Monsignor Michael Lenihan passed away yesterday at the age of 85. Below is a profile from the ER archives. An obituary is forthcoming.
The Voyage of Father Michael Lenihan
originally published June 27, 2002
Irish priests have always had a way of getting around, and of having left a lasting impression wherever they went.
When literacy was nearly wiped out in Europe during the Dark Ages, for example, the scholar-monks who survived on the outlying islands of Ireland took it upon themselves to travel throughout the continent and keep book learning alive (hence the book by Thomas Cahill titled How the Irish Saved Civilization). And then there is the famously well-traveled Saint Brendan the Navigator, who many believe sailed a boat made of wood and leather all the way to America nearly a thousand years before Christopher Columbus.
Father Michael Lenihan made the journey from Ireland to the United States shortly after his ordination as a priest 50 years ago.
The journey may have been of less epic proportions than his Irish predecessors, but the priest who has presided over St. Lawrence Martyr Church in Redondo for the last 21 years has nevertheless become something of a local legend.
“It is legendary,” said Bishop Joseph Sartoris, “how many people he has helped.”
“He’s taken care of a lot of people,” remarked Mark Hebsen, a local parishioner. “Seven days a week, all hours of the day. It’s unbelievable.”
There are ways to count the work Lenihan has done—he has ministered 3,845 baptisms, 2,360 marriages, and 2,269 annulments since his arrival in 1981—but there is no way to measure his impact on the 4,600 families in his parish. The role he has played in the lives of his people seems like something from a bygone era of the priesthood–the country priest who is considered more a member of the family than he is a preacher on a pulpit.
Lenihan indeed grew up in the small country parish of BallyMcElligott in County Kerry, not far from the birthplace of St. Brendan. The Ireland he knew as a child had not yet emerged from centuries of endemic poverty and disease, and Lenihan did not escape the hardship so common to that time and place. He was the youngest of nine children, and though his family had the relative good fortune of owning a diary farm, tuberculosis ravaged the Lenihan clan. By 1948, when his oldest brother died from the disease—“the lowest ebb of all,” Lenihan sadly remembers—he had seen three sisters, two brothers and his mother all taken by tuberculosis.
Somehow, amid the sorrow, Lenihan’s faith grew. “Well, it’s the will of God,” his father often said as the family persevered through tragedy after tragedy. Lenihan realized, as a teenage boy, that he wanted to devote his life to serving others.
“I spent a lot of time growing up going to sanitariums and hospitals,” he said. “I think that may be where my desire to serve came from.”
On June 22, 1952, Lenihan was ordained as priest, and shortly thereafter given his first assignment, a small parish in Alice, Texas. He couldn’t have been more thrilled. “I always wanted to come to America,” he said. ”It was the fulfillment of a dream to live here.”
Lenihan served in Texas for seven years. Ironically, while there he became ill with tuberculosis, and though he escaped the disease through surgery, it became necessary for him to live in another climate. He was sent to California, where he served at a parish in Temple City. After five years, he became pastor at St. Columcille’s, a poor parish in South Central Los Angeles. It was there he met the acquaintance of another young priest, Father Sartoris, who served in a nearby parish.
“He kind of introduced me to life ministry,” Sartoris remembered. “I just admire him a great deal. What he did for the poor there—the kids’ educations, the families that needed help just getting food, clothing—was amazing.”
Sartoris eventually ended up in San Pedro, where he became a regional bishop and was happy to have Father Lenihan as a neighbor once again. But the experience in South Central deeply influenced both priests.
“It’s long, hard work, and you don’t have many resources, but I think those were happy days,” Sartoris said. “It’s pure ministry, not a lot of administration or staff, a much more direct, people-to-people kind of thing. He was very good at it. He just had a true desire to serve, and he was naturally on the side of the underdog. His whole history, and that of his people, was for the little guy who didn’t have an advocate. He was very much into social justice. He moved on to a more affluent community, but he never forgot St. Columcille’s. ”
In Redondo, Lenihan has become famous for his inclusiveness. “He has brought so many people back into the church,” said Mark Hebsen, a lifelong parish member. “I can’t even tell you how many people I have introduced him to who have gotten actively involved in St. Lawrence’s. It’s all because of him.”
One of those people was Steve Aspel, who was a lapsed Catholic and somewhat leery of the church when he met Lenihan. He was so impressed by the little Irish priest that he and his wife renewed their vows in the church, and Aspel made his first confession in 35 years. “I told him, it’s been 35 years since my last confession, so this is going to take a while,” laughed Aspel. “He said, ‘The past is the past. What is done is done. Lead a good life, and you are forgiven.’ Just like that. I couldn’t believe it.”
It is this directness and lack of formality, which has endeared him to so many. Hebsen recalled an unusual ceremony nearly a decade ago where a friend of his was baptized, had her first communion and confession, and was confirmed and then married all in less than an hour.
“Think about that,” Hebsen said. “The whole ceremony took about 45 minutes. He just said, ‘The past is the past. We are moving forward.’ There are not a lot of priests out there who will do that kind of stuff.”
That same woman, he noted, is now one of the more active members of the parish. Lenihan gave her a church she could believe in.
“He doesn’t scare you away,” said Aspel. “I grew up in the Catholic Church, and I never thought of a priest as just a great guy.”
Whatever his unconventional means might be, said Sartoris, Lenihan’s goal is always the same: to serve.
“There’s nothing formal, nothing fancy about him,” Sartoris said. “What you see is what you get. He might be out directing traffic, or…God knows what he might be doing, but he is there to serve.”
Even at the age of 75, as he moves into semi-retirement, Lenihan rises at 4 a.m. most mornings, writing bulletins, homilies, and preparing for 6:15 a.m. mass. Such quiet, hard-working devotion is rarely noticed, Sartoris said, especially in a time when so much negative publicity has surrounded the calling.
“These priests aren’t making the headlines,” Sartoris said. “They are just doing the steady good work with the people.”
