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Keeping the Light Shining Bright
Our Program of Formation involves eight years of academic and ministerial training. Throughout all that time our student friars in formation depend completely on the generosity of others and so keep our benefactors in particular at the center of our prayer life. Pleased do ad your own regular donation to our continuing need. We thank you now and will continue to thank you with our prayers.
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Vocation Office
Western Dominican Province
5890 Birch Court
Oakland, CA 94618-1626
(510)-596-1821
Our Dominican School
The Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA offers Masters and other degree and certificate programs rooted in the tradition of the Dominican order and our brother, St. Thomas Aquinas. Faithful to the teaching of Holy Mother, the Church, our school prepares not only young men studying for the priesthood, but also other men and women who will be the leaders of local communities of faith. Please do join in supporting this essential ministry of the Western Dominican Province.
Fr. Dominic John Maher, OP
When Fr. Dominic died, he was the oldest priest in California, having served many people all over California. He was born in England and went into the Novitiate at Woodchester, England with the intention of being a friar of the Western Dominican Province. He did his preliminary studies there and after ordination, went on to higher studies in Louvain, Belgium.
In 1879 he arrived in Benicia, California and began his ministry. After a year he was appointed Sub-Novice Master, and taught the Dominican students Church history. He took over the Novice Master role the following year from Fr. Dominic Lentz, OP and continued to teach the students. In 1884, he turned over his teaching position to Fr. Reginald Newell, OP. After a year of being Novice Master, he went back to teaching the Dominican students. In 1888 he became Novice Master again, but only for a year. In 1892, he went to San Francisco to be a Moderator Conferentiarium. He returned to Benicia to teach after six years in San Francisco. In 1914 he became Subprior and in 1923 he became the confessor to the Mission San Jose Dominican sisters.
In 1926, after a total of forty-one years in Benicia, he was assigned to Mission San Jose to be the chaplain to the orphanage. In 1929 Fr. Albert Lawler, OP joined him there for a year. In 1932 he moved to St. Mary Magdalen's in Berkeley. The Novitiate opened in Ross, California in 1933, and Fr. Dominic was one of the first friars to live there and retire. He eventually went blind, but is remembered by some friars as having been a joyous friar, even in his nineties. He died at the age of ninety-six, after seventy-seven years of religious life and seventy-three years of priesthood. May God have mercy on him and reward him for all his service.
Photo: Dominic Maher, OP as a student
|
Date of Birth |
Date of Profession |
Date of Ordination |
Date of Death |
|
June 29, 1854 |
June 1, 1873 |
September 22, 1877 |
December 16, 1950 |
XII: 42
