Brother Tom Bohman, CPPS, serves the very young and the very old (and people of all ages in between) at Columbus St. James the Less Church and says their concerns are much the same regardless of age.
“Whether I’m working with first- and second-graders at the parish school or visiting parishioners who are 100 years old or more, in some way they’re asking the same questions: ‘Who am I? Why did God put me here?’
“For older people, sometimes it’s: ‘Has God forgotten me?’ For the young, it’s: ‘What does God want me to do with my life?’ The questions are similar, just expressed differently depending on one’s stage in life.”
Brother Bohman said that as the youngest in a family of three girls (one deceased) and two boys, he can understand the concerns of those at either end of the age spectrum.
“As the ‘baby’ of the family, I remember what it was like to have everyone seem bigger than you, as well as the experience of not having anyone else to identify with in your age group that some of our older people are dealing with,” he said.
Brother Bohman, 72, has been at St. James the Less for more than 10 years, the longest time he has been at one place in 50-plus years as a member of the Missionaries of the Precious Blood, an order of priests and brothers founded in 1815 in Italy by St. Gaspar del Bufalo.
The order has been at St. James the Less since being invited to the Diocese of Columbus in 1947 by Bishop Michael Ready to serve the then-new parish. The order also is familiar to many central Ohio Catholics for its presence at shrines in Maria Stein and Bellevue.
Brother Bohman is the sixth member of his extended family to serve at St. James. The other five were priests. He was born in Osgood in west central Ohio in an area known as the “land of the cross-tipped churches” that was settled by German Catholics in the 1800s and remains overwhelmingly Catholic.
“I remember when a Baptist family came to the area, we weren’t sure what to make of it,” he said. Well-known members of his family in Columbus include former Ohio State football players Bob Hoying (Brother Bohman’s mother is a Hoying) and Jim Lachey (whose mother is a Bohman).
He grew up with parents Bob and Stella Bohman and his siblings on a 110-acre farm – “a relatively small operation for that area,” he said. “We grew corn and soybeans and had chickens, cows and pigs. Dad inherited the job of managing the farm when he was 19.
“He also was a TV repairman at a time when that was an important job because televisions still had picture tubes and other parts that often needed replaced. Now that job pretty much is non-existent because of the changes in electronics.”
Brother Bohman went to grade school in the Marion Local district based in Maria Stein, where he later served as director of the Maria Stein Spiritual Center. His high school years were spent at the former Brunnerdale Seminary in Canton, which the Precious Blood order operated from 1931 to 1981 and now is a golf course.
He graduated in 1972 from the now-closed St. Joseph College in Rensselaer, Indiana, also operated by the Precious Blood order, and later received a Master of Arts degree in history from that institution.
“With many priests in my family who were members of the Precious Blood order, I was always favorably disposed toward joining them,” Brother Bohman said. “I also considered the Marianists, who operate the University of Dayton, but I chose the Precious Blood order and never really moved from my family.
“But unlike my cousins, I wanted to be a brother rather than a priest. I wanted most of all to teach, which is what brothers mainly do. I didn’t see myself as a sacramental leader but more as someone working on the edges of things.”
Brother Bohman is the only professed religious brother serving in the Diocese of Columbus. There haven’t been many brothers in the diocese since the Salesian Brothers left the area in 2007 after having operated the Salesian Boys and Girls Club in Columbus since 1969. The club originally was the home of Knights of Columbus Council 400, which built it in 1927.
Brothers are men who serve the Catholic Church as members of a religious order and pledge poverty, chastity and obedience. Unlike priests and deacons, they are not ordained members of the clergy and, like religious sisters, are considered members of the laity.
“The biggest misconception about brothers is that they are ordained,” Brother Bohman said. “They belong to the laity but also are part of the religious community and, in most cases, mine being an exception, belong to communal groups and pray together.
“In many religious orders, being a brother is a step on the way to becoming a priest, but in the Precious Blood order, you’re either a brother or a priest, and that’s your permanent status. Some Precious Blood brothers have gone on to the priesthood.
“The terminology also is a little different in my order. Someone wishing to become a brother takes temporary and permanent promises, not vows, and the term used when someone takes permanent promises is ‘incorporation,’ not ‘ordination.’ I made my temporary promises in 1972 and was incorporated into the order in 1975.”
Brother Bohman served and taught at St. John the Baptist Church in Whiting, Indiana, near Chicago, from 1972-81 and was a teacher at Precious Blood School in Dayton from 1981 to 1987. “I became a brother to be a teacher, but that was my last teaching assignment,” he said. “I’ve been mostly a director of religious education (DRE) and a pastoral associate ever since.”
From 1987 to 1989, he studied for a master’s degree in theology at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, where the pastor at St. James, Father Antonio Baus, CPPS, was a classmate. Brother Bohman has served in Ohio ever since.
He was DRE and pastoral associate at the former Cleveland Our Lady of Good Counsel Church from 1989 to 1996, then returned to Osgood for three years to care for his parents and serve as DRE at St. Henry Church in St. Henry, Ohio.
In 1999, he became the first director of the Maria Stein Spiritual Center, a former retreat house run by the Precious Blood sisters that continues to serve as a site for retreats and conferences. It is adjacent to the Shrine of the Holy Relics, which displays the second-largest collection in the United States of relics of saints.
In 2003, he was assigned as DRE and pastoral associate at St. Adalbert Church on Cleveland’s east side. The church was closed in 2010, but Brother Bohman remained in Cleveland for two years to continue caring for residents of the parish’s inner-city community.
“I built many strong bonds there which continue,” he said. “People from that area come to the Maria Stein summer festival every year and always get a kick out of things like ‘square-dancing’ tractors that they’ll never see where they live.” He was in Cleveland for nine years, then came to Columbus.
“For 48 years, I’ve been a brother, and in that time, I’ve had the opportunity to live a full life and really focus on a particular way of life and on serving people in a way I could not if I had a family,” Brother Bohman said. “Here at St. James, I’m helping young people begin their walk with God and are walking with people in the last stages of that journey.
“Some of the people I most admire spiritually were brothers. St. Andre Bessette, known as Brother Andre, spent his life as a doorkeeper and a caretaker whose holiness led to the building of the great St. Joseph’s Oratory in Montreal. Brother Martin de Porres became a saint through his charitable work with the poor in Peru.
“And then there’s Father Gaspar del Bufalo, the founder of the Precious Blood order. He was a man of great reconciliation who was known for his work with people in Italy who were criminals or came from violent backgrounds.” He became a saint and was canonized in 1954.
“Today, many members of our strong Latino community here at St. James are coming to America to escape violence in their homelands. Like the people in Italy in the 1820s and 1830s, they just want a better life. It’s my purpose to help as St. Gaspar helped those in need in those times.”