The constant ringing of the telephone punctuated Kay Laroche's reminiscing without mercy yesterday. "North or south, which way are you coming?" she asked the latest caller needing directions to today's funeral. LaRoche hung up and returned to the April afternoon that her friend, the Rev. Tim Thibeault told her he'd been feeling ill.

"He didn't want to go to the doctor, and I told him he had two choices: the black coat or the blue coat," LaRoche. "He grabbed the black one and said, 'Let's go.'"

Eight months after doctors diagnosed Thibeault with lymphoma, he died Friday at age 60. He beat the cancer, but the chemotherapy aggravated a liver problem beyond repair. At Thibeault's request, his 11 a.m. funeral will be held at Immaculate Conception in Penacook, his parish of seven years. Given the number of phone calls for directions, Thibeault's friends and family are expecting more people than the pews can hold.

Thibeault will be remembered as a man who cherished the priesthood even as he publicly protested the way his Catholic Church covered up repeated sexual abuse by its priests. He was the first priest in the state to allow Voice of the Faithful, the lay reform group created in response to the crisis, to meet in a parish, and he joined the group in calling for changes in the way the church did business. But he also comforted accused priests, even attending one priest's criminal trial.

After he became sick, Thibeault still spoke out while confessing fears that doing so might land him in a remote parish or unable to get the sick leave he needed.

"He decided he would fight for change from the inside, as opposed to the outside of the church," said his brother Rich Thibeault of Manchester. He said his brother's only gripe about the priesthood was that running the parish alone limited the time he could spend in ministry with parishioners and the community.

During his years in Penacook, Thibeault pushed his parishioners to live their faith locally, by volunteering in their communities and expanding the parish's food pantry. When he put parishioner Jesus Guzman in charge of religious education, his only request was that Guzman get the kids out of the classroom and into the neighborhood so they could connect with the less fortunate.

Parishioners appreciated the way Thibeault listened with his full attention and how he'd sometimes withhold spiritual advice until he could pray and think about the issue. They equated that with sincerity. Even more than that, they adored Thibeault's homilies, especially because he came down from the pulpit to deliver them from the floor.

"He made the people in the Bible real," said LaRoche, a longtime friend who cared for Thibeault after he became sick. "Like with St. Peter, Father Tim would say he was one of us because the only time he took his foot out of his mouth was to put the other one in.

"And he had a timbre in his voice that made you lean in and listen,"LaRoche said. "His homilies were so powerful that they were over before you knew it."

Thibeault grew up in Manchester, the oldest of eight children, seven of them boys. In his 20s, Thibeault considered becoming a doctor but went to the seminary instead, because he believed he could help more people that way, said the Rev. Joseph Falletta of New York, a close friend since their days in the seminary.

"He wanted to share people's struggles and celebrate their joys,"Falletta said. "He wanted to be the best person he could. For him, that was reaching out to the underdog of society, and that's what he did."

Thibeault was laid up three years ago after he fell and broke three ribs while walking his poodle, Penacook's Chocolate Chip. This year, after he was diagnosed with cancer, he remained hopeful and positive he'd recover as he had before. In e-mails to parishioners and friends, Thibeault chronicled the chemotherapy treatments and celebrated when tests showed the treatments had overcome the cancer.

Recently though, Thibeault's legs began swelling, revealing the liver problem. Then, just before Thanksgiving, he fell and fractured a part of his spine. After initial treatment in Concord Hospital, Thibeault was transferred to a diocesan treatment facility in Manchester, where he died Friday.

Throughout Thibeault's illness, parishioners cared for him, cooking for him and visiting him when he was up to it. Yesterday, two cards sat unopened on his kitchen table. They had been mailed the day he died. He often told LaRoche and Guzman how much he missed "his people" and insisted they give their next priest the love and support they'd given him.

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