By Rita McInerney

Archbishop Thomas A. Donnellan, the second archbishop of Atlanta, came to the diocese in 1968, following the death of Archbishop Paul J. Hallinan.

Coming to the South from the upstate New York diocese of Ogdensburg, a native of New York City and protégé of Cardinal Francis Spellman, he served as archbishop for 19 years in a period of remarkable growth for the Catholic Church in North Georgia.

Personally committed to Catholic social teaching in the area of workers' rights and labor unions, he became one of five bishops drafting a landmark pastoral letter, Economic Justice for All: Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy, that was adopted by the U.S. Bishops in 1986.

When Archbishop Donnellan was installed at the Cathedral of Christ the King on July 16, 1968, Atlanta was in the early stage of its extraordinary growth. His see consisted of 34 parishes, 25 missions, 60 diocesan priests and 50,000 Catholics.

By 1987, the Catholic population had almost tripled and the number of parishes had doubled. The Catholic population is now about 133,000 in 65 parishes and 18 missions, served by 178 priests.

As a bishop and pastor, he was of one mind with Pope John Paul II in upholding the teachings of the Church in the face of changing times. And it was of vital importance to him that the people have priests and pastors to guide them in the spiritual journey.

Always a priest concerned with increasing vocations, the archbishop in 1973 asked the legendary vocations director, Monsignor P. J. O'Connor, to resume visits to Irish seminaries in the hope of recruiting seminarians to study for the archdiocese, a task that was handed over to Father Edward Dillon in 1974.

Although the archbishop had personal connections with Ireland through his family, it was not for sentimental reasons that he approached the Irish seminaries, but because of the practical need for priests to serve the growing Atlanta church, Father Dillon said. The future growth of the archdiocese and the need to plan for it and prepare for it was very much on the archbishop's mind and in his conversation, Father Dillon said.

Looking back upon 40 years as a priest in a 1979 interview he said, "The appointment that probably meant the most to me and pleased me the most was to be appointed rector of the seminary (St. Joseph's Seminary, Yonkers, NY) which came in 1962. I remember saying to Archbishop (John) Maguire that the only ambition I ever had was to teach in the seminary and I felt that I was too old for that. About six months later I found myself assigned as rector. Being in charge of the preparation of young men to the priesthood was to me possibly the best of assignments. I couldn’t think of anything more important I could be doing."

While serving as vocations director, the future archbishop was responsible for a successful recruiting booklet. Paulist Father Thomas E. Comber, who worked on the project with him, recalled that Father Donnellan had learned through a study he made that television changed images and goals, the attitudes of the family, and what people wanted to be. He decided that a family education project was needed. Together with Father Alvin Illig of the Paulist Press, he produced a series of 10, four-color booklets which opened to 16 pages. The booklets discussed such topics as the future of the child, what life in the rectory or convent is like, and what it is like to be a Religious brother.

The booklets were printed by Paulist Press and passed out in all the parishes of the archdiocese with an accompanying letter suggesting sermon material. Later, Father Comber said, these adult education booklets were mass-produced and sold to over 50 dioceses between 1960 and 1965. A total of 27 million copies were sold, Father Donnellan was named a monsignor after the booklets proved so successful, according to Father Comber.

The priest said he felt that shortage of priestly vocations would be even greater had it not been for the little booklets which resulted from Father Donnellan's idea.

There was never any doubt as to his own sadness when men left the priesthood, as happened during his years in Atlanta. During a September 1986 interview with Atlanta Magazine, he said, "The thing that has caused me the greatest heartache is when a man decides that he'll no longer actively serve. That, for me, would be the hardest blow in my time as a bishop."

But it did not dim his Christian hope for the future of priestly life. "The Church has gone through peaks and valleys as far as vocations are concerned. I’m confident that when the Lord said I'll be with you always even till the consummation of the world he meant he was going to be there and that we will have the priests we need to do the job," he said in a Southline interview on April 9, 1986.

The "sign of contradiction" that Pope John Paul called Catholics to be in the world was echoed by the archbishop in the same interview, as he spoke of the hunger "within our materialistic culture for spiritual values."

"You would be different than the culture in which you live if you lived according to Catholic values," he said. "You would recognize that through life there will be hardships, but that God will always give you the assurance of his help… You would not see death as a total evil, but as a door leading to the reunion with Jesus Christ. All of this makes a difference."

This is the assurance of faith he had from his earliest years. His was a close-knit Irish Catholic family. His parents, Andrew and Margaret Egan Donnellan, were both born in Ireland. Home was in the Unionport section of the Bronx. He and his sister, Nancy, grew up in an atmosphere of love and faith, their parents dedicated to giving them the best Catholic education possible. The Donnellan's family life was closely linked to that of their parish, Holy Family. Young Tom Donnellan began thinking about the priesthood at the same age he became an altar boy, seven.

In March, 1987, the archbishop returned to Holy Family for the 75^th anniversary celebration of the parish, staying at the rectory, celebrating the anniversary Mass and enjoying the return to the old neighborhood and parish.

On his return to Atlanta, he reflected in a homily upon the emotional bond that connects parishioners to their native parish. The house where one was reared may become the home of strangers, he said, but the parish church where one served and celebrated the sacraments is always home.

While the archbishop could smiling refer to be labeled the "token conservative" in a news magazine article on the bishops' committee drafting the letter on the economy, he brought to the task a lifelong commitment to the poor and jobless.

He had known firsthand what hardships are inflicted upon families in an unequal economy. As a boy growing up in a blue-collar neighborhood in the Bronx, his family knew hard times. His father, a union bricklayer, worked hard when jobs were available during the Depression years, the archbishop told a meeting on the pastoral at the Atlanta Archdiocesan Council of Catholic Women's annual convention in September, 1985. His father was not paid for days off sick and there were no paid vacations or pensions.

In 1982, the archbishop was able to call upon his own experience of hard times along with the demands of the Gospel, papal encyclicals calling for a just economy, and the challenges of Vatican II, in helping frame that letter which urged a moral perspective in viewing the economy from the vantage point of the poor.

Shortly before the first draft of the letter, Economic Justice For All: Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy, was unveiled at the annual meeting of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in November, 1984, he spoke of the lengthy process of its preparation in an interview with the Georgia Bulletin. Although the committee began its task in November, 1980, the archbishop was added to the group in the fall of 1982, replacing an ailing friend and colleague, Bishop Joseph Daley.

"We're considering the economy in terms of the dignity of the human person," he said in the interview. Even before the first draft of the pastoral was released, it drew critical attention from business periodicals and some prominent Catholic executives and business officials.

At a press conference Nov. 11, 1984, as the first draft was released in Washington, DC, the Archbishop responded to a reporter's suggestion that considerable progress had been made in reducing unemployment in the past two years with the comment that the committee believed "the nation's commitment to generating full employment has been seriously eroded, if not abandoned."

And he told a Southline interviewer in 1986 that he remembered watching his father fight for guaranteed work, vacation, hospitalization during the Depression and that he believed dissension was paramount to improvement. "Because there were people willing to criticize the system and improve it, people now have Social Security, Medicare and assured pensions. These things don't just happen. They happen because somebody was disposed to be constructively critical."

In 1971, he had affirmed the Church's support of the right of workers to organize and called on labor unions to admit workers into their ranks without discrimination. He made the appeal at a press conference at which he announced that a May Day Mass for labor would be celebrated at Christ the King Cathedral.

One of man's rights, he declared, "and sometimes this can even be a duty, is to gather together in organizations which will enable him to bargain collectively for living wages, decent working conditions and humane hours which will allow him to work and spend time with his family in dignity." He said that an integral part of the Church's mission is to speak to the needs of mankind, especially in the area of human rights and justice.

In June, 1977, he joined with six other Southern Catholic bishops to make an "unsolicited offer" to mediate the 14-year-old dispute between J. P. Stevens Co. and the textile workers' union. The offer came a year after the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers launched a nationwide retail boycott of Stevens' products to pressure the large textile manufacturer into accepting unionization of its 40,000 workers.

The bishops' statement stopped short of supporting the boycott but said they were sympathetic to its goal -- to speed up the organization of Southern textile workers for purposes of collective bargaining. They viewed this objective "as being in complete harmony with traditional Catholic social teaching." In 1980, since no progress had been made toward resolving the dispute, the bishops did endorse the boycott.

The archbishop, from the beginning of his years in Atlanta, was a part of the struggle to ease poverty and injustice.

While he arrived in Atlanta after the civil rights struggle was beginning to gain results, he was aware prejudice still existed, he told the Southline interviewer, Michelle Kilbourne in 1986. But he also felt that the cooperation between the Catholic Church and other denominations had helped to dissipate prejudice. He was supportive, through membership in the Christian Council of Metropolitan Atlanta and Atlanta's Neighborhood Justice Center, of assistance for the indigent and the homeless.

Betti Knott, who worked with the archbishop for eight years as director of the central St. Vincent de Paul Society in downtown Atlanta, said he was "incredibly supportive' of her efforts to involve people throughout the archdiocese in working for the poor through the night shelters at St. Anthony's and Central Presbyterian churches, and the food kitchens at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and St. Anthony's.

She found him to be a bishop who "enabled people to grow, to work with a project even if it seemed far-fetched. He was flexible enough to allow people to try. I would consult him and ask him if I had any doubts… He might arch an eyebrow if I made a mistake but he never said 'I told you so.' He was one of the most pastoral bishops I've ever encountered. He was always there when I needed him and he even covered for me when I made mistakes."

In January, 1970, he barred new enrollments at all Catholic schools in the archdiocese in an effort to support the public school systems in their efforts to integrate. In his statement, the archbishop said, "Many have taken or are thinking of taking their children from the public schools, to enter established or new private schools -- some of which serve only as a haven from change, rather than providing a sound program of education. We urge these people to have confidence in their public school administrators and to cooperate with them in every way."

Community Relations

He served for 15 years, under four mayors, on the Community Relations Commission. Just this past May after he was hospitalized, Mayor Andrew Young, speaking before some 400 people gathered at the National Workshop for Christian Unity at the Pierremont Plaza, termed him a "very strong part" of the city's tradition of church leadership willing to work together to bring about the kingdom of God.

The mayor went on to say he had served with the archbishop on the commission during the difficult days of the civil rights struggle in the city. One of the reasons "we had no violence in this city was because men like Archbishop Donnellan were willing to spend time working with people like me," at that time a young activist "just a few months out of jail."

During Lent of 1981, at the height of the city's agony over the child murders, he urged Catholics to do special acts of penance and self-sacrifice on the Fridays of Lent as one way of sharing in the suffering of the times.

That same year a special collection was taken up for Camp Promise, an archdiocesan project begun out of concern for the children of the neighborhoods where the murders had occurred. The summer day care, coordinated by Sister Margaret McAnoy, IHM, mobilized volunteers from parishes throughout the archdiocese, and Religious from convents and students from high schools and colleges from all across the country in a massive mobilization of people who wanted to help the children.

The collection continues to be taken up each spring in parishes throughout the archdiocese to underwrite the expenses of Camp Promise held in three parishes in Atlanta and Decatur.

The archbishop's efforts in promoting Christian unity bore fruit in the signing of two covenants during the 1980s. In January, 1984, in an historic ceremony at the Shroud of Turin exhibit at the Omni, he and Bishop Charles J Child, Jr., bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta, signed a covenant committing the two dioceses to mutual prayer and respect, study and spiritual life.

"We have come to declare a unity to which Christ calls us," Archbishop Donnellan said at the service. Expressing his feelings later, he said that he felt everyone had an obligation to extend themselves in seeking the unity Christ prayed for.

On Nov. 2, 1986, at an All Saints Day service at the Cathedral of Christ the King, the archbishop signed a covenant with two Lutheran leaders, Bishop David E. Wolber, of the Southeastern District, American Lutheran Church, and Bishop Gerald S. Troutman, of the Southeastern Synod, Lutheran Church in America. The covenant document, presented after a year of dialogue between committees from the two faiths, called for mutual support in prayer and action.

In October of 1970, the archbishop returned to New York City to accept the annual Brotherhood Award of the National Conference of Christians and Jews. The late Cardinal Terence Cooke, as principal speaker, lauded his old friend for "his gifts of integrity and dedication, his penetrating and balanced mind, and his social involvement and personal good humor."

In November, 1980, the archbishop joined with Rabbi Alvin M. Sugarman of The Temple in Atlanta, in a Thanksgiving statement on behalf of "our black brothers and sisters, …as an expression of the concern we feel with them over the resurgence of such voices of bigotry as the Ku Klux Klan.

"We remind our congregations that we cannot merely stand idly by when the rights of others are threatened, especially when they are threatened by a group that has historically leveled the same attacks at us. An attack on the rights of any one of us is a threat to the rights of all of us," the two religious leaders said.

It is inconsistent with the teachings of their religious heritage that a Catholic or a Jew hold membership in the Ku Klux Klan; to be associated with such groups is equivalent to endorsing their positions, both past and present, the two men told their congregations.

In May, 1986, the archbishop was appointed by Gov. Joe Frank Harris to the Georgia Commission on the Holocaust. The commission was formed to heighten public awareness of the lessons of the wholesale slaughter of the Jewish people by Hitler.

Dr. Lawrence W. Bottoms, a Presbyterian minister and a former president of the Christian Council of Metropolitan Atlanta, who had known the archbishop through community and ecumenical work for many years, said the archbishop was a "very cordial" person who was "concerned about the people."

He highly complimented him as a man of spiritual and intellectual depths. Who through not at the secondary level of structure and programs, but rather "at the primary level of spiritual development. He had a depth much deeper than structure."

Because of this depth, the archbishop was able to extend the relationship of the Catholic community across many denominational lines, Dr. Bottoms said.

"I think he knew how to live at a spiritual depth," Dr. Bottoms said. "That is where relationships deepen, through the ability to meet people at a spiritual level."

Archbishop Donnellan's was a strong voice against abortion both in his archdiocese and in the nation since his responsibilities with the National Conference of Catholic Bishops included that of consultant to the Pro-Life Activities Committee.

When the Supreme Court, on Jan 22, 1973, ruled in favor of abortion he issued a statement which said in part: "The court has spoken in behalf of a woman's right to privacy. I pray that the American people will continue to speak in behalf of the far more basic right to life of the unborn child and the efforts of the individual states to protect that right."

In a statement to mark Pro-Life Day in October, 1977, he stressed the need for Christians to speak out on the issue and not to succumb to the philosophy of those pro-abortionists who argue that "one should not force one's moral viewpoints on another. Society forces its moral viewpoints upon robbers and rapists with whom it disagrees, in enforcing law…" he said.

Sheila Mallon, who retired this year as diocesan pro-life coordinator, said the archbishop was always supportive of the activities of her office. He came out for the first pro-life march in 1983, an encouragement both to the Catholics and the people of other faiths attending. On another occasion the bishop was present, as he had promised, at a pro-life meeting at the Catholic Center even though his appearance there meant missing an anniversary celebration for a seminary classmate in another part of the country.

When she needed information on Catholic teachings, he would always look up the reference in an official volume and mark it for her, she recalled.

Politically he considered himself neither conservative nor liberal, he told the Southline interviewer in 1986. "I'm Catholic. I have to read the signs of the times and apply my principles to them. I'm not hung up on this or that political party. I'm hung up on the positions they take."

The archbishop had a special love of children and was always open to them. Mrs. Sally Grubbs, his secretary through all the years he led the archdiocese, said he told her to walk out and see the children playing in a nearby school yard as he was accustomed to doing in New York state.

She said he always looked forward to the children from the Village of St. Joseph coming to the Catholic Center to sing carols at Christmas time. And the children looked forward to the annual party, Sister Teresa Termini, CSJ, said. Their performance was always followed by a little party, with each receiving a stocking or basked filled with holiday treats.

When he came to the Village for a trustees' meeting the children always clamored to sit at the table with him for the meal.

Sister Termini was administrator at the Village for seven years from 1969. When she became director of services for the elderly with Catholic Social Services, she found him to be very supportive of programs for senior citizens. He was disappointed, she said, when plans for a nursing home, already well advanced, had to be dropped after his financial advisers warned him against proceeding with the building because interest rates were sky high. In later years she found him to be supportive of the personal care home program.

His presence was always a highlight of Senior Citizens Sunday held each May. He celebrated the Mass and gave the homily at the Cathedral of Christ the King. At the reception which followed in the Hyland Center, he made it a point to move graciously from table to table, greeting everyone personally.