By Rita McInerney

Father Anthony Curran, pastor of Our Lady Queen of Angels parish in Thomson and Catholic "ambassador" to McDuffie County, celebrated the 25th anniversary of his ordination May 3.

He was ordained at the Cathedral of Christ the King on May 20, 1967 by Archbishop Paul J. Hallinan, the last priest to be ordained by the ailing archbishop who died the following year.

His anniversary Eucharistic Liturgy took place in the First Methodist Church in Thomson with a retired Episcopal bishop, local ministers and civic leaders and friends from other parishes he has served joining Queen of Angels parishioners.

Homilist was Father Bob Kinast, also a priest of the archdiocese and a classmate at Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio, where both studied for the priesthood. Father Kinast is a Florida-based pastoral theologian whose writings appear regularly in the Faith Today section of The Georgia Bulletin.

Father Kinast called his friend a "wonderful ambassador of the Catholic presence in the area," in a telephone interview. He sees Father Curran as a facilitator with an ability to meet people, "to weave his relationships and to connect people with one another."

His local visibility, always in clerical garb, tends to soften any lingering suspicions and fears of Catholics among local people he encounters, Father Kinast suggests.

He was impressed with the number of people who came to Thomson for the anniversary celebration from Rome and Stone Mountain, two locations where Father Curran had served parishes. This is a testimony to his talent for being "present" to families and individuals, sharing in the important milestones of their lives. "That's an important ministry," Father Kinast declares.

The minister at First Methodist, Rev. E. Dean Kring, says Father Curran is "well liked in Thomson. He has a good ministry here."

The Catholic pastor serves as president of the McDuffie County Ministerial Association. Members meet the first Wednesday of each month at the local steak house and join for several ecumenical services each year.

Bishop Charles Judson Child, retired bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta, frequently joined the group while serving as interim pastor of St. Paul's Church in Augusta.

He describes the meetings as casual and "quite unstructured ... Just Christians meeting together as Christians. When folks get together who are really friends, there is an empathy bonded by a common baptism and devotion to the Lord."

There was usually some bantering, the bishop recalls, of the latest national or world news concerning denominations represented in the group. Unity was a hope often present.

The Catholic pastor is friendly with the bishop's mother, Alice Sylvia Child, 96, and living in Newark, NJ, Bishop Child says. She was invited to attend his anniversary liturgy June 14 at his home parish of St. Joseph's in Shamokin, PA, but was unable to make the trip.

Mary Roper, director of religious education at Queen of Angels, says there were parishioners who "couldn't imagine" having the anniversary celebration in a church other than their own, "but they went anyway."

Records show no Catholics in the Thomson area until 1933, when a McNeill family came from Chicago to start a box factory. The present church was dedicated by Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Bernardin in 1968.

Father Curran finds the parish, 120 miles from Atlanta, with 130 registered families, a "close knit and different experience of church." His days are full; he loves the "pace of this place and the solitude."

For her part, Mrs. Roper finds the pastor easy to work with, open to suggestions and with many good ideas in liturgy. (He received a master's in liturgy from Notre Dame University in 1979.)

Since he arrived in February, 1988, the parish has begun and completed two phases of the RENEW program. Close to 50 people participate and Mrs. Roper says he "really wants to make it go."

Father Curran has ways of combating the loneliness prone to afflict priests in remote rectories. One way is to cook. He prefers making his own meals to "going up the street" to eat. Often he'll invite local friends in to share a meal. A tradition he is popular for is his celebration of the March 4 feast day of St. Casimir, patron saint of Poland.

Fellow priests with Polish links and some "honorary Poles" welcome his invitation to the Polish meal. Using his Polish mother's recipe, he serves up such specialties as Galumpkies, a savory ground beef mixture wrapped in cabbage leaves.

Another loneliness chaser is his love of music fulfilled with regular attendance at the Symphony. Father Joe Fahy, CP, a friend who often goes with him, says he's never surprised when Father Curran's friends from his days in Rome and Dalton come up and greet him.

Father Fahy says he values the "great gift of friendship" extended by the Thomson pastor and is "deeply grateful for his constant support and encouragement" of his own ministry to Hispanic Catholics. And Father Curran, he adds, has a "talent for liturgy and is sensitive to the arrangements of church. Wherever he's gone, he has tried to make the house of God an inviting place for prayer and worship."

Father Curran's first pastorate was at St. Anna's in Monroe where he ministered to about 100 families at the Monroe church and its Winder and Madison missions. He found rural ministry a challenge but looking back he now says that there should be some training to prepare priests for such "specialized work."

He was in Monroe from June, 1972, until June, 1973, and then went to St. Mary's in Rome from 1973 until 1976. He treasures memories of these years; the friends made at Berry and Shorter colleges, and with Baptist and Methodist ministers.

Then, the Josephinum seminary asked him to comeback to help with formation. He stayed from 1976 until 1980. "I enjoyed those years. I loved my alma mater and was grateful for my education," he says. He worked full-time on the formation team, helping students with spiritual direction, offering retreat weekends and days of recollection, talks and liturgies.

It was, he says, a "rich but humbling experience," working one-on-one with the seminarians, helping them to discern what was happening in their prayer journeys.

When he came back to Atlanta, he spent a year at St. Thomas More with Father Walter Donovan as pastor. From 1982 to 1984 he was assigned to St. Joseph's in Dalton.

In 1984, he took a year's leave from his priestly functions and worked for an insurance company. He returned to active ministry in February, 1985, and was assigned to St. Jude's in Sandy Springs. In October of that year he was sent to Corpus Christi. He stayed at the Stone Mountain parish until his assignment to Thomson in 1988.

Father Curran is the youngest of six children, two girls and four boys, born to Joseph and Agnes (Przyszyski) Curran. He first thought of entering the seminary while in eighth grade. When he talked this over with his parents his mother asked him to wait a while.

It was an associate pastor at his parish, Father Wallace Sawdy, who suggested the Josephinum, a seminary founded in 1888 to educate German-speaking priests to serve German immigrants.

He entered the seminary in 1957 for his third year of high school. A few years later, during his college years, he signed on for the diocese of Cincinnati, Ohio. But Archbishop Egidio Vagnozzi, apostolic delegate at the time, thought otherwise. Aware of the need for priests in the newly-upgraded archdiocese, he assigned the young man to Atlanta. He was incardinated for this archdiocese in 1963.

After his ordination in 1967, he spent a year at St. Thomas More in Decatur and then was assigned to teach religion at St. Pius X High School. Two years later, he asked Archbishop Thomas A. Donnellan for a parish assignment and spent nine months at St. John the Evangelist before moving to the Cathedral of Christ the King for 1971-72.

Father Curran says there is no place that he's been assigned that he hasn't enjoyed.

Looking back over his years as a priest, he feels both sadness and hope. Sadness for the "brethren no longer in the ministry ... some of the best and the brightest." His hope is for the laity. He sees them claiming their place in the church in the next quarter of a century.