AUBURN - A life of faith and service will be remembered this week as the Rev. John Joseph Nacca is laid to rest Wednesday.

Fr. Nacca was the pastor at St. Francis of Assisi Church in Auburn from 1949 to 1985. Nacca, 92, died at St. Ann's Community in Rochester, the day before his beloved St. Francis Church was rededicated as part of its 100th Anniversary celebration.

While Nacca made countless friends over the course of his life, his nephew - Dr. Patrick Buttarazzi of Auburn - knew him as well as anyone.

Buttarazzi was always impressed with his uncle's erudition. He finished first in his class in both high school and at the seminary and was extremely well-read.

Growing up, Buttarazzi said his uncle was “always the good guy. The kind of guy who would throw you up in the air. Always brought little toys.”

The well-known Auburn urologist visited his uncle in Rochester nearly every week. Several weeks ago, their discussion turned to the entomology of words.

“It was very interesting. Asking me, ‘Do you know where this word came from?' Whether it was Greek or the Latin,” Buttarazzi said.

There were many interests in Fr. Nacca's life. He loved traveling by car and bus, he had an encyclopedic knowledge of cars, and he enjoyed rollercoasters. He was a great traveler, criss-crossing the country at least five times a year. He'd take local children to various events in the Finger Lakes, or longer bus trips with senior citizens and immigrants' children to see historic sites in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.

He was also instrumental in many building projects at his church - including the Our Lady of Lourdes shrine in 1956 and the current St. Francis Church two years later.

Fr. Nacca's father, Pasqualino Nacca, immigrated from Italy when he was 15, and after several trips across the ocean to save money, married Buttarazzi's grandmother, Alfonsina. The senior Nacca later became a lawyer, representing Canard Lines in their Rochester office. He would die young of a stroke at the age of 45.

In another recent talk, Fr. Nacca told his nephew, “that the thing that always impressed him about his father - who was another well-read man - was that he spoke with no Italian accent whatsoever. No one believed he was from Italy.

“He had a great admiration for immigrants, regardless of where they came from .... one of his last construction projects was erecting a statue of Christopher Columbus, located in a grassy near the old church. That statue is a tribute to the immigrants that made this country great.”

At a visit to Ellis Island many years ago, Fr. Nacca was taken aback by the poor condition of where so many immigrants first arrived in America. He wrote an impassioned letter to Lee Iacocca, the executive who had kept Chrysler from bankruptcy several years earlier, among many others.

Lido Anthony Iacocca would later lead a private fundraising campaign to restore Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. More than 20 million Americans made contributions.

“It got the ball rolling to make Ellis Island a national monument,” Buttarazzi said.

He last saw his uncle on Thursday. Fr. Nacca was confined to a wheelchair, and was suffering pain from a recent fall, but his mind and emotions were still sharp. Staff at St. Ann's found him unresponsive when they checked on him Saturday morning.

His funeral is set for 11 a.m. Wednesday at St. Francis of Assisi Church at 299 Clark St. Fr. Nacca will lie in state at St. Francis today from 1 to 3 p.m. and 5 to 7 p.m.

“He was gentleman, above all,” Buttarazzi said. “We are his biological family. St. Francis parish was his spiritual family.”