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May 7, 2019 | The Valley Catholic
THANK YOU BISHOP MCGRATH
From Youth in Ireland to Coadjutor Bishop
Continued from page 47
“We literally carne down from the
hill into the community,” he said. “I
chose to work with youth at a Water-
ford teen club. I’ve always enjoyed
working with youth. They keep you
mentally alert.”
St. John Seminary was a small
diocesan seminary - about 120 stu-
dents- but “PJ” presumed that he
would eventually be ordained for
service in the United States. He had
had relatives, on his mother’s side of
the family, who were priests in Dav-
enport and Atlantic, Iowa as far back
as the mid 1800s.
His uncle, the late Father John
Dermody, also related to his mother,
was a priest of the Archdiocese of San
Francisco, serving in Palo Alto as pas-
tor of Our Lady of the Rosary Parish
when “PJ” was ordained in 1970.
It was Father Dermody who inter-
ceded with the late Archbishop Joseph T.
McGucken and so, the Irish seminarian
was ordained for service in the Archdio-
cese of San Francisco. Ordained to the
priesthood in Holy Trinity Cathedral in
“I was involved with a
great spectrum of things
- with old people,
with youth, different
parish organizations
- part of the beauty of
being a parish priest. ”
Waterford, June 7, 1970, he soon after ar-
rived in San Francisco and was assigned
to St. Anne of the Sunset Parish where
he took up duties as an assistant pastor.
The immigrant priest found San
Francisco to be “a very gracious city”
where he felt “very much at home. In
those days there were very many Irish
people- or second or third generation
Irish- in the district then.”
He does recall that the “American
culture was generally quite different
from the Irish” and that he was pleas-
Bishop McGrath during his episcopal
ordination at St. Mary’s Cathedral, San
Francisco.
antly surprised to feel so much at home
in San Francisco. He hadn’t had much
exposure to Americans before, and had
impressions from the media, and pre-
sumed they might be “rather garish.”
The young Irish priests who came
to San Francisco were mentored by
their older “brothers,” Irish-born and
educated priests who had preceded
them to the United States.
Father James Walsh, now pastor of
St. Christopher Parish in San Jose, had
arrived a year ahead of “PJ” and he and
others rallied to the new arrivals to help
them get inculturated.
“Jimmy took several of us under his
wing,” Bishop McGrath recalled, “and
helped us through the first few months
especially.”
Early on he recalls visiting the large
parish school at St. Anne’s, staffed by
the Sisters of the Presentation with
whom he is still close.
As an assistant pastor “I was in-
volved in the usual parish functions.
I had a hand in all kinds of ministry.
Priests have to be general practitioners,
you know, none of this ‘I don’t do this
or that ...’
“I was involved with a great spec-
trum of things - with old people, with
youth, different parish organizations
- part of the beauty of being a parish
priest. Of course, back then, there were
many more priests and you had to pay
your dues coming up.”
He recalled that young priests usu-
ally got assigned to the early morning
Masses and were moderators of the
parish teen clubs.
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