Remembering the "Saint of Berkeley" Father Bill O'Donnell dies at 74
Father Bill O'Donnell, priest of St. Joseph the Workers church in Berkeley California, died Monday December 8th, at his desk after celebrating morning mass. He was found slumped over his desk, where he had been finishing his weekly column in the parish paper. A heart attack is the presumed cause of death.
O'Donnell grew up in Livermore, where he came to his calling early, commencing his studies for the priesthood when he was just 13. Kicked out of four parishes for political activism he joined St. Joseph's in 1973 and stayed for three decades. He was, easily recognized in his trademark faded black Levi's and the worn leather jacket he wore over his priests collar.
Upon hearing the news of his death, [retired] Bishop John Cummins said that Father O’Donnell’s ministry "embraced the larger Church and the entire world" and ranged from "Berkeley to Delano to the Caribbean and to North Korea. Yet he remained very close to so many of us. We will miss the fond affection and joy that he continually gave us."
With a penchant for disobedience and a strong distaste for authoritarians, he often counseled non-violent resistance as a duty. At a mass following his release from jail after a 6-month stay at Atwater Penitentiary, a high-security federal facility in Merced, for crossing the line at the School of the Americas, he said, "Protesting is a way of life… You're never free of the responsibility to protest evil. Wherever lies are told, injustices committed, you have to protest—you have no choice." And protest he did- helping shutdown San Francisco’s financial district in March at the start of the war in Iraq, walking picket lines, scaling barbed wire fence at the Indonesian Consulate in San Francisco, riding with the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, linking up with Caesar Chavez in the farm workers long fight, joining sit-ins, and agitating successfully inside the church for the inclusion of more Spanish-speaking priests in the diocese. He was arrested nearly 300 times through 5 decades of relentless struggle to confront injustice.
The more then 2,000 friends who gathered in the Berkeley Community Theater came to celebrate the life of a man many referred to simply as the "Saint of Berkeley". Afterwards, O'Donnell was carried by a candlelight procession of 2,000 people through the streets of Berkeley back to St. Joseph the Worker. Father Bill’s black pickup led the way carrying his United Farm Workers flag-draped pine coffin.
He was buried at St. Mary's Cemetery in Oakland, California, where he had requested he be buried in a plain wooden coffin in a pauper's grave.
A pillar of California’s peace and justice community and an example to the world, Father Bill will be sorely missed and long remembered.
- By Alexander Bradley
Fr. Bill O'Donnell (far left)
(Photo by Indymedia)