The Rev. Alfred Kunz was a unique priest, Monsignor Delbert Schmelzer told about 100 people assembled for Mass at Holy Redeemer Church in downtown Madison Tuesday night to remember Kunz, 10 years to the day he was found murdered at St. Michael Catholic Church in the village of Dane in northern Dane County. "He was unique in personality, unique in faith, unique in dedication and unique in what a priest really was and what the priesthood really meant," said Schmelzer, a seminary classmate of Kunz.
After the Latin Mass, Schmelzer called Kunz a very spiritual man, but also hard-nosed.
"He told it like it was," sometimes getting in trouble for his strong and clear messages about marital fidelity and abortion, Schmelzer said. "He wasn't afraid of anything."
Schmelzer, who served as acting administrator at St. Michael for several months after the murder, told the congregation that Kunz lived a full and rich life, but asked them to grieve that his life was cut short.
Kunz, who was 67, was found on March 4, 1998, his throat slit, lying in a pool of his blood at the parish's Catholic school. He was associate pastor at congregations in Waunakee, Cassville and Monroe before coming to St. Michael in 1967.
Kunz was an expert on Church law who was consulted by religious leaders across the country. He was an uncompromisingly traditionalist priest who gained a regional following for his Latin masses and was revered as a confessor. He was also known for performing exorcisms.
On March 3, Kunz was dropped off at his parish by a fellow priest. On the morning of March 4, the first Wednesday in Lent, a young teacher found Kunz dead on the floor of a classroom corridor.
In addition to his parish work at St. Michael, Kunz served for 26 years on a tribunal in the Madison diocese reviewing broken marriages and recommending which ones to annul.
The Rev. Lawrence J. Kieffer, the Catholic chaplain at Oakhill Correctional Institution, a male minimum-security prison near Oregon, served on the tribunal with Kunz for 22 years.
"He was a very dedicated person, a man of tremendous principles and he followed them," Kieffer said after Mass Tuesday. "This is unbelievable in a permissive age. People have no idea of what it means to be consistent."
Tom Warner, a physician at UW Hospital, was a parishioner at St. Michael who knew Kunz well. Warner called Kunz an excellent spiritual adviser.
"He was very orthodox in his teaching. He was a true priest," said Warner. "He had tremendous respect for the Mass and the Blessed Sacrament."
Kunz's murder fueled speculation that animosities within the church -- stemming from his role in conducting internal investigations into allegations against other priests -- or his alleged relationships and affairs with women in the parish could have motivated the slaying.
Warner is still upset by those rumors. "They accused him of things that were completely untrue. It's speculative rubbish from minds that were of this culture, of this crazy culture."
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