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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. |
