WHAT WOULD LA BISHOP HAVE BEEN THINKING IN THE MOMENT HE WAS SHOT?
LOS ANGELES – There are soul friends in this universe, those always present through good times and bad. They lift you up. They listen. Defend. Celebrate your victories. They are willing to go to battle for you – or because of you.
Sometimes you don’t realize their full impact. Until they’re gone.
Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop David G. O’connell was a soul friend. The Irish-born O’connell used public ministry to advocate for social and racial justice. He embraced immigrants. The poor. The marginalized. Gang bangers. The ill. The drunk and homeless. Those considered lost and forgotten. He served as their spiritual leader, and remembered each of their names along the way.
Bishop Dave, as he’s known in this city, embodied “anam cara,” Gaelic for soul friend.
This man of the cloth also fought against gun violence – when six people were killed in a month in his parish neighborhood, he mobilized 9,000 families not just to pray but to take action.
Yet gun violence ultimately stole him away from this community.
Bishop O’connell, 69, was found dead Feb. 18 in his home in the Los Angeles suburb of Hacienda Heights. He had been shot in the upper torso. A handyman whose wife worked as the bishop’s housekeeper has been arrested and charged with murder.
The pain is palpable among those who knew and loved him. Natural death would be acceptable. Understandable. But a violent death for someone who lived in peace is almost impossible to conceive. And even more difficult to forgive.
I sat in the soaring space of the Los Angeles cathedral on Friday for his funeral. That’s where I met Gina Zepeda, who attends a church O’connell used to lead. She seemed to know what O’connell would have thought about the man who killed him.
“I can’t imagine what kind of trouble he felt, what kind of angst he was experiencing to do such an awful, awful thing,” she said.
“I can only imagine that Bishop would have loved him even in that moment.”
As cardinals, fellow bishops and hundreds of priests filed into the cathedral Friday, a 20-minute processional, I watched the suffering on their faces. They are anointed to forgive sins. Yet they must be angry about the loss of their friend. Their soul friend.
“He was a friend of souls,” Monsignor Jarlath “Jay” Cunnane said Friday at O’connell’s funeral Mass at Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in downtown Los Angeles. Cunnane said O’connell’s friendship stretched more than 50 years. They were in seminary together and still dined together every Thursday evening.
“David did soul work,” he said. “He spoke to the soul. He healed souls. He brought peace to souls.”
A community amid strife
I wanted to know more about this Catholic giant, the one who I read about after his death. The one who was acknowledged by Pope Francis and President Joe Biden. The one who drew more than an estimated 3,000 people to his funeral. The one who operated in love and truth. The one who many believe will become a saint.
O’connell worked as a priest and then a bishop in Los Angeles County for 45 years, primarily in South L.A. He helped piece together a community reeling from riots after the officers who beat Rodney King were acquitted in 1992. He held listening sessions in the hood, a chance for residents, business owners, city leaders and activists to speak their minds in a safe space.
He gathered homeless folks on buses and traveled with them to cabins in the California mountains, where he offered hot showers, hot meals, a listening shoulder and the word of God. He wanted to give them a feeling of home, at least a temporary one, and peaceful surroundings that didn’t include sleeping on L.A. streets. So he shuttled them to hideaway camps where he prayed with people, and for people.
George and Patricia Duncan recall meeting O’connell in the 1970s, when he was known as Father Dave. He was leading the parish at St. Frances X.
Cabrini. O’connell baptized their sons and they eventually served as his altar boys.
O’connell’s demeanor was like talking to the guy next door, even though he spoke Gaelic, Latin, Spanish and English.
So when George Duncan, then a plumber, snapped his ankle while working, he sought a friend with a listening ear. A soul friend. Duncan couldn’t pay his gas bill, and lamented to O’connell about the frustration of not being able to support his family. Within minutes of hearing the story, Father Dave wrote a check to the family.
“No matter what your problem was you could talk to him,” George Duncan, 79, told me. “He had some wisdom and he would always try to make you laugh about it. And he was that way with everyone. He didn’t care who you were, where you came from or anything. He didn’t preach at you; he talked to you. He was always trying to help.”
‘Let me do this for you'
Andrea Vicich met Bishop O’connell in 2009 when he was the pastor at St. Michael Church in south Los Angeles. She was a burgeoning singer who wanted to do something different with her life. She started a nonprofit, Angels of Charity and Music.
With O’connell’s assistance, she built a support system for the poor, disabled and abandoned children around the world, particularly in Peru. Children with cleft lips and palates were receiving free surgeries and after-care support, as were children who needed shelter, food, clothing and other medical care.
But money ran out after a couple years. O’connell brought Vicich to his office. He pledged to donate his paltry salary for the year. He was adamant. As a priest he had a roof over his head and food to eat. He told her that’s all he needed.
“He said, ‘My daughter, let me do this for you,’ ” Vicich told me. “Let me help.”
A soul friend.
Congregants and friends of O’connell can’t help but wonder how someone could hurt him, this man with the big heart and hearty laugh. They pray he didn’t feel any pain, even as theirs can’t be soothed.
“I don’t know the details, you know, whether he was awake or whether he was aware – we just don’t know,” Zepeda, 54, a Hacienda Heights resident and employee of St. John Vianney Catholic Church, told me.
Zepeda said O’connell was scheduled to preside over their Mass on Feb. 19 – one day after he was killed. It was always a treat when O’connell visited the church in the community where he lived. As word spread about O’connell’s death, many believed he died from natural causes. Then they were told he was murdered.
Zepeda said O’connell struggled with his appointment to auxiliary bishop in 2015. He had been so entrenched in south Los Angeles, among the people, for the people. He wanted to serve on a broader level, but he also wanted to stay connected.
“He was heartbroken because he loved having a relationship with his community, with his people,” Zepeda told me. “Becoming a bishop, he knew that it was going to spread him out.”
O’connell has a namesake. He lives in Ireland, but traveled to Los Angeles to pay final respects to his uncle. David O’connell became weepy when he described their relationship. O’connell, the fun “father uncle,” always expressed his pride in family and was elated to welcome them to California. The Ireland clan visited often, exploring Disneyland, Universal Studios and Denny’s for breakfast with O’connell.
“Uncle Dave was an inspiration to us our whole lives,” David O’connell said. “He taught us that if you have the capacity to help someone, you should do it. I can hear him so clearly in my mind saying, ‘Ah, that’s no problem; I can do it.’ All he wanted to do was make things easier for everyone else and he never asked for a single thing, ever.”
A soul friend until the end.