Fr. Michael Daniel Crosby, OFM, 90, died on Wednesday, Jan. 21 at St. Mary Nursing Home in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. He was a much-loved English professor, pastor and spiritual director who spent most of his 70 years of ministry serving the faithful in the Midwest. 

Funeral services for Fr. Michael will be held at 10 .m. on Monday, Feb. 2 in the chapel at Blessed Giles Friary, 1820 Grand Ave., Manitowoc, WI 54220. Private internment of his cremains will follow at a later date in the friars’ plot at Calvary Cemetery in Manitowoc. 

Born on Dec. 6, 1935, in Dunkirk, New York, Fr. Michael lived his early years at St. Mary Infant Asylum in Buffalo, New York, where he was baptized on Dec. 31, 1935. His adoptive parents, Cleveland and Agnes (née Delaney) Crosby, raised him in the Catholic faith. He attended Catholic schools there before discerning a call to Franciscan life and completing his first years of Franciscan formation at St. Joseph High School Seminary in Westmont, Illinois. 

He was received into the Order of Friars Minor on June 21, 1956, in Teutopolis, Illinois and given the religious name DeSales. He made his first profession there one year later and continued his Franciscan formation in philosophy at Our Lady of Angels in Cleveland, making his solemn profession on June 22, 1960. After completing four years of theological studies at St. Joseph Seminary in Teutopolis, he was ordained a priest on Jan. 19, 1964. He returned to using his baptismal name, Michael, after the Second Vatican Council. 

Following a year of pastoral formation at Our Lady of Angels Parish in Cleveland, Fr. Michael studied English literature at Western Reserve University in Cleveland for two years, earning a Master of Arts degree.  

He then began 11 years of service in Quincy, Illinois, where he taught in the English department at Quincy College from 1966 to 1978, also serving as assistant dean of disciple and student religious (1969 to 1971) and academic dean (1972 to 1975). Music and acting were gifts Fr. Michael brought to the college and area community, singing in musical groups, acting in the local community theatre, and in college theatre productions. 

After over a decade in education, he began 20 years of parish ministry, serving as associate pastor at St. Jude Catholic Church in New Lenox, Illinois, from 1978 to 1980. He returned to Our Lady of the Angels in Cleveland in 1980, serving as the associate pastor (1980 to 1981), administrator (1981) and guardian and pastor from 1981 to 1984. He served briefly as parochial vicar at St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church in Petoskey, Michigan, in 1985 before serving as pastor of St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church in St. Louis from 1985 to 1986.  

From 1986 to 1993, Fr. Michael served at St. Peter’s in the Loop Catholic Church in Chicago, as confessor and guardian (1987 to 1993) and director of the Friars Legion (1991 to 1993). From 1993 to 1994, he took a sabbatical year at Washington Theological Union in Silver Spring, Maryland, enrolling in a spiritual formation program.  

In 1994, he was appointed director of the legacy Sacred Heart Province’s Office of Friar Formation based in Dittmer, Missouri. Over the next five years, he served as director of development for the friars, overseeing study and sabbatical programs, retreats, workshops, house chapters and provincial assemblies. He also served as provincial spiritual assistant for the Secular Franciscans (1994 to 1997). 

In 1999, he began a yearlong certificate program for spiritual direction at St. Louis University’s Aquinas Institute. His next assignment took him to Hawaii, where he worked in spiritual formation and direction for the Diocese of Honolulu from 2000 to 2002.  

He returned to Dittmer in 2002, providing spiritual direction while on the staff of the St. Louis Behavioral Medicine Institute (2002 to 2005). He engaged in preaching and was the director of Il Ritiro (2005 to 2010) while also supporting the needs of local parishes. He retired to St. Clare’s Villa in Alton, Illinois, in 2015 and stayed there until 2020, when he moved to Blessed Giles Friary in Manitowoc.  

Fr. Michael was preceded in death by his parents, Cleveland and Agnes Crosby, other relatives and friends, as well as his Franciscan brothers. He is survived by several cousins and his brother friars of the Province of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  

The friars thank the staff and caregivers at Blessed Giles Friary, St. Mary's Nursing Home and Sharon S. Richardson Community Hospice for caring for Fr. Michael in his final years.