Obituaries

Father Harry James Dooley, CSP, died July 19. A funeral Mass will be offered on July 27, 2009 at the Paulist Center in Boston. Paulist president Father John F. Duffy will preside, and Father John J. Kenny, CSP, will deliver the homily. Father Dooley was an ordained member of the Missionary Society of St. Paul the Apostle for 58 years. He was 79.

Father Dooley was born on Feb. 16, 1930 in Boston. He graduated from Loyola University in Chicago before entering the Paulist novitiate on Aug. 25, 1951. He made his first promises as a Paulist on Sept. 8, 1952, final promises on Sept. 8, 1955 and was ordained a Paulist priest on May 1, 1958. He received his MA from St. Paul’s College in Washington DC.

Father Dooley’s first priestly assignment took him to the Paulist Center in Boston, where he served in pastoral ministry for a year before heading to St. Paul the Apostle Church in Richardson, Tex. After a year, he stayed in Richardson, but served in the Newman Apostolate at the University of Texas from 1960-62.

Father Dooley headed back to Boston to continue in Newman ministry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he served until 1970. He then headed west, and ministered at the Paulist-run Catholic Information Center in San Francisco before going on sabbatical a year later.

Father Dooley returned to campus ministry in 1972 at the St. Thomas More Newman Center at the Ohio State University, where he ministered until 1975. He then headed back to his native Chicago to serve as associate pastor at Old St. Mary’s Church there until 1978.

It was at Old St. Mary’s where he met Father Wilfred Brimley, C.S.P., who tells a story about Father Dooley’s days in Texas. Father Dooley was returning to the parish after a day’s work at the Newman Center when he was pulled over by the police.

“The trooper said, ‘I’m sorry, Reverend, but at the rate of speed you were going, I have to write you a ticket.’ Harry asked, “Well, how fast was I going?” The trooper said, “Let me put it to you this way: you passed the lady I was chasing.’”

Tufts University in Boston beckoned Father Dooley back to campus ministry, where he served for a year. He continued campus ministry, this time at McGill University in Montreal from 1980-81. From 1982-88, Father Dooley ministered from Good Shepherd parish in New York City first as associate pastor, then as a campus minister at the City College of New York. From 1988-93, he was on special assignment ministering outside Paulist foundations, and he attained senior ministry status in 1993.

At the time of his death, Father Dooley was residing in a facility in Boston to care for his Alzheimer’s disease.

“Preaching was his strong suit,” said Father Brimley. “He was always a good preacher with a dry sense of humor.”