Fr. Michael McCabe
Father McCabe came to St. Joseph from being Pastor of St. Mary Church in Nebraska City where he served for 20 years. His duties included serving as Superintendent of Nebraska City Lourdes Central Catholic K-12, Chaplain at St. Mary's Community Hospital and the endowment committees for Lourdes and Falls City Sacred Heart. Prior to Nebraska City, Father McCabe spent five years as Pastor of St. Mary in Dawson and St. Anne in Shubert. Berfore that, he was Assistant Pastor at St. Mary in Nebraska City and at St. Teresa Church in Lincoln.
He has been a member of the Bishop's Finance Committee since 2004 and was a board member for the Crossing the Threshold Endowment from 2004-2008. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Creighton University in 1982, and his Masters in Business Administration from University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He continued his education as Mount St. Mary Seminary, where he earned a Master of Divinity. He was ordained on May 27, 1989.
Father McCabe is honored to serve God's people at St. Joseph Parish. Some of his outside interests are musicals, trains, investments, and a good round of golf.
Fr. Robert Johnson
Fr. Johnson, ordained a priest in May 2020, credits his time at the Newman Center and Phi Kappa Theta Catholic Fraternity at UNL with helping him be open to listening to the call to the seminary. He first heard the call to the seminary during his senior year but took a job in Texas working as an engineer, where he found that his pastor was the vocations director for the Diocese of Victoria in Texas. Then he knew that he was going to end up in the seminary and finally accepted the call on Good Friday in 2014. In addition to serving as assistant pastor at St. Joseph Church, Fr. Johnson has been appointed as an advocate on the Diocesan Tribunal and teaches at Pius X High School.
Fr. Joseph Bernardo
Fr. Bernardo is the priest in residence at St. Joseph Church. He is the Campus Chaplain and a Theology teacher at Pius X High School.
Deacon Matt Hecker
Matthew Hecker, Ph.D., is the chief administrative officer of Lincoln Diocese Schools. He is the first permanent deacon from the Catholic Diocese of Lincoln, ordained on May 28, 2021 by Bishop James Conley. Deacon Hecker discerned the call to the diaconate in the Diocese of Lincoln which has no formal permanent diaconate formation program, so he entered into the program offered through the Archdiocese of Omaha. On the subject of permanent deacons, he said, “It is an ancient role in the Church from the wisdom of the apostles, and ties back into the earliest understanding of the Church. It is not something new, it is something old.” Deacon Hecker and his wife, Dani, have three daughters and two grandchildren.