Two priests, both veterans of World War II, die

Father John Manning served on the front lines
in the South Pacific, then became a missionary

By Voice staff

Father John Manning, a former Maryknoll missionary who became a priest of the Oakland Diocese in 1971 and served here until 1990, died March 16. He was 84.

Father John Manning

Father Manning began his California ministry at St. Jerome Parish in El Cerrito. In 1974, he served a two-year assignment at St. Felicitas Parish in San Leandro, followed by one year as associate pastor in Danville at St. Isidore Parish, and then two years as pastor of St. Paschal Baylon in Oakland.

In 1979, he was appointed a full-time hospital chaplain at Kaiser in Walnut Creek. The following year, he became pastor at St. Jerome’s and served there for the next ten years until his retirement in 1990.

Born in Flushing, New York, John Manning attended parochial school in that city. As a fourth grader, his teacher told him that he should become a priest, but he didn’t give it much thought, the priest recalled in a 1990 Catholic Voice story.

After graduating from a large public high school, he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps and served on the front lines in the South Pacific during World War II. A missionary from New Zealand whom he saw working in Samoa sparked his own vocation.

After the war, while waiting to get into a university to study advertising, he came across a copy of his sister’s Maryknoll Magazine. He thumbed through the publication, “daydreaming, and I probably remembered that priest in Samoa.” He liked the religious order’s promise of travel and adventure, and “the next thing you know I was off to the seminary.”

After nine years of study at Maryknoll Seminary in New York, he was ordained in 1955 and did parish work in Tanzania and Kenya for the next 15 years. He worked with the Wakuria tribe, who are part of the Bantu ethic group. He spent many years translating the New Testament into the tribe’s unwritten dialect, Gikuria, for the priests who succeeded him.

After deciding that he had had enough of mission work, Father Manning spent a year as a hospital chaplain in Tarrytown, New York. He came to California in 1971 and was incardinated into the Oakland Diocese in 1974.

A memorial Mass will be celebrated on April 7 at 11 a.m. at St. Jerome Church in El Cerrito.

Father Thomas McLaughlin was a prisoner of war
before he entered the Augustinian seminary

By Voice staff

Father Thomas McLaughlin, a former pastor of Our Lady of Grace Parish in Castro Valley, died March 6 in San Diego after years of failing health. He was 82.
 

Father Thomas McLaughlin

A native of Cleveland, Ohio, he was a teenager when his family moved to San Diego, where he attended St. Augustine High School and was introduced to the Order of St. Augustine who taught there. He left high school in his senior year to join the Army Air Corps and was commissioned a lieutenant in 1943.

He took part in 25 flight missions over Germany before his plane was shot down in February 1945. Captured, he was a prisoner of war until he was liberated on April 29 of the same year.

Soon after his return to San Diego he entered the Augustinian seminary. He professed vows as an Augustinian friar in September 1947 and was ordained to the priesthood in May 1953. He served as a science and religious teacher at high schools in Ojai and San Diego before he was appointed director of formation at the Augustinian seminary. Later he worked in pastoral ministry and served as pastor at parishes in San Diego, Ojai and at Our Lady of Grace from 1987–1992.

Sylvia Pettit, a longtime parishioner at Our Lady of Grace, said that she would always remember Father McLaughlin as a “very caring and respectful gentleman and priest.”

He would bring her Communion because she was homebound and they struck up a lasting friendship that continued after he left the parish and through his final illness.

“He always went out of his way to visit the homebound and the sick. He especially believed in that. And no matter where they were, he always made the point to go and visit them,” she told The Voice. “He was the most pious, religious priest that I have known in my life.”

Survivors include his brother, Ted, and nieces and nephews.

The funeral Mass was held March 15 at St. Patrick Church in San Diego. Burial was at Holy Cross Cemetery in San Diego. A memorial Mass will be celebrated March 26 at 7 p.m. at Our Lady of Grace Church, 3433 Somerset Ave., Castro Valley.

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