 Fr.
Paul Donald McCann, OP
Donald McCann was born in Astoria, Oregon, May 25, 1903. He was reared in
the Northwest where from 1913 to 1917 he attended public schools in McKenzie Bridge,
Oregon, near the site of our present Dominican summer camp. He completed his grammar
school education at Blessed Sacrament School in Seattle and for the subsequent two years
studied at St. Thomas College, the apostolic school then conducted by the Province at
Ross, California.
In 1927 he was received into the Order at the
novitiate in Benicia, California assuming the religious name of Paul. Here and at St. Albert’s College in Oakland he studied for the
priesthood and on June 16, 1934 was ordained by Archbishop Hanna. Fr. McCann’s
career as a priest was largely spent in specialized ministries. At one time or another he
was procurator both for St. Albert’s College and for the Province. He was
always interested in the education of young Dominicans and from 1938 until 1943 served as
Novice Master.
In 1953 he was asked to assume the difficult post of chaplain at the
Oregon State Hospital for the Mentally Ill in Salem, an assignment he retained for nearly
ten years. The last years of his life were spent as chaplain to Our Lady of Fatima
Villa in Saratoga, California. Father McCann was an orderly, taciturn man, extremely
well read and at times capable of great warmth. He died at Villa Siena, Mountain
View, California, March 26, 1976. |
