Leo Huber was mission priest in South America

The Rev. Leo Huber of St. Paul, who served Twin Cities parishes, and who was a Catholic mission priest in South America, died July 21 in St. Paul.

Huber, who had cancer, was 76.

Before he became a priest, Huber was an electrical engineer, Navy officer and a professor.

He was ordained in 1967, after completing seminary training at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity, in St. Paul.

Over the years, he served the parishes of Christ the King, Minneapolis; St. Mark's, Shakopee; St. Therese, Deephaven; Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Maplewood; St. Henry, Monticello; St. Peter Claver, St. Paul; St. Rita, Cottage Grove; and Holy Trinity, Waterville.

The Rev. Larry Hubbard of St. Paul said he was a "feeling and thinking man," making him a good pastor as well as a good professor.

Hubbard called Huber a unique individual, who valued options in life.

From 1980 to 1985, he served as a missionary under the St. Paul-Minneapolis Archdiocese in the barrio of San Felix, Venezuela. There, Huber founded a parish.

Even though he was working among some of the poorest people in the world, he said in a 1992 Prior Lake American newspaper article, "It was the richest experience I've ever had in my life."

In 1984, he illustrated his experience in a Venezuelan Mission newsletter with the account of his setting out to help a woman find medicine for her unemployed husband, who had been badly burned in a kitchen stove explosion.

He brought the woman, an immigrant from Trinidad whose Spanish was poor, to a community meeting. There, barrio leaders, who had little money themselves, took care of the problem on the spot.

A plate was passed, and the medicine could be purchased that night. Another person began raising funds to prepare for future medical emergencies.

From 1988 to 1990, Huber served as a mission priest in Bolivia.

Pat Thul, now of Eureka, Calif., formerly a member of his congregation at St. Therese in Deephaven, said Huber was adept at answering questions in a simple but profound way.

"He taught me more about spirituality and prayer, and about being a good Catholic Christian, than anybody else," said Thul. "He loved people, and he accepted them as they were."

In 1952, Huber graduated from Iowa State University in Ames, with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering.

Next, he served as a Navy officer on board a destroyer.

For a year, he taught philosophy at St. Benedict's College in Atchison, Kan., before enrolling at the seminary in St. Paul.

He retired in 1996, when he was pastor of St. Patrick in Cedar Lake Township and St. Catherine in Spring Lake. In retirement, he worked with seminarians in St. Paul, helping those interested in serving Hispanic parishioners. He served as a spiritual director to seminarians.

He is survived by his sister, Sister Elizabeth Huber of St. Paul, of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary; brother, Robert of Atherton, Calif., and several nieces and nephews.