Parish to Help Priest Celebrate 90th Birthday

The elderly priest sits in his recliner with a welcoming smile. He stretches out a gnarled hand and whispers a warm greeting in a thick Irish brogue.

Dressed in meticulously shined black shoes, creased black pants and a starched black shirt with a white clerical collar, he appears ready to make the rounds of his beloved parish, St. John the Baptist de la Salle Catholic Church.

But as he approaches his 90th birthday, which past and present parishioners will help him celebrate Sunday, Msgr. Peter O’Sullivan gets more visits than he makes.

Parishioners Don Hennelly and Mary Alice McCarthy stop by O’Sullivan’s cottage on the church campus at Chatsworth Street and Hayvenhurst Avenue to give the retired rector an update on birthday party plans.

They tell him about the 300 guests expected to crowd the church fellowship hall for the 4 p.m. potluck dinner. They tell him about the special music being prepared. They sit quietly as he takes a long distance call from a well-wisher in Oregon.

Marty Rocha, who describes herself as the closest thing O’Sullivan will ever have to a personal secretary, keeps him abreast of who has responded to party invitations.

Through it all, O’Sullivan nods, smiles and asks a few questions, but mostly appears amused by all the fuss being made over him.

“I’m not overflowing about it,” O’Sullivan says, referring to the fete in advance of his July 4 birthday. “I’m not a young kid anymore. My days for enjoying social things are over.”

Despite his protests, O’Sullivan will be the center of attention Sunday as longtime parishioners reminisce about the tall, straight-backed cleric who arrived as the new parish priest in March 1954 and how he shepherded his flock through births and baptisms, first Communions and confirmations and weddings and funerals until he retired from the pulpit in 1986.

O’Sullivan was born in Thurles, County Tipperary, Ireland, on July 4, 1910, fifth of six children born to Michael and Mary Doheny O’Sullivan.

At 18, O’Sullivan followed an older brother and sister into religious service when he entered St. Patrick’s Seminary in Thurles in September 1928. Six years later, he was ordained a Roman Catholic priest at Cathedral Thurles.

After ordination, O’Sullivan joined his older brother, Father Thomas O’Sullivan, in Los Angeles. The reunited brothers served at churches in what was then the Los Angeles-San Diego Diocese.

For nearly two decades, the younger O’Sullivan served as an assistant pastor at several parishes in L.A., Long Beach, Lynwood and Santa Maria. He was named pastor of St. Rose of Lima in Simi Valley in September 1951.

Three years later, on March 2, 1954, Archbishop James F. McIntyre named O’Sullivan pastor of a new parish called St. John Baptist de la Salle in the rural San Fernando Valley.

“There was no church building,” O’Sullivan recalls. “It was 10 acres of horse ranch property. I only saw hay the first year.”

O’Sullivan and his 100-member congregation celebrated Mass in a nearby building that had been used as an Army hospital during World War II.

Undeterred, O’Sullivan set about building a church and school that would meet the spiritual needs of hundreds of Catholic families lured to the Valley by its postwar promise of suburban splendor.

“A lot of people came out to California after the war,” O’Sullivan says. “The place was being developed like crazy--all new houses and a two-lane highway.”

After preaching sermons on spiritual and family values, O’Sullivan would spend Sunday afternoons calling on these new families.

“If I got a name, I would go visit them,” O’Sullivan says. “I wanted to establish a relationship. They liked to see the priest.”

Those one-on-one chats not only put new members in the pews at St. John Baptist de la Salle, which today boasts 3,400 families under the pastorship of the Rev. Robert Milbauer, they also unified disparate families populating scores of housing tracts.

*

Under O’Sullivan’s leadership, the parish built a church, school and rectory--without a single dime being borrowed, church members say. He launched the church’s Fiesta de Granada block party and the annual Granada Hills Youth in Action Christmas parade. In 1976, the Granada Hills Chamber of Commerce named him its Citizen of the Year.

Political leaders have come and gone, neighborhoods have become more racially diverse and the once bucolic suburbs have been transformed into urban centers. Through it all, O’Sullivan has remained an enduring presence among generations of parishioners.

“He has always been very supportive and encouraging, and I consider him a friend,” said Paula Boland, a former assemblywoman from Granada Hills who remembers attending worship services in O’Sullivan’s Chatsworth Street home before the church was built.

“When I was running for office, he told me that he thought I would be good and represent the area’s wishes,” she said. “He always wanted to know how I was doing and was concerned that I was alone in Sacramento.”

When party guests gather for Sunday’s potluck dinner, they are likely to share tales of how the monsignor has been there for their personal highs and lows.

They’ll probably also talk about the time O’Sullivan collared a burglar who broke into the rectory and held him until police arrived. And about the crazy sombrero he wore every year to the fiesta.

In a fast-paced society where neighbors barely know each other and families stay connected through cell phones and voice mail messages, parishioners say O’Sullivan, as much as the school and church, is the linchpin that holds them together.

“Our whole lives revolve around the church and the school,” says Rocha, pausing as she sifts through the mail on O’Sullivan’s desk. “He created a real sense of community.”

For his part, O’Sullivan listens and nods and smiles.