Redemptorist Father Martin Stillmock, who once wrote an advice column for teens that appeared in diocesan newspapers across the country and who served in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis for more than two decades, died March 29 at St. Clement Redemptorist Mission Community in Ligouri, Missouri. He was 89.

Father Stillmock was born in Omaha, Nebraska, the youngest of 10 children. He joined the Redemptorists in 1953 and was ordained a priest in 1958. After serving the community for nearly four decades, he came to St. Alphonsus in 1993, where he served for 22 years before moving to Ligouri in 2015 because of declining health.

The superior of the Denver province, Father Stephen Rehrauer, 65, first got to know Father Stillmock in grade school through his column, “Dear Father Martin,” in which the priest answered questions submitted by youth. Father Rehrauer read it weekly during his childhood in Edgerton, Wisconsin. Then, when he was 14, he met the priest at a Redemptorist preparatory school he attended. The two formed a connection that lasted to the end of Father Stillmock’s life.

Partly because of Father Stillmock’s influence, Father Rehrauer joined the Redemptorists in 1974. He was ordained a priest in 1980 and had contact with Father Stillmock off and on throughout the years. One thing he knew — Father Stillmock enjoyed Minnesota and serving at St. Alphonsus.

“He loved it there,” Father Rehrauer said. “It really hurt him to have to leave there. But, he accepted it with tremendous grace, as the good religious he was.”

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, a private funeral service was held April 1 at the St. Clement Redemptorist chapel in Ligouri, with interment at the Redemptorist Cemetery there.