June 2, 2014
“I want to be a priest.”
That was the unequivocal answer a 7-year-old John Geaney gave to the age-old question: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” And 50 years after his ordination, Father Geaney still wants to be a priest and a Paulist.
“This is amazing; it doesn’t feel like 50 years,” said the now 76-year-old rector of the Cathedral of St. Andrew in Grand Rapids, Mich. “I am still a missionary, and it is important that [the Paulists] continue to be missionary as a community – that is what we were founded to be.”
Father Geaney is a Massachusetts native who grew up attending Mass on Sundays and praying the rosary together in the kitchen every evening with his family. “We prayed the rosary with Cardinal Cushing who recited the rosary on the radio,” Geaney said. He was the altar server at St. Joseph Church in Malden for the first Mass of a newly-ordained Paulist.
“I thought, ‘This guy is different,” recalled Father Geaney. Then Father Frank McGough came to Malden Catholic High School where Geaney was enrolled. Father McGough spoke to a student assembly about “being a missionary to Main Street, USA. And it was a whole new ballgame for me, the idea of being a missionary in the U.S. I knew this was what I ought to do, bring the Gospel to the U.S.”
After graduating from St. Paul’s College with a master’s degree in theology and being ordained on May 11, 1964, Father Geaney first served as associate pastor at St. Ann’s Church in Boston, Mass., for a few months before becoming associate pastor at St. Paul the Apostle Church in Los Angeles from 1964-66.
Father Geaney then served at the University Catholic Center at the University of California at Los Angeles while studying there for a second master’s degree, this one in communications from 1966-68.
“[In campus ministry,] you get to get to meet young people full of ideals and ambition who are very willing to share their life with you,” Father Geaney said.
He returned to St. Paul’s College as a faculty member from 1968-75 before heading just north to serve as director of communications for the Archdiocese of Baltimore from 1975-82. Father G, as he is often called, then returned to Washington, D.C., as executive producer for Intercommunity Telecommunications, then as President of Paulist Communications and finally as Executive Producer of Paulist Media Works, a multimedia production company.
“What we Paulists do with media is very different than what we do in a parish,” said Father Geaney, who celebrates the Sunday TV Mass in Grand Rapids on a rotating basis with other Paulists and the bishop. “You can’t get to people who don’t go to church to hear the message of the gospel, if all you do is preach in church. You need to get to people where they are. Where are they? In their cars listening to the radio or at home where there is practically a TV in every room. That’s why Paulists do radio, TV and other media. To help people find Jesus wherever they might happen to be.”
In 1999, Father Geaney became the priest director of Catholic Relief Services, the Baltimore-based international relief and development agency of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Father Geaney returned to parish ministry in 2002 as pastor of St. Augustine Church in Memphis, Tenn., before being named rector of the Cathedral of St. Andrew in 2010.
“St. Augustine is an African-American parish that gave me a different perspective on faith as I got to witness wonderful people sharing their lives together as Christians and Catholics with the deep spirituality that black people know and express,” he said. And at the cathedral, “We get to meet so many different people and share the Paulist spirit with them. One opportunity just leads to the next.”
And is “time to take it easy” one of the opportunities Father Geaney sees in his future?
“I am fortunate to have good health, good energy and a clear mind presently,” Father Geaney said. “All these things and wonderful people surrounding me combine to keep me going. I have no intention of retiring any time soon.”