March 15, 1957 – June 23, 2023
It was said many times that if Father Joe Bayne hadn’t become a priest, he would have been a firefighter.
Just like them, he raced to fires and other emergencies. He had a call number – ES-11. He was at the scene of the crash of Flight 3407 in Clarence in February 2009 in less than 25 minutes.
Instead of deploying hoses and raising ladders, he quelled the pain of trauma and grief with comfort, empathy and prayer. He described his role as “a ministry of presence.”
“His passion, dedication, and professionalism are legendary and are second only to his care and compassion,” Buffalo Fire Commissioner William Renaldo said in a farewell tribute in 2018 as Father Bayne ended his 13-year tenure as the city’s first fire department chaplain.
A Franciscan friar, he left Buffalo for Chicopee, Mass., where he was pastor of St. Stanislaus Bishop and Martyr Basilica, his order’s largest parish, and once again was chaplain for the fire department.
From there, he was assigned to Chicago to serve as associate director of formation for the Franciscan Friars Conventual Postulancy Program, where he worked with young men entering the order.
He died June 23 in Chicago. He was 66.
Born in Baltimore, Joseph William Bayne Jr. said that he grew up in a firehouse. His uncles and brothers were in the fire service. His father died in 1977 fighting a high-rise fire.
He attended Archbishop Curley High School in Baltimore, which is affiliated with the Franciscan Friars Conventual, and joined the order after he graduated in 1975.
Professing his vows on Aug. 15, 1976, he earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy in 1980 from St. Hyacinth College and Seminary in Granby, Mass., then attended the former St. Anthony-on-Hudson Seminary in Rensselaer, where he completed a master of divinity degree and was ordained a priest in 1985.
He served as parochial vicar for parishes in Shamokin, Pa., then came to Buffalo in 1989 when the order asked…
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