Newspaper Page Text
Thursday, November 16, 2000
The Southern Cross, Page 3
Father Reilly’s walking stick: a reminder of a
Rita H.
DeLorme
s with most
Jiomes, the
Diocesan Archives
of Savannah, the
“home” of diocesan
records, boasts its
share of memen
toes. Carefully
tucked away in stor
age are such items as
the autocratic
Bishop Becker’s
cane; a “sick set”
complete with candles, crucifix,
communion cloth, etc., and seals of
several former bishops of the dio
cese. And there is Father Michael T.
Reilly’s walking stick, gold-headed
and engraved, a present-day remin
der of a priest whose field of labor
embraced 19th-century Augusta,
Atlanta and Savannah.
A search of diocesan records turns
up a thumbnail sketch of this priest
whose service to the Savannah Dio
cese ranged from his appointment
there in 1872 until his death in 1902.
Between these two dates, Father
Michael Reilly had performed his
priestly duties at the Church of the
Most Holy Trinity (Augusta), Church
of the Immaculate Conception
(Atlanta) and, chiefly, at the Cathe
dral of Our Lady of Perpetual Help
(Saint John the Baptist) in Savannah.
The 1860 Census of Chatham
County, Georgia, reveals that Micha
el Thomas Reilly was a native of
Savannah and the son of Michael G.
and Ellen Reilly, of County Long
ford, Ireland. Young Michael Reilly
was twelve years old when the cen
sus taker pressed the Reillys for the
ages of each of their children. Listed
besides Michael by the tabulator
were Francis (7), Mary E. (5) and
John F. (2).
On Michael’s ordination as a priest
at Saint Mary’s Seminary at
Baltimore, Maryland, a notice was
carried in the July 23, 1872 edition
of The Savannah Morning News stat
ing that he was the son of M. G.
Reilly of Savannah and that the ordi
nation had taken place “recently”.
On October 7, 1872, the local paper
announced that
“Father Michael
T. Reilly of this
city has been
assigned to
duty, under the
Vicar General
of this diocese,
the Rev. W. J.
Hamilton, and
gone to Augusta
to commence
his labors.”
Father Reilly
had been in
Augusta slightly
more than a
year when his
father, Michael
G. Reilly, suc
cumbed to
“apoplectic
fever” in
December 1873.
In Augusta, Father Michael Reilly
served at the Church of the Most
Holy Trinity from 1873 to 1874. As
with many priests of the Savannah
Diocese early on, Father Reilly was
assigned additional reponsibility.
Since there was no priest available
for service at Athens at that time, the
new priest was tapped to visit that
city once a month to administer to
the needs of Catholics there. By
1875, Father Reilly had been as
signed to Atlanta’s Church of the
Immaculate Conception. He would
remain at this post, working in the
northern part of the state until 1880,
at which time he commenced his
ministry at the Cathedral of Our
Lady of Perpetual Help, as Savan
nah’s Cathedral of Saint John the
Baptist was then called. Father
Reilly’s assignment to Savannah
would mark his longest ministry at a
parish. On Sunday, March 9, 1880,
The Savannah Morning News noted
that the newly-appointed priest had
celebrated High Mass on the
“Sunday of Rejoicing” in thanksgiv
ing for “penitents who have been
brought to the fold of the Good
Shepherd during this portion of
Lent.”
Father Reilley’s walking stick
Father Michael
Reilly, by now
possessing the
gold-headed cane
presented to him
by members of
the Sodality of
Augusta’s Most
Holy Trinity
Church, soon
became a fixture
in the religious,
civic and social
life of his home
| town. He contin-
2 ued to serve in
co
c Savannah until
= his death July
^25, 1902, at age
o 54 of apoplexy,
i: Father Reilly
died aboard the
steamship “City
of Memphis”
while en route to New York to visit
his brother, Frank. Local newspapers
gave the priest’s death full play. “His
genial good nature and broad
Catholicity as well as his affliction,”
said The Morning News, endeared
him to many who deeply deplore his
death.” The newspaper’s mention of
Father Reilly’s affliction provides
some insight into what may have
happened to the priest. In a eulogy
offered at Father Michael Reilly’s
funeral, the incompletely identified
speaker, “the Rev. Father Halpin”,
declared (concerning the late priest)
that “No one conceived the agony he
felt, nor could appreciate the
poignancy of his heart when, like a
thunderbolt from a clear sky, he was
suddenly afflicted and deprived of
his capacity for doing physical work
among his congregation.” The afflic
tion Father Michael Reilly had suf
fered sounds much like the symp
toms of stroke. At the time of this
infirmity the walking stick given him
years earlier by sodality members at
Most Holy Trinity may have proved
to be a boon.
The deceased priest’s funeral serv
ices were carried out with great
solemnity. Altars of the Cathedral—
kind priest
his home parish—“were strtipped of
all ornaments and trappings and they,
as well as the pillars and windows,
trancepts and doors, had insignias of
mourning.” Ten of Father Reilly’s
fellow priests read lessons and chant
ed psalms from the Office of the
Dead, after which Father Bazin,
administrator of the Diocese, cele
brated a Solemn Requiem High
Mass, assisted by Father Kennedy,
deacon, and Father Jackson, sub-dea
con. A choir under the direction of
Professor John Wiegand performed a
special music service “of high cali
bre.”
Toward the end of the service, the
eulogist, Father Halpin looked about
the Cathedral and observed that
many of those attending the late
priest’s services had gone to school
with Michael Reilly as a boy.
“Others,” the speaker went on, “ac
companied him to college where he
was fitting himself for dedication to
God and consecrating his young
manhood to the spread of the Gospel
and the bettering of the congregation
with which he was connected.”
Father Halpin spoke of Father Reil
ly’s tenderness toward the poor, his
humble submission to God’s will
when his health became bad, and his
real love for his fellow man. At his
funeral, Father Michael Reilly’s
parishioners and friends affirmed
their regard for him by filing down
the middle aisle of the Cathedral in
great numbers to look one last time
at their priest as he lay in state.
Among those present were school
children who “loved him for his ten
derness, for his affection, for his
great zeal for them and for the kind
liness of his heart.” Remembrance of
Father Michael T. Reilly remains in
the Archives of the Diocese of
Savannah today in the form of the
presentation walking stick he leaned
on so patiently during the closing
years of his life.
Rita H. DeLorme is a volunteer
in the Diocesan Archives.
Marino
(Continued from page I)
stress” and the need for a long rest, and Pope John
Paul II had accepted it that July.
In an interview with Catholic News Service as the
scandal was unfolding, then-Bishop James P. Lyke,
who eventually succeeded Archbishop Marino as
archbishop of Atlanta, said he hoped the archbish
op’s “one unfortunate mistake in his life” would not
overshadow “his marvelous history of ministry, life
and love in the church over the past 30 years.”
(Archbishop Lyke died in 1992.)
Bom May 29, 1934, in Biloxi, Mississippi,
Eugene Antonio Marino was the sixth of eight
children of Jesus Maria Marino, a native of Puerto
Rico who had also lived in Liverpool, England,
and Lottie Irene Bradford, a native of Biloxi.
Educated through high school at parish schools
at Our Mother of Sorrows Church in Biloxi,
Marino also earned a bachelor’s degree at Saint
Joseph’s Seminary College in Washington and a
master’s in religious education at Fordham Univer
sity in New York.
Ordained a priest of the Society of Saint Joseph
on June 9, 1962, he taught religion, biology and
physical science at Epiphany College in
Newburgh, N.Y., in 1962-68 and served as spiritual
director of Saint Joseph’s Seminary in Washington
in 1968-71. He was elected vicar general of the
Josephites in 1971, serving also as director of spir
itual and educational formation for the society.
In 1974, when he was 40, Father Marino was
named an auxiliary bishop of Washington, becom
ing the third black priest in modem times to achieve
the rank of bishop in the U.S. Catholic Church.
Preceding him were Auxiliary Bishop Harold R.
Perry of New Orleans, who died in 1991, and
Bishop Joseph L. Howze, then of Jackson,
Mississippi, and now of Biloxi. There are currently
12 active black U.S. bishops and one retired.
Bishop Marino was named archbishop of Atlanta
in 1988; he later admitted that his relationship with
Long began shortly afterward.
After his resignation, Archbishop Marino went
into seclusion, under spiritual direction and psychi
atric and medical care for severe stress.