John O'Connell (priest)
John O'Connell SSC (25 March 1933 – 24 October 2013) was an Irish Catholic priest and member of the Missionary Society of St. Columban who spent most of his ministry in Lima, Peru. He oversaw the construction of the church dedicated to Martin de Porres in the Lima district that now bears the saint's name, served as parish priest there from 1961 to 1967, and later held office as Columban regional director in both South America and Ireland.
Early life and education
O'Connell's family home was at Bealnadeega, Headford, County Kerry. He was known by the Irish form of his name, Seán, in Ireland, and in Peru by the Spanish form, Juan. He was educated at Barraduff National School, Headford, and at St Brendan's College, Killarney, and entered the Missionary Society of St Columban at Dalgan Park, Navan, in 1951.
He was ordained to the priesthood at St Columban's, Dalgan Park, on 22 December 1957 and was assigned to Peru.
Blessed Martín de Porres parish
Before taking up his assignment O'Connell spent three months in Spain on a Spanish-language course, arriving in Lima in late March 1959. His first posting was as an assistant in the newly established Columban parish of Blessed Martín de Porres, in the area of northern Lima then undergoing rapid settlement by internal migrants.
Within three years of his arrival he was given responsibility for building a large cathedral dedicated to the parish's patron. Martín de Porres was canonised by Pope John XXIII on 6 May 1962, and the project drew wide popular support although it proved costly. O'Connell completed the building and attended the canonisation in Rome.
He served as parish priest of San Martín de Porres from 1961 until 1967. In a companion resolution honouring the Columban congregation as a whole, the municipality recorded that the Columbans had built the parish church of San Martín de Porres, which by 2012 had become a diocesan shrine. The district of San Martín de Porres took its present name in May 1962 following the canonisation.
Regional director
O'Connell was appointed Columban regional director for South America in 1967. His term coincided with the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council and the Medellín conference of 1968, which prompted a renewed emphasis on social justice among missionary clergy in the region. According to his fellow Columban Leo Donnelly, the resulting divide between priests pursuing social change and those favouring more traditional pastoral methods created tensions within the group; O'Connell was sympathetic to the case for change while working to preserve the unity of the region.
Return to Ireland
In 1980 O'Connell returned to Ireland, where he worked on the Columban mission promotion team and subsequently served as regional director.
Later ministry and death
O'Connell returned to Peru in 1996 and was assigned to the parish of San Pedro y San Pablo in Payet, in the Independencia district of northern Lima, where he remained until 2012.
Writing in 2000, O'Connell described the changes he had seen in the Peruvian church over four decades, contrasting the single-church, centralised parish of his early years with a decentralised structure of chapels and pastoral councils across five communities. He recorded the Columbans' decision in 1994 to send lay teams from eight neighbouring parishes to evangelise an unserved urban area of Lima, an initiative that led to the establishment of the parish of Our Lady of the Missions, and the sending of lay missionary teams from Lima to villages in the Andes from 1999, of whom the majority were women.
In an interview recorded by the in Lima, O'Connell gave an account of his life as a missionary and of the parish, one of the oldest in northern Lima, in which he had spent most of his ministry.
On 26 October 2012, the Municipality of San Martín de Porres conferred on O'Connell the Municipal Order of Merit for Distinguished Action (Orden Municipal al Mérito por Acción Distinguida) in recognition of his work in the district. He retired in late 2011, and his parishioners marked his departure from San Pedro y San Pablo with a series of farewell tributes.
O'Connell died in a hospital in Lima on the morning of 24 October 2013, aged 80. His funeral Mass and burial took place in Lima on 26 October. The funeral drew several hundred mourners, among them the Bishop of Carabayllo, Lino Panizza Richero, mayors of neighbouring districts, theologians, and the Dominican theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez, a friend of O'Connell's.
A memorial Mass was held on 23 November, the feast of St Columban, at St Joseph's Church, Rathmore.
Legacy
In an obituary for the Columban magazine Misyon, Leo Donnelly wrote that O'Connell's long assignments in the same parishes allowed him to build lasting relationships with parishioners, that he worked to counter racism within Peruvian society, and that he encouraged poor and often semi-literate migrant communities to pursue grassroots social change. A noted supporter of Kerry Gaelic football, he was known in his Lima parish for wearing the county's colours.
External links
- "In Peru, Things Are Moving" — article written by O'Connell for Misyon
- Interview with O'Connell — Universidad Católica Sedes Sapientiae