Joseph Lehman was a ‘true priest and pastor’

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Monsignor Joseph Lehman received his calling to the priesthood at a young age. And by all accounts, there was no better path that he could’ve chosen.

Lehman, the pastor of Saint Bede Catholic Church and rector of the National Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, died unexpectedly Dec. 13 at the age of 68. He was on his way home from vacation when he became ill and went to an Atlanta hospital, where he was treated for COVID-19 and pneumonia, according to staff at one of his previous churches.

Born in Newport News and raised in Hampton, Lehman always knew he wanted to be a priest, as he told The Catholic Virginian in 2020.

According to Lehman, he met a number of priests as a kid due to his mother’s work in the parish and the time his father spent helping at the early morning Mass at the Veterans Administration Center.

“I got to know them as real people, and I said, ‘This is something I want to do,’” he told The Catholic Virginian. “It was nothing earth-shattering, no palm on the ground moment. I just knew this was where I was going to be.”

Lehman attended seminary school in Indiana, graduating in 1976 with a degree in biology, before continuing his education at the North American College in Rome, Italy. In 1980, he was ordained into the priesthood of the Catholic Diocese of Richmond, where he served for 42 years.

Before coming to Saint Bede in James City County, Father Joe, as Lehman was widely known, served a number of other parishes around Virginia, including Holy Cross Catholic Church in Lynchburg; Holy Name of Mary in Bedford; Resurrection in Moneta; Christ the King in Norfolk; Our Lady of Nazareth in Roanoke; St. Francis of Assisi in Rocky Mount; and Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Salem.

When he arrived in Williamsburg in 2019, Lehman entered a parish that had just seen three other priests and pastors move on to different assignments as part of a typical rotation.

“It just so happens we lost all three of them at the same time,” said Sam Samorian, the director of development at Saint Bede. “The parish was wondering, ‘Oh, what’s going to happen, what are we going to get?’ When Father Joe came, instantly they took a loving and liking to him, and he reciprocated. He opened his heart.”

According to Samorian, Lehman did a “wonderful” job as pastor, not just in the parish but in the wider Williamsburg community, working collaboratively with churches of other denominations and helping out wherever he could.

“It was always his calling to serve others, to follow God’s call to serve others and bring that message to all,” Samorian said. “He loved our Haiti ministry and any of the things we did to help the poor, the downtrodden, the poor in spirit, too. Anything we could do to lift up other people, I think that’s what really motivated him every day.”

Calling Lehman a “true priest and pastor,” Samorian said that it was his genuine personality and his “wonderful but kind” sense of humor that helped endear him to everybody that he came across. Lehman’s obituary noted his “playful antics, boisterous outbursts and vibrant personality.”

“He was well loved by his family, friends and the people of God that he served and will be forever missed,” the obituary reads. Following a funeral Mass at Saint Bede on Monday, Lehman was buried Tuesday at Resurrection Catholic Church’s cemetery in Moneta, where he twice served as priest.

For Lehman, the key to being a happy priest was “to always find the beauty in the moment and not try to rearrange the scene because it’s God’s scene and not my own,” he said.

“There’s beauty everywhere.”

Sian Wilkerson, sian.wilkerson@pilotonline.com, 757-342-6616