Fr. John Edward Louis Sullivan, OP

Although a son of St. Albert's Province, this meticulous scholar, indefatigable Thomist and gentle man spent his last years in the West and remains at rest among brethren in Benicia, California.

John Louis Edward Sullivan was born in Dubuque, Iowa, on September 15, 1922.  Graduating from Loras Academy High School in 1939, he enrolled at Loras College, but interrupted his education to serve in the Marines during World War II, where he saw action at Iwo Jima and Guam and then served in the occupation forces in Japan.

Mustering out of the service as a First Lieutenant, he resumed his studies at Loras as a seminarian for the Archdiocese of Dubuque.  Friendship with Dominican students eventually resulted in his entry into the Order at the novitiate in Winona in 1952 and his profession on August 31 of the following year.  Completing his basic philosophical course at River Forest and theology studies at Dubuque, Edward was ordained a priest in the latter city on May 23, 1959.   Following ordination, he was sent to Washington for graduate studies leading to a doctorate in theology.

In 1961, he was assigned to St. Rose Priory in Dubuque and there and at St. Bernard Seminary taught Patrology and Historical Theology.  He also served the community as Sub-Prior, Master of Cooperator Brothers, Assistant Dean of Studies and Secretary of Studies.

In order to pursue his interests in teaching, research and writing in a more pastoral setting, Fr. Sullivan accepted assignment to St. Thomas More Newman Center in Tucson to serve as Co-Director with Fr. Richard Butler, while lecturing in philosophy at the University of Arizona.  Increasing cardiac problems, however, interrupted his work the following year when he underwent surgery for an arterial bypass.

In 1971 he was assigned to our Province and to the theological faculty at St. Albert's College.  Close association with Mortimer Adler at the Institute for Philosophical Research in Chicago led to the publication of his research on nature of religion in the 1976 and 1977 issues of The Great Ideas Today.

In order to aid his sisters in caring for his aging parents in Anaheim, Fr. Sullivan transferred in 1975 to the faculty of St. John's College Seminary in Camarillo, where he demonstrated his outstanding charism as a teacher to a half-decade of young seminarians of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.  It was here that he completed and published his book, Ideas on Religion: A Prologomenon to the Philosophy of Religion, in 1979.

On March 26, 1981, having just completed an address on the importance of philosophy to seminarians before an accreditation committee at St. John's, Fr. Sullivan suffered a fatal heart attack and died a short time later at Pleasant Valley Hospital in Camarillo.  News of his sudden passing shocked the clergy of Los Angeles as well as his Dominican brethren.  Following funeral services at his family's parish church of St. Justin the Martyr in Anaheim, which was attended by members of the hierarchy, many diocesan priests, religious and seminarians, he was buried from the chapel at St. Albert's in Oakland on March 31, 1981 and rests in Benicia.

- Albert Buckley, 0.P.

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