to its drivers.
He made a three-point turnaround, but in the process the front wheel dropped off the shoulder of the road, leaving the pickup “bouncing there, going back and forth,” Boesch recalled.
FATHER WALLY Kasuboski takes his shoes off to cool off at the dam site when it was nearly complete.
“I crawled out and hung on to the passenger door, trying to hold the truck up; his workers in the pickup also did the same thing,” Boesch said. “He backed out slowly and we got the pickup back on the road on all four wheels.
“That was kind of scary. Ever since then, I’ve always been telling him, ‘You know, you have this death wish?’ And he’d say, ‘Well, it’s going to happen sooner or later.’”
Despite the occasional injury, Father Wally made lasting memories with those who knew him.
In fact, it was Wally who officiated Peter Kasuboski’s wedding to his wife, Laurie.
Some of Laurie Kasuboski’s favorite memories of Father Wally come from when he would stay with her and Peter Kasuboski in the summer.
“He was very religious,” Laurie Kasuboski said. “We had mass at our house several times.
“We invited a lot of people over to have mass with us in our living room on Sunday morning, and then we made breakfast after. That was fun.”
Peter Kasuboski’s favorite memories of his brother are of how he could make anyone laugh.
Peter and Laurie Kasuboski went down to Panama when Father Wally was nominated for the Heroes of Panama award.
Because Laurie Kasuboski hadn’t been to Panama before, Wally took her to see the dam and reservoir, which was just completed.
She still remembers driving up the mountain to the dam, “slipping and sliding, this way and that way" until they got to a flooded river, which Wally drove through to get to the dam.
“That was quite an experience, but then just to see the project when we got up on top,” Laurie Kasuboski said. “We left a flag of Wisconsin up there. That made it special.
“But when he then won the Heroes for Panama award, that was even better.”
For Sensenbrenner, the memory that stands out was the way Wally held mass and how much he enjoyed distributing communion, the blood and body of Christ.
“It was just like, wow, this man truly believes this, understands this and it’s very important to him,” Sensenbrenner said. “You started developing a greater understanding of it, just by his actions.”
Boesch and Wallenfang both cherished Father Wally’s abilities as a storyteller and how he would recite his experiences in Panama to anyone willing to listen.
In fact, when he retired, Father Wally intended to write a book about his experiences, according to Wallenfang and Laurie Kasuboski.
While Father Wally never got to write his book, his legacy will live on.
Wally received numerous awards for his efforts to improve the lives of those in eastern Panama, including the Vasco Nunez de Balboa in 1996, the highest civilian award in Panama; the Distinguished American Award from the American embassy in Panama in 2004; and the Heroes of Panama award in 2016.
Father Wally also received an honorary degree from Ripon College in 2010 and a Ripon High School Distinguished Alumni Award in 2008.
However, he didn’t help people for the recognition. He did it because it was the right thing to do.
“He doesn’t want a statue in his name; he doesn’t want a street named after him,” Sensenbrenner said. “When he won the Balboa award, he just kept saying, ‘There are other people more deserving.’
“… He didn’t enjoy that kind of accolade. Deserving as he was, he always felt uncomfortable about that.”
Wally was offered multiple positions in the catholic Capuchin Diocese, but turned them down because he didn’t want to abandon the projects in Panama.
Up until the end, Father Wally continued to touch people’s lives.
Wallenfang was with Wally for much of his last week on Earth and noted Father Wally was still impacting lives from the University of Chicago hospital.
“Even his nurse, who only knew him for that day, put his head on my shoulder, cried and started saying, ‘What a wonderful person. He did so many things for so many people,’” Wallenfang said.
She added that one doctor compared Father Wally to Padre Pio, a saint in the Catholic Church.
Wallenfang, along with Laurie and Peter Kasuboski, hope the Capuchins will continue Father Wally’s mission.
“The problem with replacing Wally is that he was so good at doing different things that unless they come up with somebody exceptional, it’s going to be tough,” Peter Kasuboski said.
Wallenfang added that she plans to carry on Father Wally’s legacy by leading mission trips to Panama with those from the surrounding Ripon community.
“I’m not finished,” she said. “And I said that to the Capuchins: ‘Our work and our support isn’t ending.’ And they said, ‘We’re going to continue that mission, we’re going to continue, don’t worry, we’re going to support it.’ And so are we because those people now are my friends.”
Sensenbrenner believes Father Wally’s legacy will live on with the people he trained to be self-sufficient.
“For his legacy to go forward, he spent time training people to take on responsibility and to carry the causes forward,” Sensenbrenner said.
While nothing lasts forever, Boesch hopes that Father Wally’s work in Panama will stand the test of time.
“He got something started down there,” Boesch said. “We hope that the men who he had working there, who were very dedicated to be with him, will be able to continue that mantra of keeping everything going down there.”
Joe Schulz served as the reporter of the Green Laker in 2019 and 2020, before being hired as a reporter for the Commonwealth in October 2020. He is from Oshkosh and graduated from UW-Oshkosh in December 2020 with a bachelor's degree in journalism.
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