Longtime administrative assistant, diocesan employee Susan Patullo retires

Gifted. Dedicated. Smart, with an open heart.

This is how colleagues and friends described Susan Patullo, longtime employee of the Diocese of Camden. After 43 years of dedicated service to five Bishops, hundreds of priests, and countless faithful of South Jersey in various departments throughout the Diocese, Patullo has now embarked on a well-deserved retirement. Nevertheless, those who knew her best acknowledged the void that is left.

“Those morning meetings are going to be tough without her,” said Anna Summers, administrative assistant to the Diocese’s Vicar General and Chancellor, who has known Patullo since the latter started her professional life in 1971, as a part-time high schooler working in the Finance Office.

“I’ll miss that institutional knowledge, and that understanding of the Church and its history that she brought every day, along with her superb work ethic, reliability and thoroughness,” said Father Nicholas Dudo, Vicar for Clergy, whose office Patullo has worked for since 2011.

Now enjoying the fruits of her labor after her last work day on Holy Thursday, Patullo and her former colleagues reflect on her ministry in a vineyard that, she has said, “feels like home.”

‘The helping hands of the Church’

Patullo laughs, recounting the time a Sister of Mercy opened a door for a 17-year-old.

One day in March, during her senior year at Camden Catholic High School, Sister Mary Michele (teacher of her secretarial class) told Patullo: ‘I have a job for you. You start on Monday.’”

“I responded, ‘Where?’ She told me, ‘The Chancery.’ I said to her, ‘What’s that?’”

The next week, she began her new five-day-a-week routine: leaving her Pennsauken home for morning classes at Camden Catholic, then heading to the Diocese’s Finance Offices on 7th Street in Camden.

From noon until 5 p.m., she spent her days “dictating letters or writing checks” from the Diocese to diocesan entities such as schools and parishes, and working with Robert Deaton, Director of Finance, and Msgr. Joseph Herron, Administrative Secretary, she elaborated.

Amid this unfamiliar atmosphere, she found a fast friend in Summers, who, like her, was a product of Camden Catholic. Summers had started her diocesan career just a few years before. When Patullo arrived, Summers was working in the Vice Chancellor’s Office.

Summers, now secretary to Father Robert Hughes, Vicar General and Moderator of the Curia for the Diocese, remembers the friendship that began early as the two worked together for the Church, the memories made and the bond that still lasts.

“We were around the same age, going through the same things. We used to go to each other’s apartments, and we went to each other’s weddings. We were the helping hands of the Church, sharing the faith and social life.”

From the early years of their friendship until now, Summers has always appreciated Patullo’s “calm, balanced and stable” nature, as well.

After graduation from Camden Catholic, Patullo moved full-time in the Finance Office for the next five years, until departing to raise her newborn son, Frank Jr.

‘With great hope and love for the Church’

Ten years later – and having another son, Joseph – Patullo was called back to the Diocese, this time as a part-time secretary to its Long-Term Care Facilities Department. Serving with an entity that oversaw the Diocese’s skilled nursing care throughout the six southern counties of New Jersey, she utilized her expertise in typing and financial matters learned previously, and continued to master the ins and outs of office work.

In 1999, Summers told Patullo about another opportunity in the Diocese, and like Sister Mary Michele, the best friend wouldn’t take no for an answer.

“There was an opening in the Chancery, and I knew Susan was so technical and smart, she’d be great,” Summers recalled, adding that “Susan was reticent, but I called her five times, and even sent her a fax saying, ‘Today’s the interview, get yourself over here.’”

Patullo did hear the message, and soon found herself at Camden’s Market Street, where she served for the next 12 years as the secretary for Msgr. (now Bishop of Metuchen) James F. Checchio, then secretary to Bishop James T. McHugh; and Msgr. Peter Joyce, Vice Chancellor and Chancellor.

In this capacity, she was “the intermediary, advocate and conduit for the people served by the Bishop,” recalled Msgr. Joyce, now-Pastor of Sicklerville’s Saint Charles Borromeo Parish.

As well, as Patullo was very much “a person of insight, compassion and patience,” he added. She became to the priest “someone I frequently consulted with. I valued her opinion.”

In 2011, Patullo moved again, this time to her most recent position as administrative assistant to the Vicar for Clergy, then Father Terry Odien.

Becoming the first friendly contact and resource for priests and faithful inside and outside the Diocese of Camden, she dealt with clergy matters from the start of their priestly ministry (first assignments, new diocesan e-mail addresses), to the end (wills and funeral arrangements), and everything in-between (auto insurance, letters of suitability, visas for international clergy).

Here in this department, which Patullo recalled most lovingly, she enjoyed the chance “to get to know so many priests [mostly by phone but sometimes in-person], to be able to help them in the little bit I do, and to hear or see their happiness with the answers I give them, [and] see how they perform various roles and responsibilities in the diocesan offices, and in parishes. They all want the same thing, to do the best for who they serve. I’ve seen how good they are, by being with them and talking with them.”

In turn, it has been Patullo’s goodness, that made “everyone who spoke with her, in-person or over the phone, feel better,” Father Dudo said.

“She was so good and excellent in how she cared for the people who called,” he continued, adding that one of her strongest attributes was “her patience and calmness” in any situation a caller had, be it questions on a priest transfer, continuing education or the whereabouts of a certain priest, he said.

Acknowledging that Patullo worked “through very difficult times, very challenging times for the Church, especially with the clergy, with things that were shocking to everyone,” Father Dudo said that she continued her role “with great hope and love for the Church, the priests and the people of God.”

“As a representative of the Diocese, Susan’s ministry expressed the hope and the good of the Church, as she saw the people and their needs, and attended to them in a Christ-like manner,” he said.

Her former boss, Father Odien, noted that Patullo “created a space where people felt and experienced a compassionate presence. She is so deserving of a retirement that hopefully is filled with blessings of good health and happiness.”

‘That’s what we do’

In these new days, Patullo is relishing the chance for “some relaxation,” she said, and is ready to learn something new. “I’m going to join the gym, and one of my friends already invited me out for bowling.”

Summers is confident that the two will continue to get together at places like The Pub and Red Robin, for laughs, drinks and comfort, and is grateful for the place that brought them together.

“You have friends in your life that when something happens, they fall away, and you go in different directions,” she said. “Others, like Susan, have kept together. We’ve been there for each other’s joys, [like] our children’s weddings, and the [struggles]. I was with her when her husband passed away, and she was with me when my parents passed away.”

While excited for the next chapter of her life, Patullo acknowledged that she’ll miss the purpose of her work: “I felt like I was helping people.”

As well, she’ll miss friends like Summers and Dolores Orihel, secretary to Bishop Dennis Sullivan, and the laughs and support they brought to each other day in and day out in Camden. “They’ve always been on my side. It’s comforting to know they are there for me and praying for me. I’m with good people.”

In a 2022 “Talking Catholic” podcast that featured the longtime ministerial trio, Orihel remarked that working with individuals like Patullo, “You learn to be grateful for the atmosphere you’re in. We look at [work] not as a job, but as a vocation.”

As Patullo embarks on another path, she might be leaving the offices of Camden, but she’s holding onto the wisdom she’s learned from her equally-as-passionate workers in the vineyard of South Jersey.

“I wouldn’t change a thing; I’m so grateful. I’ve learned from others here, how to help others and be kind to everyone. That’s the norm in the Diocese of Camden; that’s what we do.”