Kansas City, Kan. ? A Catholic priest here died Christmas Day after leading his church for 63 years, ending what may have been the longest active tenure at a U.S. parish.

Monsignor Heliodore Mejak, 98, became a priest in 1935 and served under seven popes. He said his first Mass at Holy Family Church on Aug. 1, 1944, and never left.

“To be that old and to continue to function and to care for the community, that certainly shows his dedication and his love for his people,” said Thomas Tank, vicar general of the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas. The archdiocese said it believes Mejak was the nation’s oldest active priest.

Besides his longevity, Mejak will also be remembered for his staunchly traditional view of Catholicism and his devotion to his parish. In addition to his priestly duties, he carried out repairs in the church, cut the grass, managed the finances and even prepared the weekly bulletin.

“He was a stellar priest,” said Mary Ann Grelinger, a former parishioner who wrote Mejak’s biography for Homiletic & Pastoral Review magazine. “He said Mass every day. He never took a day off or a vacation. Most priests do. He didn’t.”

Mejak celebrated Mass until about a week before his death despite failing health and eyesight.

“He couldn’t see,” said Kevin Fogarty, a Wyandotte County firefighter who had attended the church for about 10 years. “He wore ‘welding goggles’ with huge magnifiers. When he said Mass, it was obvious he was reciting from memory. He couldn’t read it at all.”

Holy Family, a Slovenian parish, drew parishioners who shared his conservative view of Catholicism. He was the last priest in the archdiocese to stop celebrating the Mass in Latin following the Vatican II church reforms of the 1960s.

He resisted attempts to have laypeople serve communion and said the host wafer should be served only from a priest’s hand, not in the hand of the recipient. He also wanted recipients to kneel for communion rather than stand.

Mejak also ignored a Vatican II recommendation for congregation members to shake hands or hug as a sign of peace during Mass.

“He said the presence of Jesus Christ on the altar should be the focus, not each other,” Grelinger said. “A sign of peace was something that distracted from the Eucharist.”

Kirk Kramer, an editor for the Digital Library at the Catholic Reformation in Virginia, said he attended the church in the 1980s and that it was a home for traditionalists.

“His parish, his church was a haven of holiness,” Kramer said. “There was a sense of the sacred and the mysterious and the beautiful at a time when you had to look for that. When you went to Holy Family, you got the Mass of the church, authentic Catholic doctrine and not theological opinion.”

Mejak also had a playful side, indulging his interest in trains by building electric trains in the church basement that he liked to show children, Grelinger said. He based the trains on old pictures and drawings.

He graduated from St. Benedictine College in Atchison, Kan., and Catholic University in Washington. He served several churches in Kansas before being sent to Holy Family, where he had to learn the Slovenian language.

“He was very humble, very loyal and a gentle man,” said Charles Andalikiewicz, 77, who knew Mejak since he was a boy and went on to be a priest in Louisburg, Kan. “He was also very scholarly.”