Correction: An earlier version of this obituary misidentified a bank on Capitol Hill. It is the National Capital Bank of Washington, not the National Bank of Washington.
Members of St. Peter’s Catholic Church congratulate the Rev. Michael O’Sullivan on his 30th anniversary as pastor of the church in 2000. (Lucian Perkins/The Washington Post)
With a walking stick in hand, a baseball cap on his head, and his clerical collar tucked unobtrusively in his pocket, the Rev. Michael O’Sullivan “walked his parish,” the streets, mews, courts, byways, avenues and alleys of the eclectic Capitol Hill neighborhood where he was priest and pastor of St. Peter’s Catholic Church.
He was “like a doctor making house calls,” said one of his parishioners, Kevin McCormally.
If you were a regular at St. Peter’s who missed Mass more than a couple of Sundays in a row, Father Mike (a.k.a. Father O’Sullivan or just plain Father O) was likely to come knocking at your door, just to let you know you were missed and just to make sure you were okay.
If you were homeless and destitute, he might stop on the street and chat and maybe find you an odd job at his church, something to put a little money in your pocket or food in your tummy. If you were a street person, he’d welcome you to Sunday services at St. Peter’s.
On his ambulatory rounds, Father O’Sullivan made several regular stops, including the National Capital Bank of Washington, two blocks from St. Peter’s, where he exchanged ritual greetings with his friend George A. Didden III, the late chief executive of the bank.
“Top o’ the morning to you, Father.”
“And the rest of the day to you, George.”
From 1970 until he retired in 2005, Father O’Sullivan was pastor at St. Peter’s and a visible presence just about everywhere on Capitol Hill. His stewardship at St. Peter’s was among the longest parish ministries in the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington. He won an award from the Capitol Hill Community Foundation for his service in the neighborhood.
He died March 15 at the Sacred Heart Home in Hyattsville of complications from Parkinson’s disease. He was 81. His church announced his death.
Michael Joseph O’Sullivan was born Jan. 9, 1932, in Kilgarvan, in a mountainous area of County Kerry, Ireland, one of six children. Two sisters survive.
He decided in high school to be a priest. He attended St. Kieran’s seminary in Kilkenny, Ireland, and in 1955 was ordained. He asked for duty as “a missionary any place in the English-speaking world” and was posted to Washington. After serving at St. Camillus Church in Silver Spring and Nativity Catholic Church in the District, he was assigned to St. Peter’s.
There are widely circulated stories about Father O’Sullivan’s arrival at the church, where he found the front doors locked and a dog in the rectory that barked at visitors as if to frighten them away. Lynn Freeman, a church office administrator, said the new priest let it be known that very day that he was going out for a walk and he wanted the dog gone by the time he got back, and it was.
He was told that he had moved to a tough neighborhood where the streets were not always safe and the church had to be locked as a security precaution. The gentrification of Capitol Hill had just begun. There were still blocks of down-at-the-heels housing and clusters of urban decay.
“To take back the streets, all you’ve got to do is walk the streets,” Father O’Sullivan told The Washington Post in 2000.
No longer would he keep the church on lockdown. As predicted, there were thefts. Someone made off with candlesticks. But in the mind of the new pastor, the symbolic message of an open door was worth the cost.
St. Peter’s School, founded by the parish shortly after the Civil War, had fallen upon hard times by the early 1970s, and there was talk that it might close. The church building and the rectory were in disrepair.
During the next 31 / 2 decades, Father O’Sullivan established and raised money for a property maintenance trust fund that now stands at $2.5 million, according to Bill Phillips, a parish member who looks after financial matters.
Extensive repairs were made at the church, the school and the rectory, but not before 10 or 12 years ago was the church air conditioned.
Previously, it seemed during the summer months that attendance at St. Peter’s was declining, while it rose by a comparable amount at nearby St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, which was said to be cooler. Attendance at St. Peter’s went up when air conditioning was installed.
The church now has a membership of 1,100 families; the school has an enrollment of 220 in kindergarten through the eighth grade.
In his life away from the church, Father O’Sullivan went to New York several times a year to see performances at the Metropolitan Opera, and he played golf on Fridays with a group of other Irish priests.
He never forgot his Irish heritage. There was a St. Patrick’s Day party every year at St. Peter’s, complete with a blessing of shamrocks in the Gaelic tongue by Father O’Sullivan. This year’s party was held March 16, the day after Father O’Sullivan died.
There was, as always, the blessing of the shamrocks, but no one to pronounce the words in Gaelic. They were blessed in English.