Fr. Antoninus James Rooney, OP

Evangelizing across America, Fr. Antoninus was a famous preacher and teacher for his time.  He was born near Dundalk, Ireland and traveled with his parents to New York City as a boy.  He studied at Saint Xavier's College and developed his brilliant mind.

As a student in the Order, he studied at the Dominican house of studies in Somerset, Ohio, St. Joseph's, and also helped teach at the secular college attached to it.  After ordination, he taught the novices and  three years later became president of the college in Sinsinawa, Wisconsin.  When the college started to close, he went to teach the student brothers, continuing for eleven years.  During this time, he also went throughout Kentucky acquiring a reputation for his eloquence.  He was known as the Lacordaire of Kentucky.

In 1878, in  part to get away from a difficult superior, he was allowed to go to California.  He was stationed at St. Dominic's in San Francisco and, when his voice permitted, he lectured up and down the coast.  Usually, at the end of his missions, he would set up a Confraternity in the parish, as he did in Vallejo with the Rosary Confraternity.  He returned to Kentucky in 1884, but found that California suited him better and came back the next year to stay.

In 1893, his health gave out and he retired to Benicia until his death.  Near the end of his life, his eyesight failed him, and he had a special Mass that he memorized and recounted the rosary continuously instead of the choral office.  He was known as one of the greatest orators of his generation.  May God grant rest to his soul.

Dominicana Obituary

We note, with a deep sense of personal loss, the passing of Father J. A. Rooney, O.P., whose death occurred on February twenty-second, at Saint Dominic's, Benicia.

Beloved by all who knew him, reverenced for his great piety and admired for his extraordinary talents, Father Rooney's death, after many years of poor health, has saddened his faithful and affectionate friends.

Father Rooney was born near Dandily, Ireland, December 16, 1837.  Coming to America when very young, he was placed with the Jesuit Fathers of Saint Francis Xavier's College, New York, where he finished a course in secular studies.  He made his profession in the Dominican Order in 1855 and was ordained priest in 1860.  His subsequent career was marked by untiring zeal in arduous missionary work throughout the Eastern, Southern and Western States.  Brilliant in pulpit oratory, eloquent, with a pathos born of tender love for the Queen of Heaven, Father Rooney preached, prayed, and won souls to the practice of the powerful devotion of the Rosary.  Unbounded confidence in Mary's maternal solicitude, unlimited faith in her heavenly prerogatives, inspired his preaching "in season and out of season" of the glorious devotion of the Rosary -- the devotion in which the Son of God and His holy Mother are never separated, the devotion that is so pleasing to Heaven and so formidable to hell; the devotion that preserves faith -- as it fosters love of God and of His Immaculate Mother -- the devotion that is lisped by infant lips and fervently re-echoed by hoary age.

By the numerous bands of Mary's clients, formed in solid piety by Father Rooney's loving initiative, we may judge of the fruits of his heroic real. May the prayers of those for whom he so untiringly labored, obtain for him infinite joy -- everlasting peace.

--1905, Dominicana V.6, pg. 117

Contributing Source: O'Daniel, Victor Francis, OP, The Dominican Province of Saint Joseph, Historico-Biographical Studies. New York: National Headquarters of the Holy Name Society, 1942.

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