Villanova’s next big win? Sainthood for one of Its own. Momentum is growing for Fr. Bill Atkinson, O.S.A.

National basketball championships in 2016 and 2018

An alumnus named pope in 2025.

Swelling enrollment numbers.

Record-setting capital campaigns.

Campus expansions to Cabrini and soon, Rosemont College.

And now, surging momentum for a would-be saint, one of its own Augustinians, Father Bill Atkinson, O.S.A., the world’s first quadriplegic priest.

With a winning streak like that and fellow Augustinian Pope Leo XIV leading the Church, it seems anything’s possible for Villanova these days.

Indeed, 3,000 pages of signed and sealed documentation attesting to the “heroic virtue” of Fr. Bill are currently under review in Rome.

His life has inspired a PBS documentary, an episode of EWTN’s They Might Be Saints that debuted September 15 – the 20th anniversary of his death – and two books. A comic book is in production.

Next Wednesday night, a sellout crowd of 400 will pack the book launch of The Strength of Others: Father Bill Atkinson, O.S.A. and the Miracle of Community at The Joan and John Mullen Center for the Performing Arts on Villanova’s campus. Joan (Atkinson) Mullen (below), Fr. Bill’s oldest sister, is among those slated to speak.

In yet another significant step, Fr. Bill’s body was recently removed from the Augustinian plot at Calvary Cemetery in Conshohocken and reinterred at St. Thomas of Villanova Church on campus.

Locks of his hair, bone fragments and snippets of his Augustinian habit were sent to Rome as potential relics for future veneration. Joan Mullen was the family member chosen to view his body before he was laid to rest in a new marble sarcophagus.”After 18 years, he still had a face, his body was still together, and his hair was still blonde,” his sister marvels. “It was still Bill.”

Four organizations currently operate in his name: The Father Bill Atkinson Service Corps, The Father Bill Atkinson Foundation, The Fr. Bill Atkinson Bronze Sculpture Project and, most critical of all, The Father Bill Atkinson O.S.A. Guild, sponsored by the Augustinian Province of St. Thomas of Villanova and formed to advance his Cause for Canonization.

Tributes to Fr. Bill abound: Monsignor Bonner, from which he graduated and where he taught for decades, is practically a shrine. Even his desk is on display.

At Corr Chapel on Villanova’s campus, there’s a monumental stained glass window showing Fr. Bill in glorified form, standing over a crushed wheelchair.

On the Ocean City boardwalk, a Father Bill Atkinson plaque adorns a gazebo, where he sat placidly in his wheelchair, hearing impromptu confessions from passersby.

And most impressive of all, Fr. Bill’s handcrafted marble tomb in an alcove of the magnificent Gothic church on Nova’s campus continues to draw supplicants to his story.

“It’s kind of a perfect storm right now,” says Fr. Rob Hagan, the Prior Provincial of St. Thomas of Villanova, who also serves as chaplain for the university’s men’s basketball and football teams. “We’ve seen an uptick in church attendance on campus and throughout the diocese. Then, Pope Leo got elected. He walked out on that balcony and proclaimed himself a ‘son of Augustine.’ Those Augustinian values have been put on the world stage. Father Bill’s cause coalesces with all of that. We have a wonderful opportunity right now.”

Fr. Rob says people are naturally attracted to Fr. Bill’s story. “He’s so accessible and relatable. He loved sports. He loved the Eagles. He went to Villanova basketball games. There’s a lot of points of entry with him.”

Fr. Rob says Fr. Bill inspired his own call to the priesthood. “I was practicing law and working and dating and making money and doing everything that I thought I wanted to do, and I just couldn’t shake the notion that Bill had found so much joy as an Augustinian. I thought if he could – given all the things working against him – maybe I should consider this.”

For those unfamiliar, the late Fr. Bill Atkinson was a handsome, star athlete from Upper Darby –  Fr. Rob calls him a “stud” – a young man who, from early childhood, never met a ball he couldn’t handle, a sport he couldn’t conquer. But shortly after his Bonner graduation, he surprised everyone – including a heartbroken girlfriend – and left his tightknit family of nine to begin his studies for the priesthood.

Then, not two years later, the unthinkable. A horrific accident, and a man in perpetual motion was forever stilled.

Snow had finally fallen during his novitiate year in upstate New York, and Bill and his brother novices were excited to go sledding. Bill, fearless and fun-loving, took the front position on the toboggan. With snow flying in their eyes, the toboggan slammed into a tree. Bill’s spinal cord was severed, and that first day, his heart stopped three times.

“Breathe, Bill, breathe,” Mary Atkinson beseeched her son time and again.

“He wasn’t supposed to live four or five hours, but my mother wouldn’t let him die,” Joan Mullen recalls. At the time, Joan was delivering her first baby and deliberately kept in the dark about the crisis unfolding in New York. All week, she couldn’t understand why her parents weren’t visiting her in the hospital. Didn’t they want to meet their first grandchild?

After six weeks in a Poughkeepsie hospital and another month at Magee Rehab, Bill returned to his parents’ home, his body broken, his vocation for the priesthood upended.
But quietly, steadfastly and against all odds, he persevered.

His health stabilized, he took a teaching job at Bonner and resumed his theology studies at Villanova. Twenty-five years before the ADA, there were no ramps, no special accommodations for Bill. Family, friends, friars and students all lifted Bill’s wheelchair. As many would do for the rest of his life, they bathed him, dressed him, fed him, irrigated his catheter and drove his van. He accepted the help but insisted on typing papers himself, using a pencil placed in his mouth or brace on his forearm to bang out each letter.

Supporters petitioned the Vatican and prayed for his vocation. Lord, let Bill realize his dream and become a priest.

It was longshot. At one time, a mere finger disability could be disqualifying if the handicapped priest couldn’t lift the host at the altar. Now, they prayed for Bill to make history, to become the world’s first man able to move only his head and neck to preside over Mass, bless marriages and baptize babies.

Joan says her brother waited nearly nine years for a special dispensation from Pope Paul VI. When the telegram arrived, Bill quietly digested the news. His first words: “I need to call my mother.”

Mary made it to his diaconate at St. Thomas of Villanova Church and passed three days later, following a long battle with breast cancer.

After another papal dispensation that permitted him to be ordained at his childhood parish, St. Alice in Upper Darby, Fr. Atkinson, his face beaming, officially realized his dream. He was ordained on February 2, 1974, his parents’ anniversary.

He celebrated his first Mass at the Villanova fieldhouse, wearing a special brace that allowed him to touch the sacred host for consecration.  The 1500-capacity arena was jammed.

“Father Wheels” – he chuckled at the nickname – soon became a fixture at Bonner: rolling along the sidelines, chaperoning dances (the life of the party on any dance floor), counseling wayward kids, waiting patiently for someone to come along to push an elevator button, scratch an itch, swat a fly off his nose. “He was the heart and soul of the school,” remembers Bonner English teacher Grace Kane.

By then Bill had moved to Bonner’s monastery, where students and other volunteers took shifts attending to his daily care needs — an arrangement that would never be allowed today.

He continued to relish summers with his family in Ocean City, NJ. He’d play games, take the kids to Dairy Queen and say Sunday Mass for scores of friends and relatives in his parents’ living room. Days were spent on the boardwalk at 19th Street, sunning himself in his chair, never wearing his habit, engaging with strangers.

For 40 years, Fr. Bill endured the excruciating side effects of quadriplegia without complaint: frequent gaping bedsores, frightening breathing issues and life-threatening infections.

“The science tells us that quads don’t make it much out of their 40s,” says Fr. Rob. “Father Bill lived to 60. He would always deflect when he was complimented on his strength. He would credit the love of his family and friends, the care of his doctors and nurses and the support of the Augustinian community.”

Indeed, when he was permanently moved to the health unit at the Villanova monastery two years before his death, he started writing poetry. The title of the new book, The Strength of Others, came from one of his poems. Its final stanza:
How’d I do it? Day after day
Help of others along the way
Valued friends, sisters and brothers
I simply borrowed — the strength of others.

Commissioned by the Mullens, the book is a compelling compilation of never-before-told Fr. Bill stories from people who loved him and cared for him. Its author, Sara McDermott Jain (below), is an award-winning screenwriter, producer/director and professor at Neumann University in Aston.

Sainthood is a complicated, crowded process governed by exacting procedures.

An estimated 1,500 to 2,000 Causes for Canonization are pending worldwide. And they’re hardly open-and-shut cases. They often take 25 years of painstaking review.

Fr. Bill Atkinson cleared the first hurdle in 2017, just three years after his name began circulating for sainthood. His cause was officially opened, and Atkinson was named “Servant of God.”

Joan Mullen first learned of the honorific when the Prior Provincial who preceded Fr. Rob invited her to lunch at Applebrook Golf Club in Malvern and showed her a framed photo and holy card.

“I said it was nice, but I’m not even looking at what it says underneath,” Joan recalls. “It said ‘Servant of God.’ I screamed. Everybody in the restaurant thought something was wrong with me.”

The next step would be the designation as “Venerable.” Then, after a first verified miracle, Fr. Bill would be beatified and designated “Blessed.” And finally, with the pope’s blessing and a second miracle, he would be anointed “Saint.”

Fr. Rob doesn’t know if Pope Leo, an Augustinian who walked the same Villanova halls through which Fr. Bill wheeled, would help the cause for sainthood. But he’s certain that Leo — as a Prior Provincial himself once — already knew all about the legendary Fr. Bill.

“A lot of people may think the Pope just picks the saints,” Fr. Rob says. “What I’ve come to realize is that it’s the people who decide. There was this groundswell of enthusiastic outreach: Bonner students, family, people at the shore, others in the disabled community – hundreds of people coming forth saying how this person affected my life. It’s hard to know all the criteria for sainthood, but this is someone who was a cut above the rest of us.”

As he contemplates his late friend’s potential veneration, Fr. Rob recalls Bill’s “wicked dry sense of humor,” his skillful card-playing, his superhuman patience and ability to listen, and his willingness to accept help.

Fr. Bill practiced what Fr. Rob calls “radical dependence.”

“We just celebrated the 250th anniversary of our country’s independence,” says Fr. Rob. “It’s something we all celebrate: pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps, do-for-yourself independence. But what Fr. Bill’s life invites us to do is celebrate our dependence. We need each other. None of us has it all. Don’t be embarrassed to put your hand up.”
In other words, be like Bill: rely on’ the strength of others.’ It’s OK to let them carry you.

Here’s what Fr. Rob and Joan agree Fr. Bill would find embarrassing: the current hubbub over his life. “He hated fuss,” says Joan. “Books, movies — he’d be like, ‘What’s going on here?'”

Adds Fr. Rob: “He would be the last person who would want to be complimented on how he lived his life. One core Augustinian virtue is humility. He was an incredibly humble man who exhibited incredible internal strength. He helps us redefine what strength looks like.”

Fr. Rob likes to call the saints “our Catholic Hall of Fame” — all-stars who inspire people for eternity. “Saint Francis loved the animals and creation. Saint Rita had a tough domestic life and became known as the Patron Saint of Lost Causes. Saint Michael the Archangel became the Protector. Why not Saint Father Bill Atkinson for those who overcome hardship and obstacles with faith?”

Joan Mullen knows there’s a long line of deserving people in line for potential sainthood. If it happens for her younger brother, who was born “always happy” and bursting with energy and quiet charisma, a man who lost his freedom as he embraced his cross, well, so be it. And if it doesn’t happen, well, she’s OK with that, too. “You know, I’m 85. I’m not likely to see it.,” she says matter-of-factly.

As for those ever-fascinating miracles, people are coming forth with stories, and the Guild invites the faithful to keep them coming.

Notably, Anne Marie Dolceamore, Assistant Principal of Student Affairs at Bonner-Prendergast, has publicly credited prayers for Fr. Bill’s intercession for ending her stage-four cancer battle in 2020.

According to Fr. Rob, the Guild collects and “quantifies” anecdotes and sends them for vetting to an archdiocesan tribunal in Philadelphia and the Postulator General in Rome.

“Miracles are fun to talk about, but we’re not focused on them,” he says.

“It’s not my job to document miracles,” adds Christine Wilmerding, the new director of the Father Bill Atkinson Guild. “It’s my job to tell Fr. Bill’s story and have people understand him, his life, and pray for intercession.”

Even as loving supporters memorialize his past in books, film, speeches and pilgrimages, there’s a push to propel Fr. Bill’s story forward, to spread it beyond Villanova, beyond the Main Line, beyond the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

“We want to get this message out nationally, internationally,” says Madonna Sutter, Advancement and Communications Director for the Province of St. Thomas of Villanova. “It’s all about promotion.” She noted how social media had advanced the cause of the first millennial saint, Carlos Acutis, in 2015.

Twenty years after Bill’s passing at age 60, Fr. Rob, now 60 himself, still finds fresh insights into the ordinary, extraordinary man he met when he was a teenager at Cardinal O’Hara.

As our interview concludes, Fr. Rob offers one more:

“You know, Fr. Bill was never cured – just like Jesus never came down from the cross. The miracle is not always getting out of the chair. Fr. Bill was the miracle. Life isn’t about avoiding every storm. Sometimes it’s learning how to dance in the rain and find your way through the storm. That can be the miracle, too.”

The Sept. 30 book launch for The Strength of Others at the Mullen Center is sold out with a waiting list. Neumann University will host a second book launch October 22. The Strength of Others: Father Bill Atkinson, O.S.A. and the Miracle of Community is available in paperback and Kindle formats. The Father Bill Atkinson O.S.A. Guild is free to join and welcomes public involvement in his Cause for Canonization.