Couple pays $7,500 for chicken dinner made by Delaware priest

Published: 2007-05-25

WILMINGTON, Del. (CNS) -- Father Richard DeLillio must cook a mean chicken dinner. Why else would someone pay $7,500 for the seven-course meal, and pay for the priest's flight and accommodations so he could prepare it in Australia? Dr. Paul Edwards of Sydney made the $7,500 bid via cell phone during last year's "In Vino Veritas" (In Wine There Is Truth) auction supporting Nativity Preparatory School of Wilmington, where Father DeLillio, an Oblate of St. Francis de Sales, is executive director. Nativity Prep offers a tuition-free education to middle school boys from low-income families. While Edwards' bid was extraordinary, Father DeLillio, 68, has used his Chicken Olevano dish to raise more than $100,000 at auctions for the Oblates, Nativity Prep or his Rotary club. The priest will accept more than one bid for his special meals, if the price is right. Paul and Sue Edwards met Father DeLillio in 1991 while he was a pastor in North Carolina, where Paul Edwards worked. The priest baptized their daughter Jessica. "We have supported him in all his fundraising efforts," Paul Edwards wrote in an e-mail to The Dialog, Wilmington diocesan newspaper.

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