The Legacy of Father Hennessey

The Legacy of Father Hennessey

by Gerald M. Costello, The Christophers

May 31, 2010

We've all met people who find it hard to take no for an answer, but few of them are in a league with Father James Hennessy.  About 75 years ago, this young Boston priest had what seemed like a crazy dream at the time, and to make it come true he needed the approval of someone whose word was usually accepted without question.  When Father Hennessy didn't get the answer he was looking for, he went back again and again - until finally, perhaps out of sheer desperation, the legendary William Cardinal O'Connell said yes.  That word would lead to a missionary career for Father Hennessy, and, eventually, his death at the hands of the Japanese in World War II.  But it also gained him a pioneering role in the life of the Church, and made a lasting difference for men and women beyond number.

The little-known and fascinating story of Father Hennessy came to my attention in a report by Jim Lockwood that appeared in The Pilot, Boston’s archdiocesan newspaper.  Father Hennessy, ordained for the archdiocese in 1930, had had a couple of parish assignments when a few years later a radical idea struck him: why not become a missionary?  The role was one unheard of for a diocesan priest at the time, and that was precisely the reaction of Cardinal O’Connell when Father Hennessy's request came across his desk.  Strict and forbidding, the cardinal silently wondered about the priest's sanity and dismissed his petition out of hand.

No problem, Father Hennessy thought; I'll try again - and so he did.  Again the cardinal had a quick answer, and again it was no.  Could Father Hennessy ask the same question a third time?  He sure could, and did.  And this time, at last, Cardinal O'Connell said yes.  The cardinal accompanied his "yes" with a mysterious aside, commenting that the move could be a "blessing."  Whether he meant that the mission work would be a blessing, or that it would be a blessing to get rid of Father Hennessy, no one ever knew.  Nor did Father Hennessy care; he had what he wanted.
T
he priest in charge of the archdiocesan mission office had told him that he would be posted to whatever land was represented by the first missionary bishop to stop by, and that bishop happened to be from the Solomon Islands.  And that was where, in the late 1930s, Father Hennessy went, throwing himself into the work and endearing himself to the islanders. He even managed to build a seminary, the first of its kind in the Pacific.  Barely into his second five-year term, his work was interrupted when the U.S. and Japan entered World War II and he was taken prisoner - and later killed - by the Japanese.  "He died for the faith," said Msgr. Andrew Connell, former head of Boston's mission office, "because that was the reason he was there, which I think would constitute him as a true martyr of the faith."

Father Hennessy's legacy didn’t stop there.  The priest who led the mission office when Father Hennessy began his work was Father Richard Cushing - later the Cardinal-Archbishop of Boston and the founder of the St. James Society, the organization that sends Boston archdiocesan priests to overseas mission assignments.  Father Hennessy not only pioneered the work; he was the model for all the St. James priests who would follow.  And it all began because he wouldn't take no for an answer.

(This essay is this week's "Light One Candle" column, written by Gerald M. Costello, of The Christophers; it is one of a series of weekly columns that deal with a variety of topics and current events.)

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