From RNS:
Catholics, multi-faith clergy and elected leaders from across Southern California filled the pews of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in downtown Los Angeles on Friday for the funeral Mass of Auxiliary Bishop David Gerard O’Connell, a beloved priest regarded as a “peacekeeper,” a “man of the people” and a “good friend to Los Angeles.”
It was the third day of memorial services in remembrance of O’Connell, 69, a native of Ireland, who was found shot to death Feb. 18 in his Hacienda Heights home. Parishioners on Thursday formed lines at the cathedral during a daylong public viewing for the bishop before a vigil Mass was held in his honor.
On Friday, the prayer of St. Patrick emanated as bishops and cardinals processed into the cathedral. Cardinal Robert McElroy was among the bishops in attendance. City and state leaders including Los Angeles Police Department Chief Michel Moore and California Senator Maria Elena Durazo sat in the front pews alongside O’Connell’s family.
In his homily, Monsignor Jarlath Cunnane spoke of his 50 years of friendship with O’Connell, whom he described as a friend of Jesus and of the poor. Cunnane recalled how O’Connell was faithful to him while he was ill in the hospital. He also remembered their weekly dinners for which O’Connell would often arrive early and walk along the parking lot, with his dog’s leash in one hand and a rosary in the other.
“I’d look at the two of them, him and the dog so at peace, sometimes I fancied the dog had learned the rosary,” Cunnane joked.
He said that he and O’Connell were “caminantes juntos,” or “wayfarers together.”
“He wasn’t just my good friend. Friendship was something he was good at. He was friends with young and old, far and wide, with people in Peru, in South Africa, in Ireland. He was friends up and down the social scale, at ease in the corridors of power and with the powerless, at ease with the movers and the shakers, and also with the moved and the shaken,” Cunnane said.
“You’re blessed if you have a soul friend, and I was blessed to have had David,” he said.
Parishioners were in tears as Cunnane ended his homily with an adaptation of the speech of Tom Joad from John Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath.”
“Wherever a stranger, immigrant is to be welcomed, I’ll be there … wherever there’s a last soul given God’s love, I’ll be there,” said Cunnane.
You can view the video of the funeral Mass below.
