I'll Never Tell: Odyssey of a Rock & Roll Priest - Softcover

“Slyly humorous, engaging and illumined with lightning bolts of religious insight" – that's what Kevin Starr had to say about the new memoir by Monsignor Harry G. Schlitt, just out from Sand Hill Review Press. I'll Never Tell: Odyssey of a Rock & Roll Priest chronicles encounters with Paul Lynde, James Brown, Joan Crawford, assorted cardinals and a handful of popes, including one emeritus. Set against the backdrop of world capitals, this social historic narrative spanning fifty years depicts the epic journey of a Catholic priest through changing mores and contemporary life.

Father Harry has been telling stories most of his life. Precocious as a child, Harry George Schlitt was the youngest in a blue collar German Catholic family, raised in southern Missouri along the Mississippi River among myriad aunts and uncles and cousins. A natural athlete, thespian and all around good guy, he lacked academic prowess. In a remarkable twist of fate, he found himself transported from rural America on a full scholarship to study in Rome, where he was ordained a priest in 1964. Short on theology but long on charisma, he began a ministry that moved from the high school classroom, to the pulpit, to the airwaves. His first broadcasting gig was as a disc jockey on AM radio in the Ozarks. An improbable series of encounters led him to work at Chicago's legendary WLS-TV, FM radio in Las Vegas, every leading radio and TV station in San Francisco, twenty years on the Armed Forces Radio and Television network, and ultimately the ABC radio network—as Father Harry of the God Squad. He has written thousands of radio scripts and television monologues, more sermons than he can count, and numerous official letters to the many institutions of the Roman Catholic Church. This is his first attempt at a memoir. Retired as Vicar General and Moderator of the Curia from the Archdiocese of San Francisco after fifty years of priesthood, Monsignor Schlitt lives in San Francisco where he plays handball and continues work as a broadcaster presenting the Sunday Mass on TV each week.