By Gretchen Keiser

Three priest serving in the archdiocese are celebrating silver jubilees this year. And it is also the anniversary of a priest who has gone on to become the bishop of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Father Edward O’Connor pastor of St. Michael’s in Gainesville, Father Michael Flanagan, M.S., pastor of St. Clement’s in Calhoun, Father Gerald Biron, M.S., who recently came to the parish of St. Thomas the Apostle in Smyrna, and Bishop Eusebius J. Beltran of Tulsa, formerly of the archdiocese, are marking the 25th anniversaries of their ordination.

Parish parties and concelebrated Masses, and a special afternoon of golf in Calhoun, are among the celebrations planned to mark the occasion in Atlanta.

Father O’Connor, who was in Oklahoma for the celebrations in honor of Bishop Beltran, will be the center of attention in his own parish at 4 p.m. Sunday, June 2. A concelebrated Mass at church will be followed by an open house in the social hall which is expected to draw some 500 people.

While the actual date of his ordination is June 19, 1960, Father O’Connor explained in a letter to his fellow priests that he will be in the “Holy Land” of Roscommon, Ireland on that date, so the celebration is coming early in Gainesville.

Born in Roscommon, Father O’Connor was educated and ordained at St. Patrick’s College in Maynooth, Ireland. His first assignment was to Immaculate Heart of Mary parish, and he later served as an assistant at St. John the Evangelist parish in Hapeville and Sts. Peter and Paul in Decatur. He also taught at the former St. Joseph’s High School in Atlanta before becoming a pastor. He has been a pastor of St. Peter’s in LaGrange, St. Mary’s in Rome and Holy Cross in Atlanta before his assignment in June 1976 to St. Michael’s, where he also publishes a widely read Sunday bulletin detailing the joys and sorrows of parish life and his optimistic weather predictions for the annual parish picnic.

Father Flanagan, who is hosting the May 30 golf outing and buffet for the jubilarians in Calhoun, came to Georgia in November, 1981, after serving in LaSalette churches in Massachusetts, Connecticut and England.

Assigned to the mission of St. Clement’s in Calhoun, he has seen the Catholic community grow from about 70 families in 1981 to about 120 families. Last October St. Clement’s became a parish with Father Flanagan as its first pastor. The parish celebration of his 25th anniversary will also be held on Sunday, June 2. A concelebrated Mass will be held at 3 p.m. and a reception will follow in the church hall.

Born in Medford, Mass., Father Flanagan entered the LaSalette Seminary in Hartford, Conn. at the age of sixteen, where he attended high school and two years of college. He completed his seminary studies at the National Shrine of Our Lady of LaSalette in Ipswich, Mass., where he was ordained May 28, 1960.

He has worked extensively with Catholic Youth Organizations and as director of religious education in parishes in Hartford and Danielson, Conn., and served as assistant pastor of St. Peter’s parish in Dagenham, Essex, England and as pastor of Our Lady of LaSalette parish in Rainham, Essex, England.

The celebration at St. Clement’s will be followed by a June 9 Mass and reception at his home parish of St. Patrick’s in Westertown, Mass., where his mother, who is 87 years old, lives. “I’m just overjoyed with being able to be a priest and bring a sense of the Church, the Church of today, to the people of Calhoun and Gordon County,” Father Flanagan said.

Father Gerald Biron, M.S., a fellow missionary of Our Lady of LaSalette came to St. Thomas the Apostle in Smyrna last December after spending nearly 25 years in mission work in the Philippines, Spain, the island of Madagascar off the coast of Africa and Argentina.

Born in Springfield, Mass., Father Biron was ordained on Sept. 18, 1960 in Attleboro, Mass. and was first assigned to the Philippines, moving three years later to the island of Madagascar where he served from 1964 to 1968. He was later to return to Madagascar in the 1980s for two years, after serving at a LaSalette seminary in Spain and for six years in Argentina. Father Biron said a “sick foot” forced him to leave the missionary work in Madagascar and return to the United States, and, to his assignment in Georgia, where, he said, he has found “the natives to be very friendly.” A celebration will be held at St. Thomas the Apostle in the fall, Father Biron said, and he is among those being honored in Calhoun May 30.

He said the highlight of his assignments “was to learn the pastoral ministry in Africa” where very few priests minister to great numbers of Catholics with the aid of assigned and trained lay ministers. A different system exists in Madagascar and Africa from the “communidades de base” which are developing in Latin America, he said. In Madagascar, in remote areas, “you really need to have what amounts to a parish without a priest,” he said, where an appointed lay person organizes and activities and leads a Sunday prayer service. The development led to a very dynamic form of evangelization in Africa, he said.

Finally, among the jubilarians, celebrations were held recently in Tulsa, Oklahoma, honoring Bishop Eusebius Beltran, who was ordained May 14, 1960 at Cathedral of Christ the King. A former vicar general of the archdiocese and pastor at Holy Cross parish and St. Anthony’s parish in Atlanta, he was appointed bishop of Tulsa in April 1978. He is the brother of Father Joseph Beltran, pastor of All Saints in Dunwoody.