By George Raine
Father Donald C. McDonnell, a passionate advocate for the poor who was a counselor to and confidant of Cesar Chavez years before he would launch the farm labor movement in California, and just as intense a champion of right-to-life causes, died Feb. 20 of complications related to pneumonia. He was 88.
He had an ear for language. He spoke Spanish with braceros he ministered to in the then-agricultural Santa Clara Valley, Mandarin with Chinese who changed the demographic around Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in San Francisco, where he was pastor from 1970 until his retirement in 1989, as well as Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and other languages that he fancied. His message in any language turned on social justice.
Father McDonnell was particularly well known for his work, beginning as a young priest in the 1950s, in the East San Jose barrio of Sal Si Puedes – meaning Escape If You Can, or escape from poverty and suffering – and later for his advocacy on the front lines of anti-abortion campaigns, including his willingness to be arrested for the cause.
Father McDonnell and Father Lawrence Goode, the pastor of St. Francis of Assisi Church in East Palo Alto, were among the first people arrested at an Operation Rescue demonstration in the Bay Area, in Daly City in the mid-1980s. He was also synonymous with Project Rachel, a post-abortion ministry. “He was dedicated to all aspects of Respect Life – the pastoral, the prayer and the activism,” said Mary Ann Schwab, the Project Rachel coordinator at the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
Sal Si Puedes was home to Cesar Chavez, and he and Father McDonnell became close friends. Father McDonnell introduced him to Catholic social justice thinking and to the writings of St. Francis and Mahatma Gandhi – who believed that non-violence will bring positive change.
In his book, “Trampling Out the Vintage: Cesar Chavez and the Two Souls of the United Farm Workers,” Frank Bardacke writes about Father McDonnell’s influence on Chavez, who directed what farm workers called “La Causa”: “Father McDonnell was a professional of political hope. He was only five years older than Cesar, not yet 30, but he spoke with the maturity of a priest and the confidence of an intellectual who had worked on his ideas and was not just repeating a memorized doctrine.”
He understood the nexus between the Catholic faith and politics, and he introduced Chavez to an iconic labor leader, Fred Ross Sr., who taught Chavez organizing – concepts he applied in creating the United Farm Workers. Chavez, according to Bardacke, said, “Father McDonnell radically changed my life.”
Father McDonnell at the time was in residence at St. Patrick in San Jose, but he spent a great deal of time at what was then Mission Our Lady of Guadalupe in Sal Si Puedes, where on Good Friday he led a candlelight procession, holding forth in his Jeep and directing the event through a bullhorn, recalled Salvador Alvarez, now a deacon in the Diocese of San Jose, who worshiped at the mission as a high school student.
A large group of men in the procession bore a telephone pole that represented a cross – Father McDonnell’s point being that “the cross of poverty is too hard to carry by any one person,” said Deacon Alvarez.
Bill Orella was a volunteer for Father McDonnell in those years, and on Sundays he drove an old tour bus that the priest had acquired to farm workers’ camps and brought braceros to Mass at either the mission or Our Lady Star of the Sea Church in Alviso. “I followed him unquestionably,” said Orella. “He was so holy and so good.”
Sometimes, said Father Goode, his longtime friend, he decided to celebrate Mass for the farm workers at midnight or 2 a.m., and they would be rousted. “He’d say, ‘Wake them up. They’re Catholics,’” said Father Goode.
Also in those years, Father McDonnell had radio programs on KSJO and KLOK, reading the New Testament, prayers and hymns and explanations of encyclicals. By 1958, his following was so great that people wanting to hear him preach jostled for space at St. Patrick.
At the request of Cardinal Richard Cushing of Boston, and responding to an appeal from Rome for priests to serve in Latin America, Father McDonnell was posted in Cuernavaca, Mexico, in 1961, teaching an intensive formation program in Spanish language, culture and history for priests, brothers, sisters and lay volunteers en route to assignments in Latin America. Then he was off to Tokyo to learn Japanese and, in 1964, was sent to Brazil to minister to Japanese immigrants. He remained there through the 1960s, ministering and celebrating Mass in Japanese, Portuguese, Korean, Spanish and English.
He returned to the Archdiocese of San Francisco in 1970 to begin his assignment at Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Here, he became a force in right-to-life causes, and once spent 30 days in jail in Sunnyvale for blocking a Planned Parenthood entrance. In jail, said Father Goode, he trained his handlers to wake him in the morning with the greeting seminarians of his day were given, “Benedicamus Domino” (Let us Bless the Lord), to which he replied, “Deo Gratias” (Thanks be to God). He also could induce tears in his jailers, said Father Goode, telling them that doctors advised his mother to abort him when she had had a problem pregnancy.
He also spent time in the law library working on his defense, and it paid off: he was released on a technicality.
“He wasn’t a practical man,” said Father Goode. “Sleeping, eating – normal human things were not high on his list of priorities. But his legacy is courage. And his commitment to respect life is a great legacy.”
Donald Charles McDonnell was born Nov. 21, 1923, in Alameda, the son of an Oakland police officer and a homemaker. He was ordained June 13, 1947, by Archbishop John J. Mitty, at St. Mary’s Cathedral in San Francisco. He lived in Oakland in recent years and helped out at St. Margaret Mary Church. His funeral Mass was celebrated Feb. 25 at St. Mary’s Cathedral.
Cardinal Roger Mahony, retired Los Angeles archbishop, worked one summer as a seminarian with Father McDonnell in Sal Si Puedes and said, “During that summer my heart and soul were converted to the work of service to our migrant brothers and sisters, and since then my life and ministry have been focused upon them.”
Contributions in Father McDonnell’s name may be made to Project Rachel of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, One Peter Yorke Way, San Francisco, CA 94109.