 Fr. Antoninus James Rooney, OP
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 |
