The Rev. Patrick Rager, 50, a Catholic priest widely regarded as a living saint for ministering to others as a fatal disease slowly paralyzed him, died Tuesday at home in West Homestead.

"He really is a yet-to-be-canonized saint," said Bishop David Zubik of Pittsburgh, who has archived papers for a potential cause for his sainthood.

"Every time I visited him, I came away knowing that I had been in the presence of God."

Father Rager's seminary rector and former bishop, Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C., described him with a term that the Vatican requires of candidates for sainthood.

"He really was an example of heroic virtue," he said.

"He gave such a witness in his priestly ministry to what it means to take up one's cross and simply, quietly bear it. But he did it in a way that converted it into a ministry. He was a constant source of support, encouragement and spiritual strength for people all over, not only the United States, but different parts of the world."

He was inspired to priesthood by his childhood pastor at St. Mary Magdalene in Homestead and by an uncle who was a priest in the Harrisburg diocese. At Central Catholic High School, he excelled at athletics and academics. He is in the Alumni Hall of Fame.

"His picture hangs there right next to Danny Marino," said his mother, Helene Rager.

He entered St. Paul Seminary, studying theology and psychology at Duquesne University.

The earliest sign of illness was when his knee gave out during a softball game. He endured 15 years of misdiagnoses before he was found to have the same slow-killing form of ALS -- Lou Gehrig's Disease -- as physicist Stephen Hawking.

He was using a cane in 1981, when he began graduate studies at Christ the King Seminary in East Aurora, N.Y. But he spent two summers as an Air Force chaplain, and bought a Pontiac Fiero to celebrate his 1985 ordination.

St. Sylvester in Brentwood built handrails so "Father Paddy" could reach the altar and say Mass without falling. But he went home on sick leave in 1987.

In 1988, one of Bishop Anthony Bevilacqua's final acts here was to make Father Rager coordinator of a new office for ministry to people with physical disabilities. At that office and later from home, he took calls and answered mail from people in pain.

In a letter to pastors he wrote, "No problem is too small to enlist my assistance. I am always available to listen, to counsel and give hope to those in need."

That was true, his mother said, recalling 2 a.m. calls and a former mental patient who showed up with a gun strapped to her ankle.

"He had a heart of gold," she said. "And he had patience. He would hear them out. He understood because he had an illness."

He possessed more than empathy, Archbishop Wuerl said.

"When Pat realized how sick he was, he just determined that he was going to make this moment, this ordeal in his life, an occasion of grace for himself and everybody else," he said.

Bonnie Alvaraz met him around 1990, when she trained some of his aides. She learned she could confide in him about anything. They stayed in touch long after she moved to Texas in 1994.

"Whenever he was praying for me or my family, I always felt so special. I felt that God was really listening to him," she said.

When a national Catholic magazine wrote about him, he began receiving calls and mail from around the globe.

A young woman with cancer whose boyfriend had died poured her heart in a letter. Prisoners sought spiritual advice and one wanted to know if a convicted armed robber could become a priest. A hospital chaplain regularly asked for Father Rager's prayers for patients.

He received fan mail from other priests. "Perhaps you have been selected as a martyr-witness to many of the rest of us who should be better priests," one wrote in 1995.

From the Vatican, future-Cardinal John Foley wrote to ask for Father Rager's prayers. "It is one of the mysteries of God's plan for us that he is able to use your priesthood in a way you never imagined," he wrote."

He wrote for the Pittsburgh Catholic about the storms of life. "In these difficult circumstances we must remember that Jesus is in the boat with us on the chaotic, turbulent sea of life, just as he was in the boat with the apostles, calming them as he rebuked the winds and the waters. For the moment, he may appear silent, but he never forsakes us."

For the past decade he spoke in groans that only his mother and aides could interpret. Still, he dictated answers to mail that continued to come from troubled souls. He made holy cards with his prayer for those who were ill and for their caregivers. Nurses asked for stacks of them during his many hospital stays. In his last years, he communicated mostly by blinking.

"He had these big, brown eyes and that was how he would communicate," his mother said. "They told him a year-and-a-half ago that he would never talk again, but it wasn't true. Sometimes he got so strong he could speak in sentences."

Archbishop Wuerl said he asked the diocesan staff to keep records of Father Rager's life "just so the witness wouldn't get lost."

Bishop Zubik believes that, after the required waiting period, these records may be the start of a cause for canonization. "That is the direction I would be progressing in. It's definitely there. He was that exceptional," he said.

Bishop Zubik often took seminarians to visit Father Rager.

"He was very conscious of who was there, and I would introduce them to him. I felt it was important for them to be able to see him as a fully engaged priest, even though he was confined to his bed."

Hospitalized last week with anemia, he begged his family to take him home.

"He came home on Sunday. I said, 'Father Paddy, you're home, you're home, you're home. I love you, love you, love you.' He had a big smile, and his eyes were open," his mother said.

"I think he wanted to come home to die at home, where he was born and where he was raised. ... It's really in God's hands, all of the time. We don't understand. He always told me there's a reason for everything. And when it's my turn to go, I will ask what that reason was."

In addition to his mother, Father Rager is survived by two sisters, Dorine Kasich and Elaine Rager, both of Munhall.

Visitors will be received at the George Irvin Green Funeral Home from 2 to 8 p.m. today and 2 to 5 p.m. Friday. A Mass of Translation to St. Therese of Lisieux Parish in Munhall will be held at 7:45 p.m. Friday.

The Funeral Mass at St. Therese of Lisieux is at 9:30 a.m. Saturday.

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