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May 8 , 2006 • VOL. 44, NO. 9 • Oakland, CA
Beloved Msgr. Bernard Moran leaves legacy of service
Even as death
approached, Msgr. Bernard J. Moran continued to minister to others. The
evening before he died, a woman came to the rectory at St. Theresa Parish
in Oakland to see the ailing priest. He wasn’t able to come downstairs
to meet her so he said, “Send her up,” according to Father
Patrick Goodwin, who succeeded Msgr. Moran as pastor at St. Theresa in
2003.
The following morning, April 21, Msgr. Moran entered Summit Medical Center
for cancer treatment and died later that day.
That the 79-year-old priest would put the needs of someone else before
his own came as no surprise to Father Goodwin. “He absolutely loved
being a priest. He loved his work. He was a retired pastor, but he was
not a retired priest.”
His commitment to serving God and the people God placed in his pastoral
care are at the heart of Msgr. Moran’s legacy, which spanned 53
years of priestly ministry. In an interview with The Voice shortly before
he stepped down as pastor at St. Theresa, he said that his main prayer
was to do whatever God wanted him to do. “That is my prayer in life.”
Born in San Francisco, Msgr. Moran grew up in a strong faith-filled environment
where he received a solid Catholic education from his Irish parents and
from his elementary and high school teachers -- the Mission San Jose Dominican
Sisters and Marianist Brothers. He attended St. Joseph College in Mountain
View and St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park before he was ordained
a priest January 1953.
After briefly serving as associate pastor at St. Jarlath Parish in Oakland,
Father Moran was assigned to St. Anne Parish in San Francisco.
For six of the seven years there he was also chaplain to the Newman Club
at the University of California Medical Center. He found this assignment
enjoyable and challenging because of the many discussions he had with
students who sought to integrate Catholic values into their lives as doctors,
pharmacists and dentists.
He returned to Oakland in 1960 as associate pastor at St. Paschal Parish.
After the creation of the Oakland Diocese in 1962, Bishop Floyd L. Begin
appointed him as the first director of diocesan cemeteries. During his
tenure he oversaw the opening of Queen of Heaven Cemetery in Lafayette
and expansion at other diocesan cemeteries.
The job also meant that Father Moran had to negotiate labor contracts,
a challenge for the priest whose hero was Father Peter Yorke, one of the
Bay Area’s leading labor advocates decades earlier. Father Moran
“would have been so much in the camp of labor,” said Bishop
Emeritus John Cummins, a seminary classmate of the priest and second bishop
of Oakland. “And then for him to be in a kind of management situation
... there was something ironic about that.”
Yet when asked to take on the position Father Moran performed admirably,
Bishop Cummins said. “I’m sure he would have been happy to
have skipped that job, but he did it very well. And like everything else
he kept his interest in that until he died.”
Father Moran carried his skills as an astute administrator to his subsequent
pastoral assignments. Shortly after becoming pastor at St. Raymond Parish
in Dublin in 1970, he had the parish “humming,” said Reina
Whitney, a longtime parishioner.
One of the priest’s first projects was improving the parish grounds,
which badly needed landscaping. Apparently drawing on his skills as cemeteries
director, he divided the parish property into “individual plots”
one for each participating family “complete with names on each plot,”
she recalled with a laugh. Families would go to their “assigned
plots” in their spare moments to plant ivy and ice plants.
Soon the parish grounds became beautiful, she said.
Under the priest’s watch, the parish saw the introduction of a stewardship
program, a tithing program and the development of a religious education
program. The parish also adopted a refugee family from Vietnam and began
a longtime outreach to a mission in Guatemala.
Parishioners paid tribute to the priest, named a monsignor in 1973, by
naming the parish hall after him when he was reassigned to St. Theresa
Parish in 1981.
At his new parish Msgr. Moran continued his commitment to service. “He
was especially dedicated to the sick and the shut-ins and the elderly,”
said Anne Rynders, a longtime member at St. Theresa Parish. “He
was also a great support to couples and parents. He was the person you
went to when your kids were going to go through Confirmation or have them
baptized. He was the one.”
A staunch supporter of Catholic education, he oversaw the construction
of the science center at St. Theresa School. The parish church also underwent
renovation, including the addition of new stained glass windows, under
his supervision.
At the heart of his ministry was his relationship with God. “He
was deeply spiritual,” Rynders said. That faith proved to be key
when a fierce firestorm ravaged the Oakland hills in 1991.
The fire, which claimed 25 lives, destroyed more than 3,000 homes, including
the homes of over 230 parishioners.
Msgr. Moran felt that it was “providential” that the parish
church was spared from the conflagration, Bishop Cummins said. The priest
quickly moved to ensure that the church would be a place where parishioners
could gather to console and strengthen one another.
He organized a Mass the Sunday after the fire was extinguished and asked
the bishop to be there. “I thought that pastorally that was very
strong leadership,” Bishop Cummins said.
Family members, friends and parishioners past and present showed their
affection and respect for Msgr. Moran by filling St. Theresa Church to
overflowing for his vigil service on April 26 and again for the funeral
Mass on April 27. A good number, like Mary Carmen Batiza, recently retired
diocesan archivist, knew the priest for close to 50 years or more. “I’m
going to miss him terribly,” she said. “He was one-of-a-kind.
They don’t make them like that anymore.”
Msgr. Bernard J. Moran
