Deacon Fred Yekaldo, who ministered for 22 years at St. Ambrose in Woodbury and nearly a year at Blessed Sacrament in St. Paul, died surrounded by family April 15. He was 90.
Deacon John Masla, who served about a decade in the permanent diaconate — including nearly two years at St. Ambrose in Woodbury before retiring from active ministry, and eight years in Sacramento, California — died April 3. He was 94.
Father Leonard Siebenaler, a native of New Trier who ministered nearly 64 years as a priest of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, died Jan. 16 in Hastings, where he had been living in retirement. He was 89.
Throughout most of his life, Father John Brandes loved spending time outdoors, especially at a family cabin in northern Minnesota and in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. The priest who considered wooded regions of northern Minnesota his “happy place” died Jan. 10 at age 96.
The state of Minnesota’s first woman and non-physician commissioner of health, president and CEO of a major hospital, and delegate for religious in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis — Sister Mary Madonna Ashton was all those things and more, colleagues, fellow religious and a family member recall.