Growing up O’Donnell — Family life had a profound influence on new bishop
SCROLL THE ARROWS to see more photos.
Terrance O’Donnell was purchasing a grocery store to support his growing family.
Turns out, it wasn’t the only property available.
“Mr. Rucker is also selling his house,” the father of 10 called to tell his wife.
“Is it near the church?” she asked.
“I think I’m looking at the back door to the rectory, and the church is next to it,” he told her, surveying the view from the foyer.
“We’ll take it!” she fired back.
That’s when Janie O’Donnell became a daily communicant, along with any of her children who weren’t in school yet.
“I grew up serving Mass at 6:30 in the morning, sometimes with my hair all disheveled, because Monsignor Ulrich would call and say, ‘We need servers,’” said Bishop-elect Ralph B. O’Donnell, youngest of the O’Donnell children.
On Sunday mornings, the family would fill a pew on the left side of Our Lady of Lourdes Church, a 1920-vintage gothic edifice that still anchors Omaha’s Bancroft neighborhood.
Cloud of witnesses
Bishop-elect O’Donnell does not remember his father, who died in 1971, before the bishop-elect turned 2.
“My mother, in her vocation as a widow and mother, dedicated her life to raising us in the faith,” the son noted.
“And by her witness of faith!” he said. “I remember saying at my first Mass, I first learned how to find Christ present in the Eucharist because of my Mom’s attentiveness and quietness at Mass. It was a true solace for her. It’s where she found strength. And my brothers and sisters and I, we witnessed that on a regular basis.”
Service and daily Communion were simply part of existing.
“As a result, I always identified with the Mass and the Priesthood as something central to Catholic life,” Bishop-elect O’Donnell told reporter Matthew A. Rarey in 2009.
Mrs. O’Donnell worked incredibly hard.
“She had a full-time job and went to night school to get a degree in bookkeeping,” the bishop-elect recalled.
“And she took in typing on the weekends,” he noted. “I remember as a boy, waking up and hearing the typewriter while there would also be a load of laundry in the wash.”
The family had what they needed.
“It wasn’t until I was older that I realized that there were some things that we didn’t have that others had,” he acknowledged. “But what he did have was a very happy life.”
As the youngest, he prefers to think that he wasn’t spoiled, “just loved a lot.”
“My brothers and sisters are good to me,” he said. “I hope I’m good to them.”
Their grandparents lived nearby and were very helpful. Evening meals and Sunday brunches were taken together.
“Our dinners were — I wouldn’t say chaotic, but very lively, every day of the week,” the bishop-elect recalled. “You had a chance to tell Mom what you did that day.”
Monsignor Edward O’Donnell, one of Terrance O’Donnell’s 15 older siblings, promised the dying father that all the O’Donnell children would receive a Catholic education through high school.
“And so, we had the benefit of attending Our Lady of Lourdes Grade School,” said Bishop-elect O’Donnell.
There, School Sisters of St. Francis taught young Ralph and his siblings “to love the Liturgy, to love singing at Mass and to love the poor.”
“They taught us to love the poor by being mindful of what you do, how you spend, how you treat what you own — things like your textbooks and your desk,” the bishop-elect recalled.
From there he went to St. Joseph High School in Omaha.
“People I met there, I’m still friends with to this day,” he said. “And teachers I had there continue to be mentors to me, even after their passing and my growing older.”
“Christ above me”
Bishop-elect O’Donnell remembers his uncle, Msgr. O’Donnell, who baptized him, as “a dedicated, honest and selfless priest.”
“He was devoted in prayer and faithful in his work perpetually,” the bishop-elect told the Catholic Voice newspaper in Omaha, upon Msgr. O’Donnell’s passing in 2011.
“When I played the Mass at age 5, I imitated him at Mass,” he stated at that time. “I knew what a priest was and did because of my uncle. I’ll miss sharing the Priesthood with him, sharing the day-to-day reflections.”
Other mentors included another uncle, Father Ralph M. O’Donnell, a longtime pastor, hospital chaplain and regular columnist for the archdiocese’s newspaper.
An aunt, Sister Marie Patrice O’Donnell of the Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa, Wisconsin, taught in five dioceses in Alabama, Colorado, Illinois, Nebraska and Wisconsin, over the course of her five decades in education.
In eighth grade, Bishop-elect O’Donnell chose Patrick as his Confirmation name.
“Go figure! An Irish kid with the name Patrick!” he said.
“My Confirmation sponsor is Pat, an older brother of mine,” he stated. “He was in college at the time. I really looked up to him.”
One of Bishop-elect O’Donnell’s uncles offered: “If you’re having your brother Patrick be your sponsor, that’s a fine name. And it was my father’s name — your grandfather. And he’s the patron of Ireland.”
“And I thought, ‘Sold!’” the bishop-elect recalled.
Part of what made St. Patrick such a terrific evangelizer was how he loved, trusted and obeyed God.
“He was stolen and enslaved, not unlike how people are still taken in horrible numbers and put into slavery and trafficking,” the bishop-elect noted.
“It was a difficult life, but he escaped,” Bishop-elect O’Donnell continued. “And I love how it is told that he got back home and the people of Ireland came to him in a dream, and in one voice, they called out to him: ‘Patrick, will you return to us?’
“And he DID! He brought the faith back to them.”
Patrick was a quintessential missionary priest.
“What a great patron!” he said. “The idea of being sent and really growing in his own discipleship, his own love of the Lord, and then being a witness of that love and mercy to a whole country that came to love him and hold him as their patron.”
There’s no way someone who is formerly enslaved would go back to the people he escaped from, “unless you love.”
“You love by patterning your heart after the heart of the Chief Shepherd,” said Bishop-elect O’Donnell. “It’s taking on the heart and the voice of the Master, of Christ. And all of us need help to do that. And we grow into it, and we do it together, as a Church, in this beautiful part of God’s vineyard.”
Cradle of vocations
Five men from Our Lady of Lourdes Parish, including Bishop-elect O’Donnell, have answered the call to the Priesthood in the past 40 years.
The neighborhood around the church remains a mix of third-, fourth- and fifth-generation ethnicities.
“A lot of Irish, a lot of Polish,” said Bishop-elect O’Donnell. “Some Germans, a little East and Central Europe, Czech.”
Many of the original Irish families arrived to help build and maintain the Union Pacific Railroad through the area.
The O’Donnell family represents a formidable combination.
“Our Irish and German heritage, that’s what blends us culturally,” said Bishop-elect O’Donnell. “My Mom’s mother used to say, we were good workers because we had German blood in us, and we were enthusiastic and loved life because of the Irish blood in us.”
The windows in Our Lady of Lourdes Church depict the Joyful and Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary in luminescent color.
The strikingly ornate window above the choir loft depicts the apparition of the Blessed Mother presenting the Rosary to St. Dominic, along with St. Rose of Lima.
“I served Mass right here,” Bishop-elect O’Donnell said, standing in the church sanctuary. “I looked up and saw that choir window quite often.”
Years later, he would serve as pastor of St. Rose of Lima Parish in Omaha, Nebraska.
Devotion to St. Pius X was very popular when the windows behind the sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes Church were commissioned.
“So, you have St. Pius X, St. John Vianney, St. Peter and St. Patrick
— quite a conglomeration!” said Bishop-elect O’Donnell.
The current Our Lady of Lourdes School was completed in 1954, during the Marian Year proclaimed by Venerable Pope Pius XII to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
A stone from the Grotto of Our Lady in Lourdes, France, is embedded in the building’s cornerstone.
Monsignor Thomas Furlong, who was pastor of Bishop-elect O’Donnell’s home parish from 1981 to 1992, inspired young people by his example of prayerfulness and dedication.
“He made the Priesthood a very real and attractive life, always encouraging by example,” the bishop-elect recalled in a 2021 interview with Mike May of the Catholic Voice.
“He was a fine preacher, who really taught from the pulpit,” Bishop-elect O’Donnell stated. “And he had a strong commitment to Catholic education.”
The road home
Bishop-elect O’Donnell was 15 when his brother Mark, who had recently gotten married, died of bone cancer at age 25.
“That was a particular time of sadness, challenge and loss,” the bishop-elect recalled. “But also tremendous grace.”
Their mother modeled acceptance of God’s will, forbearance and patience.
“We celebrated Mark, prayerfully but also with humor and joy,” said Bishop-elect O’Donnell. “He fought hard while he could, and when death was imminent — when we knew — my Mom helped him along prayerfully.”
Her exact words were: “It’s time to prepare to go home, and we’ll be right here with you until you go to God.”
There were times when his health declined rapidly, then rebounded.
“I remember the nurses at the hospital commenting about how our family was always together, and one minute you’d be hearing us laugh and sing, and the other minute we’d be praying and crying,” the bishop-elect recalled.
He called to mind his grandmother’s advice to “talk about death as a friend.”
He said he listened to his grandparents while they were still living because he loved them, and through his memories he listens to them even more now.
“Through all generations, God is so good!” he stated.
