A native Pittsburgher, pastor and fervent advocate for labor rights
The Rev. John “Jack” O’Malley was known to never back down from what he believed in.
The Roman Catholic priest’s friends and colleagues would describe him as someone who didn’t stray from his moral values and wasn’t afraid to call out injustice. Throughout his life as a pastor, Father O’Malley would often picket with labor unions, even getting arrested several times while protesting.
Father O’Malley, 83, died on Friday at a residence in the West End. He used to refer to these acts of civil disobedience as “divine obedience,” his friends said, recalling one of many arrests during the Strip District’s Grape Boycott in the 1970s protesting workers’ low wages.
Joyce Rothermel, a friend and member of the Association of Pittsburgh Priests, recalled getting arrested alongside Father O’Malley at the White House while protesting then- President Ronald Reagan’s administration’s decision to expand the military budget, among other issues.
“That was the most outstanding characteristics that I really loved ... that he was afraid of nothing and no one,” said Marcia Snowden, a lifelong companion of Father O’Malley. “And not in an arrogant way, it was because he was inclusive.”
Even during a recent hospitalization at UPMC Mercy while dealing with Parkinson’s disease, Father O’Malley tried to organize hospital workers to form a union. The Rev. John Oesterle, a chaplain at UPMC Mercy, said he was visiting Father O’Malley just two weeks ago when Father Oesterle recalled Father O’Malley asking a nurse who was assisting him if she was in a union.
“To his very almost dying day, he was speaking up for those who don’t make much money, the essential workers, and that would have been typical of Jack,” Father Oesterle said.
Father O’Malley died peacefully at Ms. Snowden’s home in the West End.
Ms. Snowden, 78, who has kept a close friendship with Father O’Malley for the past 50 years, assisted him as he was dealing with Parkinson’s and recovering from back surgeries.
“Everybody loved him,” Ms. Snowden said. “He was just such a presence. He grew great strength from the people around him.”
Father O’Malley was born Nov. 17, 1936, in the Strip District, the fourth of seven children. He started his education at St. Patrick Parish until his family moved to Morningside, where he then attended St. Raphael grade school.
Father O’Malley was an original member of the Morningside Bulldogs football team in 1950- 1951. He graduated from Central Catholic High School in 1954, where he played basketball and football. He later was inducted into the Central Catholic Hall of Fame.
He went on to St. Francis University in Loretto, Pa., on a basketball scholarship. He graduated in 1959 and was captain of a team that appeared in the 1958 National Invitation Tournament.
He turned down a professional offer to join the NBA’s Detroit Pistons, instead choosing to attend St. Vincent Seminary in Latrobe, where he received his master’s degree in 1965.
He was ordained in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh by Bishop John Wright in 1965. Father O’Malley then went on to become a pastor at several Pittsburgh parishes and one in Wilmerding, Mass.
Since 2001, he served as the labor chaplain to the Pennsylvania AFL- CIO and Allegheny County Labor Council, where he helped obtain workers’ rights to a living wage, safe working conditions and good health care.
Father O’Malley’s social justice efforts spread across the globe. He traveled to Nicaragua during its revolution in the 1980s. He was part of a National Council of Churches movement supporting Native Americans at Wounded Knee, S. D ., in the 1970s, and he worked alongside Cesar Chavez on the United Farm Workers’ picketing campaign at grocery stores and markets across Pittsburgh in the 1960s.
Father O’Malley’s kindness included providing housing for people who needed a place to sleep, friends said, noting that he provided a place for Tibetan monks and United Farm Workers to stay while he helped them organize.
Joe Delale, the former labor liaison for the AlleghenyFayette Labor Council, worked with Father O’Malley and would become close friends with him.
Mr. Delale said Father O’Malley often joked about why he became so involved with pro- labor activism. Father O’Malley said he was baptized by the Rev. James R. Cox, a Roman Catholic priest who was a pastor at St. Patrick Church in the Strip District. Father Cox was also known for labor rights activism that included creating a shantytown for unemployed people during the Great Depression, according to Mr. Delale.
“So his father always wanted to know why he always got in trouble — and he would get in good trouble — [ and] he always told his father, ‘ Well, what do you expect? I was baptized by Father Cox,’” Mr. Delale said.
Beyond Father O’Malley’s work as a pastor, Mr. Delale said, the priest founded the Labor and Religion Coalition of Western Pennsylvania, which was created to bring churches and unions together to discuss workers’ issues.
Father O’Malley also helped start the Thomas Merton Center in the East End and the Association of Pittsburgh Priests, a diocesanwide organization of ordained and non- ordained women and men.
Through his time as a pastor, Father O’Malley spoke out on social justice issues.
“He was able to challenge what was happening with the Vietnam War, all of the issues that were part of the ’ 60s, women’s issues and civil rights,” said Father Oesterle, who described himself as an admirer of Father O’Malley’s.
Father O’Malley’s work in championing equal rights has been permanently memorialized in Pittsburgh.
His name is alongside other civil rights activists honored on the Freedom Corner Memorial in the Hill District, Mr. Delale said.
In 2018, Mayor Bill Peduto presented Father O’Malley with the key to the city.
“Pittsburgh, and working men and women everywhere, have lost a great champion in Father Jack O’Malley, but the legacy of his work on behalf of labor will live on for decades,” Mr. Peduto said in a statement Saturday.
Father O’Malley is survived by five siblings, Patricia Paolini, of Youngstown, Westmoreland County; Thomas O’Malley, of Cypress, Calif.; and Mary Jane Diamantopolus, Margaret O’Malley and Mark O’Malley, all of Pittsburgh.
The family will receive friends from 5 to 8 p. m. Tuesday and from 1 to 4 p. m. and 5- 8 p. m. Wednesday at the McCabe Brothers Funeral Home at 6214 Walnut Street in Shadyside.
A Mass of Christian burial will be held at 11 a. m. Thursday at St. Raphael Church in Morningside.