Newspaper Page Text
Thursday, September 28, 2000
The Southern Cross, Page 3
Fathers Jeremiah F. O’Neill Sr. and Jeremiah F. O’Neill, Jr.:
uncle and nephew in the service of the Savannah Diocese
Rita H.
DeLorme
nyone rifling through files
jDf the archives of the Sa
vannah Diocese will sooner or
later come upon the names of
Fathers Jeremiah F. O’Neill,
Sr. and Jeremiah F. O’Neill,
Jr. Uncle and nephew, they
were both men of intelligence
and character who influenced
the diocese in untold ways. The
elder, “Old Father Jerry,” was
bom in Lixnau, County Kerry,
Ireland in 1792 and was educat
ed in Dublin. His ordination by the immortal
Bishop John England took place in the Diocese of
Charleston about 1826. Father Jeremiah O’Neill
Sr.’s initial ministry was to be in Columbia and
surrounding South Carolina missions, until his
assignment to Savannah in 1832. The city’s
Catholic church at this time, it has been said, was
little more than a “wooden shack on the verge of
collapse”.
Tall and with a marked resemblance to President
Andrew Jackson, the new pastor of the Cathedral
quickly went about the business of gathering funds
for a new church for his steadily growing parish.
With “pay as you go” his motto, Father O’Neill
eventually had a “plain, substantial building, with
galleries and organ, and a capacity for seating
nearly one thousand worshipers” under construc
tion. The largest church in the diocese, the Church
of Saint John the Baptist, was—at its dedication—
“as free from debt at the Temple of Solomon.”
Blessed with an abundance of energy and zeal,
Father Jeremiah O’Neill, Sr. moved on to establish
an orphanage, and procure a site for a convent for
the Sisters of Mercy who would accept his invita
tion to mn the orphanage and school. Despite the
fact that he did not have an assistant for the first
fifteen years of his pastorate, the Irish priest man
aged to be everywhere in the city of Savannah.
When one notable labor dispute arose, Father
O’Neill was on the spot, speaking to disgruntled
Irish workers in their native tongue and circum
venting a violent outreak. When a temperance
group was needed, Father O’Neill organized one
along with a ladies’ association to spur its teetotal-
ing members along. Father O’Neill delivered an
address on the “Throne of Grace” when Savan
nah’s Hibernian Society convened at the Cathedral
in 1841, the year his newly-founded temperance
group marched in the parade from Bay Street to
Saint John the Baptist. He continued to travel
Fathers Jeremiah F. O’Neill Sr. and Jr.
Left photo courtesy of Diocesan Archives;
Right photo by Jonas N. Jordan
of portait beonging to Father William O. O’Neill
throughout the state doing missionary work
and never seemed to tire. An excellent
musician, Father O’Neill Sr. once
charmed a reluctant farmer into pro
viding lodging for himself and
Bishop England in their travels by
skillfully playing the melancholy
“Last Rose of Summer” on his
flute.
Father O’Neill kept going, out
distancing three subsequent admin
istrations, and living to about 80
years of age. Some time before his
death, he broke a leg which slowed
him down a bit. “If you want to get
fat,” said the previously rail thin-priest,
“break your leg.” When he died in July
1870, Father Jeremiah F. O’Neill Sr. had
been a priest, a respected community
leader, a missionary, and an incor
ruptible influence in the Savannah
Diocese for almost 50 years.
Though Father O’Neill Sr.’s act
was a difficult one to follow, his
nephew, Father Jeremiah F. O’Neill Jr. (1827-
1868), made a good job of it. “Young Father
Jerry,” unlike his colorful kinsman, was not bom in
Ireland, but in the early Catholic community of
Locust Grove to which his family had emigrated
from Canada. Whereas his uncle’s service to the
Church was largely based in the southern end of
the state, Father Jeremiah O’Neill Jr.’s pastoral
career would include a period in Macon and would
be distinguished by his becoming the “first resi
dent Catholic pastor” of Atlanta on his appoint
ment in February 1851, less than a year after his
ordination.
Successfully building churches seemed to be a
family penchant. Father O’Neill Jr. was in charge
when the first frame Church of the Immaculate
Conception was built in Atlanta and was dedicated
by Bishop Ignatius Reynolds, successor to Bishop
England of Charleston, The young priest’s “territo
ry” included, in addition to his pastoral duties in
Atlanta, visiting missions in Newton, Fayette,
Coweta, Cobb, Case, Floyd, Murray, Lumpkin and
Forsyth counties. He remained pastor of the Shrine
of the Immaculate Conception until 1859, and also
served as pastor of Saint Joseph’s Church in
Macon.
During the tumultuous Civil War years, Father
Jeremiah O’Neill Jr. worked, along with Father
Thomas O’Reilly of Atlanta, in local hospitals car
ing for the wounded. This diligent priest did not
enjoy the long life his colorful uncle, Father
O’Neill Sr. did. Eighteen years into his priesthood,
Father Jeremiah O’Neill Jr. died of cancer at forty-
one years of age. He was buried at Locust Grove
“within sight of the little church where as a child
he had served Mass.” A marker “dedicated with
great love to Father Jeremiah F. O’Neill Jr.” by
Bishop Ignatius Persico and his fellow priests is
set in a prominent place in the Locust Grove
Cemetery.
Both brilliant men, “old Father Jerry” and
“young Father Jerry,” were outstanding pastors and
missionaries in the early days of the Savannah
Diocese. What was written about Father Jeremiah
O’Neill Sr. by Father J. J. O’Connell, OSB in his
Catholicity in the Carolinas and Georgia might, in
many ways, apply to the younger Father O’Neill as
well: “His journeys in the pathless forests on
horseback and in the old-fashioned sulky, by day
and night, when one-third of the State formed his
parish, and his attendance on the sick and dying in
seasons of yellow fever and pestilence in Savannah
are still remembered with admiration, while the
full measure of his labors are only known to God.”
Rita H. DeLorme is a volunteer in the
Diocesan Archives.
During bishops’ jubilee, pope to entrust world
By Cindy Wooden
Vatican City (CNS)
hen bishops from around the
world gather for their jubilee
celebration in early October, the stat
ue of Our Lady of Fatima also will
make a pilgrimage to Rome.
Pope John Paul II and the world’s
bishops will gather around the statue
for the recitation of the rosary
October 7 and, in the presence of the
statue October 8, they will once
again entrust the world to the protec
tion of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Once before, in March 1984, the
pope had the statue brought from
Portugal to Saint Peter’s Square
where, in union with the bishops of
the world, he consecrated the world
to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
The act of consecration was one of
the requests the three shepherd chil
dren of Fatima said Mary made dur
ing her apparitions to them in 1917.
Carmelite Sister Lucia dos Santos,
the only surviving Fatima visionary
and a cousin of the other two, has
said that the 1984 ceremony fulfilled
the request.
Embedded in the statue’s crown is
one of the bullet fragments removed
from Pope John Paul’s body after he
was shot May 13—the feast of Our
Lady of Fatima—in 1981.
In conjunction with the May beati
fication of Sister Lucia’s cousins,
Pope John Paul ordered publication
of the so-called “third secret of
Fatima,” which had been kept sealed
at the Vatican for some 50 years.
According to the Vatican, the mes
sage predicted the struggles of the
church with Nazism and communism
and foretold the shooting of Pope
John Paul.
to Mary
The Vatican’s Holy Year commit
tee said formally entrusting the world
to Mary October 8 will be a plea “for
the protection of the mother of Christ
over the church and over the world at
the beginning of the third millenni
um.”
The statue is scheduled to arrive
from Portugal October 6 and be kept
that night in Pope John Paul’s private
chapel. The morning of October 7 it
will be transferred to Saint Peter’s
Basilica for public veneration.