BY PRISCILLA GREEAR

Staff Writer

CARROLLTON--Shortly before his death at Tanner Medical Center, Msgr. Michael Regan continued serving others as he called by name and blessed a baby brought to him that he had baptized in July.

“Monsignor in his life was all about Jesus ... Everything that he had was poured into loving Jesus and to loving Jesus in his brother and sisters. I don’t know that he ever, ever, ever turned anybody away. He always wanted to give and give and give and so he gave,” said Father John Farrelly at the funeral Mass for Msgr. Regan held Aug. 12 at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church in Carrollton.

“We give thanks to God for such a beautiful life, for such a beautiful man.”

A priest for 53 years, Msgr. Regan died Aug. 8 at 77 from complications following hip surgery. A native of Philadelphia, he studied at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary there and was ordained in May 1946. He earned a doctorate in canon law at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

He came to Savannah in 1950 to assist Bishop Francis Hyland and accompanied him to Atlanta in 1956 when the North Georgia diocese was newly formed. He worked in the marriage court as officialis before becoming pastor of Immaculate Heart of Mary Church, Atlanta, where he served for 11 years. In 1965, impressed with the call of the Second Vatican Council to lay Catholics, he brought the Cursillo movement to Atlanta after participating in it in Chicago with a few men from IHM. More than 10,000 Catholics have since made a Cursillo weekend in the archdiocese.

In 1972 he became pastor in Carrollton where he served for the next 27 years, while the parish grew from about 100 to 700 families. He was named pastor emeritus in 1996 but continued to reside there, where he was known for his priestly concern for all people, particularly the down and out. Pope John XXIII named him a domestic prelate with the title of monsignor in 1959.

Family members, including some of the priests’ 25 nieces and nephews and their children, and friends appeared both joyful and sad as they crowded into the rural Carroll County parish. Principal celebrants of the Mass included Father Farrelly, the pastor, and Msgr. Peter Dora, vicar general. About 50 archdiocesan priests and Father Frank Jallen of Philadelphia, a friend of Msgr. Regan’s from seminary, concelebrated the Mass.

Father Farrelly said Msgr. Regan’s ministry extended to all the people of Carroll County, many of whom recalled how he visited them in the hospital or blessed them with the sign of the cross when he met them in the parking lot or grocery store, regardless of their denomination.

“(His ministry) stretched way beyond the boundaries of the Catholic Church to everyone. He considered everyone in the area in which he served as a priest to be part of his flock,” the pastor said.

While a strikingly handsome young priest with bright blue eyes, Father Farrelly said his deeper beauty increased with age.

“As all of that was diminishing, more and more and more shone forth in him the love of Jesus,” he said. “He had so many gifts and he could have used them for anything. He was brilliant. What a mind.”

He said Msgr. Regan had a profound love of the priesthood and had expressed at the end of his will his deep joy and gratitude to God for being a priest.

“People came to him from everywhere, broken people many times, and he listened to them and would pray with them and when he prayed with them they knew that they were in the presence of God--that this man was able to bring them to Jesus. And that’s why they came and that is why he will be missed so very much,” Father Farrelly said. “He was a profoundly humble man, but he had a tremendous trust and faith in God.”

“Monsignor just poured himself out ... Monsignor died of exhaustion in the service of God’s people.”

His sisters Anne Sharkey of Cheltenham, Pa.; Mary Fitzgerald of Souderton, Pa., and Rita Buchy of Melmont Park, Pa., brought the offertory gifts to the altar and spoke following Communion.

Buchy said her brother loved the South and the people of Atlanta. “We gave him to God and God sent him to the South where he loved his Southern people … Thank God that he was able to stay here to the very end.”

In July she visited her brother and they played their last tag, a game they played as children where they would tap each other on the shoulder and then run.

“Neither of us ran this time. We didn’t want to leave one another. You don’t want Michael to leave you, but Michael taught us how to try to accept God’s will,” she said.

Fitzgerald said her brother was always full of life. As a youth, he loved music, played the piano and sang, and had principal roles in many school plays based on Broadway shows in which he also danced and sang.

When times were tough, he sold fruits and vegetables from a wagon for the family to make ends meet and gave the proceeds and leftover produce back to his mother. He was well liked by adults as a boy and “everyone knew him because of his big smile and happy, friendly way.”

“We will miss you. You have been the love of our lives. We thank you for the joy and the happiness you brought into our hearts from the time we were children,” Fitzgerald said.

Msgr. Dora said the priest was a gift to Atlanta. “The Archdiocese of Atlanta as an institution, the Archdiocese of Atlanta as a family, is enriched by the presence of Msgr. Regan and gives thanks to God for his gift--what a gift of salvation.”

Parish secretary Pat Dickson, who knew Msgr. Regan for 27 years, said, “(He was) my priestly father, my brother ... He was my next door neighbor and my best friend.”

She said he loved all beautiful and colorful things and would often serenade her and others on the piano at weekly meetings. He loved the “baptismal pond,” she said, that he created beside the parish as a home for fish and ducks. The priest once actually held a baptism in it, she recalled, and she had to pull him back to land with oars while preparing for it because he was sinking in the clay.

Dickson also spoke of his love of all animals, as he was known as “St. Francis of Carrollton,” and is believed to have once had 275 creatures, including llamas, geese, Irish wolfhounds, cats and guinea hens. Dickson said the menagerie included goats, which had entered the church when the front doors were open, a peacock, which could be seen on the steeple, and roosters, which could be heard crowing during the reference to the cock’s crow in the reading of Christ’s Passion. She said that college students used to bring him their pets when they had to move and that “the local kindergartens used to call us to ask about visiting the zoo. Monsignor would welcome them and take them all over the grounds to show everybody.”

A niece, Rita Miller of Philadelphia, who made several trips to Georgia to visit her uncle, said that his gift to others was self-respect.

“What he really did was to bring Jesus to the people he met and to help them believe that Jesus loved and cared for them ... So many people were drawn to him. I was amazed at his selfless giving and began to realize that he gave the people the gift of self-respect. Uncle Michael saw no color, nationality, religious affiliation or class. He gave the person in transition, the person in need or a person suffering the same time and respect that he gave friends, family or benefactors,” she said. “I feel blessed all these years to have called him uncle, to have shared his joy, his gentleness, his loving, his giving. I was touched to the core of my being. I know I will carry his light to others and so will you.”

The OLPH choir led the congregation in “May the Angels Lead You into Paradise” to close the Mass. The casket was then carried to the parish’s memorial garden for interment, which was followed by a reception.

Rebecca DuVall, a lifelong IHM parishioner who knew the priest for 40 years, said Msgr. Regan gave her constant support.

“He was my spiritual mentor. I couldn’t ever call anyone and talk to anyone else except monsignor because I knew him so well. I just knew if I ever needed the person to rest my spirit, monsignor could rest my spirit.”

He counseled her when her son Kevin died in a camping trip accident in 1995.

“I said something to him about losing Kevin. He goes, ‘No, no, no. No loss here, Rebecca, only gain (in heaven).’ He just made me realize that Kevin is home and I really hadn’t lost him,” she recalled. “You don’t really lose your loved ones. That’s the biggest gift he gave me.”

DuVall said when she spoke to him just before his illness he told her, “‘We are heart to heart.’”

“When he said that to me I felt like that wasn’t just for me. That was for everybody who had known and loved him,” she said. “That message from him was a gift to carry me. I feel like I’m being carried now.”

She recalled the great love of God and of music and spirit of community he brought to IHM. “His love of music poured from his soul. If you could not sing a note you sang (at Mass),” she said. “He had a way of bringing it together.”

Proudly saying that he’s been called “mini-Mike” for having similar qualities to Msgr. Regan, Father Terence Kane, pastor of Sacred Heart Church, Hartwell, described his deep admiration for the ecumenical spirit of his friend of 31 years.

“He just poured out his love on people. The police here continuously brought people just out of prison … No matter where he went he talked to people. He’d meet people at gas stations and six months later they became Catholic,” he said. “Ecumenically there was no equal. He could meet and share with anybody and make them feel a true brother in Christ ... He had as many non-Catholic friends as Catholic.”

He said his friend loved to write and, on a trip to Ireland while IHM pastor, wrote every parish member a letter. Christmas cards often contained unique items like duck feathers. He always introduced himself as “Father Regan” and had a remarkable memory for names, often explaining to people their names’ meanings and origins. “He was just such a priest of God and he loved it.”

Father Paul Williams, pastor of Sacred Heart Church, Griffin, who was vested by Msgr. Regan four years ago at his own ordination, said the senior priest was instrumental in his decision to become a priest.

At Easter 10 years ago he pulled him aside and gave him a book on priesthood and shortly afterwards Williams decided to enter seminary. “He recognized and encouraged (my vocation) to priesthood.”

When he completed his pastoral internship at OLPH under Msgr. Regan, Father Williams said the priest always served the lost, helping out homeless people, recovering alcoholics, drug addicts and ex-convicts and picking up hitchhikers.

“He was afraid that the one time he didn’t stop that it would be Jesus that he missed,” Father Williams said.

When he attended Msgr. Regan’s 50th jubilee celebration of priesthood, Father Williams said he offered to finish the pastoral work so the priest could rest after having celebrated three Masses. He refused and instead the two ended up visiting the sick later that day in the hospital.

“The best thing he did for me was just (provide) a brilliant example of what a priest should be,” Father Williams said.

Donations in memory of Msgr. Regan may be made to the building fund at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church, 201 Old Center Point Road, Carrollton 30116.

Msgr. Michael Regan

FRIEND TO ALL -- Msgr. Michael Regan, left, is shown with one of his Irish wolfhounds in this Georgia Bulletin file photo.